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Market demand for Blu-Ray content/authored-disks
I’m in the throws of establishing a video business, and I would like to hear other people’s opinions/experiences, from a buisness point of view, on their perception of the market demand for high-def content delivered on Blu-Ray disk (we’re not talking online distribution for the purposes of this discussion). I want to know what sort of priority I should allocate towards “tooling up” for this capability.
All comments appreciated.
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7 Replies
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Depends on the kind of BD authoring you want to provide. To provide the functionality you find on titles you buy in stores, you’re looking at an investment of 3K to 15K or more. Not to mention the weeks of training you will need to understand the technology
For simple one off with basic menus, There are several prosumer tools which will work OK.
Bottom line….Unless you work directly with one or several distributors who routinely release BD titles, its difficult at best.
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Hi Eric,
what sort of stuff do you attribute that 3K to 15K budget? Is it all software? what sort of software are we talking about? I assume you class Adobe Encore as “prosumer”.
Do I have to learn much scripting to do Blu-ray professionally? what sort of tools allow me to get that kind of access to the project’s internals? I’m currently checking out https://mediachance.com/dvdlab/Helppro/vts.htm in the domain of DVD authoring. This level of control appeals to me.
Re: your other comment “DVD has no future to speak of”. Would you agree that it has a ‘present’ which will take a while to die off?
Here in Australia, the video rental stores stock about 5% of it’s titles in Blu-ray. The rest is all DVD.
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Terence, like you I’m baffled by the apparent apathy regarding BD’s. As a film maker shooting and editing in HD I can find no better medium than BD for distribution and exhibition. I know that the industry likes to transfer films as HD files and indeed all the digital cinemas receive (encoded) files for projection. But, for the punter, how else to see an HD production other than by way of a BD? Admittedly the modern BD players automatically upscale DVD’s that can be viewed on HD screens but an BD of the same production looks so much better.
Any comments from the BD pessimists?
Michael Slowe
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Yeah….its all Software. There are only 3 stand alone tools which author pop-ups and the professional functionality you see in stores: Blu Print, Scenarist and Do Studio. Blu Print is 50K, Scenarist runs 15K or so and Do Studio is 3K. Do Studio is somewhat buggy and has just been bought by Sony, so I dont know how much support you will get.
Here’s an old article I wrote which goes over it all. Its a little old so some things are outdated but has some good info and some menus Ive worked on 🙂
magazine.creativecow.net/article/bluray-today-and-beyond
But honestly, Whens the last time you bought a DVD? I maybe buy 2 a year. With the online and VOD distribution channels growing everyday, whats the point?
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Eric, I’m amazed, you watch films on line? On a manky small computer screen? How does that compare to a damn great plasma or LCD? By the way, a wedding videographer I know here in the UK produces great DVD’s with multiple menus, chapters, scenes, the lot and he uses Edius and Encore.
Michael Slowe
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Merry Christmas!
Most TVs and cable services provide on line viewing options like Netflix and hulu. For $8 a month you have access to thousands of titles. My point is though that these dist hubs are taking huge chunk out of the DVD production business
Encore is fine for most DVD titles.
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Point taken Eric but if you want to ask someone to watch your production it’s so much nicer to hand (or send) them a disc, than to direct them to an on line site which they only may be able to view on a big TV screen. But you’re probably right, nothing stays the same for long, the technical developers have to think of how to ‘progress’, even if the new idea is less convenient than the old.
Michael Slowe
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