Reprinted from an Apple press release:
Apple today announced DVD Studio Pro 2, a completely new DVD authoring product, rebuilt from the ground up with a breakthrough user interface and packed with innovative features that redefine professional DVD authoring. With professionally designed and fully customizable templates, an innovative new menu editor, timeline-based track editing and a new world-class, software-based MPEG-2 encoder, DVD Studio Pro 2 is a must have application for every Final Cut Pro editor, as well as any professional who creates DVDs for a living.
“Apple has taken the industry’s leading professional DVD authoring tool, DVD Studio Pro, and rewritten it from scratch for Mac OS X and Cocoa, turning it into a completely new product with a breakthrough user interface,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With DVD Studio Pro 2, Apple has redefined DVD authoring again and set a new benchmark for others to measure up to.”
DVD Studio Pro 2 features a breakthrough new user interface so easy to navigate that both Final Cut Pro editors and users of consumer DVD authoring applications, such as Apple’s iDVD, can get started right away. Packed with innovative new features, DVD Studio Pro 2 provides professionals with all the scalability and advanced features they need. With one drag of the mouse, the approachable interface evolves into a DVD authoring powerhouse, exposing the components of your project in the new outline view, comprehensive asset information and the timeline-based track editor.
New professionally designed templates in DVD Studio Pro 2 come with a library of styles, buttons and backgrounds for creating elegantly designed DVDs in a few simple steps. The templates are fully customizable allowing users to jumpstart their DVD projects with the look of a Hollywood title or to create their own templates from scratch to re-use or share with customers and colleagues.
DVD Studio Pro 2’s innovative new menu editor allows users to create their own menus by dragging and dropping content without worrying about complex DVD specs. Context sensitive drop palettes allow users to create and link to new tracks, build slideshows and automatically build chapter indexes in one easy step, saving hours or even days needed to create a DVD. A built-in compositing engine in DVD Studio Pro 2 enables users to edit text directly in the menu editor and make changes to font styles and button graphics without leaving the application.
Based on the popular timeline in Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro 2’s new timeline-based track editing enables users to work faster and more efficiently by providing a linear view of clips, audio and other assets. DVD Studio Pro 2 users can now add and manage chapter markers, 8 video angles, 8 audio tracks and 32 subtitle tracks, all from the timeline.
Compressor, a new batch transcoding tool that comes bundled with both DVD Studio Pro 2 and Final Cut Pro 4, lets users batch and export directly to multiple formats including MPEG-2 for DVD, MPEG-4 for streaming media or any supported QuickTime format. Compressor includes watermarking, real-time preview and 30 high-quality filters and effects, providing an ideal platform for high volume or repetitive encoding tasks. Compressor comes with a new world-class MPEG-2 software encoder, which provides professional controls for adjusting bit rate and selecting one- or two-pass VBR encoding. The MPEG-2 software encoder delivers pristine quality video rivaling the speed of hardware and software encoders costing thousands of dollars as stand alone products.
Pricing & Availability
DVD Studio Pro 2 is expected to be available in August through the Apple Store (store.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $499 (US). Starting today, Apple has also lowered the price of DVD Studio Pro 1.5 to $499 (US), and customers who purchase and register their copies of DVD Studio Pro 1.5 starting today can upgrade to DVD Studio Pro 2 for an Up-To-Date shipping and handling fee of $29.95 (US). Full system requirements and more information on DVD Studio Pro 2 can be found at www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro.
