DVD Studio Pro 2

When DVD Studio Pro first hit the shelves, Apple had a tool that made it relatively easy to create professional-quality DVDson the Mac. Still, the application was never perfect. It required a certain way of thinking – building menus and tracks was often a little convoluted, and the interface had a few quirks that made it tricky for creatives to get their heads around.

With version 2, Apple has obviously thought long and hard about the usability of the tool, and in doing so has opened up the feature-set not just to DVD professionals, but anyone in the creative sector. This is borne out in a take-it-as-you-like approach to DVD authoring, one in which you can choose one of three interfaces to suit your ability or needs.

Multiple choice
The Basic, Extended and Advanced views in DVD Studio Pro 2 add and take away various interface elements and palettes – so you can effectively make DVD authoring as difficult as you want it to be.

The Basic interface (by default) includes the main viewer window, with options for displaying menus, slideshows or assets, the Browser (which enables you to view and apply templates, Styles, Shapes, Audio, Still images and Video – see boxout) and the main toolbar. Also by default, the toolbar contains just a few options, such as fonts, colours, simulate and burning, but you can customise it to your liking – giving you the ability to hide and show other palettes and dialogs. For beginners and those not used to creating DVDs, this Basic interface is an ideal starting point, and is reminiscent of the iDVD interface. The fact you can customise it as your skills progress (perhaps before moving onto the Extended interface) makes it an easy way to get to grips with what is generally considered a tricky medium.

The Extended interface offers more in the way of control for intermediate and professional users. It introduces the timeline-based Track Editor, which brings a familiar video-editing like timeline to DVD Studio Pro. This enables you to assemble your video (up to nine angles), audio (up to eight tracks) and subtitles within a single track. This provides a similar way of working to Adobe’s Encore DVD, and it is a big improvement over the 1.5 way of working. For instance, you can now link menus and buttons to tracks with ease – the contextual menus guiding you through the process. Adding chapter markers is simply a matter of clicking on the area above the timeline, and if you need to know at a glance where links go, the Connections Editor is a fantastic addition. You can also create slideshows with ease – the Slideshow Editor provides a simple and straightforward way to show off your images to friends and colleagues.

In addition, the Extended interface brings the Asset Manager to your attention, displaying each of the assets in your project and giving you an outline of file type, timestamps, length, bit rate and so on.

One of the handiest additions Apple has made to DVD Studio Pro 2 is automatic transcoding. After using this feature for just a few hours, we can tell you that it’s an absolute godsend. Instead of having to prepare movie files in another application (cleaner, etc), DVD Studio Pro includes automatic MPEG-2 encoding, which means you can import any file supported by QuickTime. Subtitling tools have also been built in, and the new Subtitler enables you to add up to 32 streams per track.

Sublime features
Before we move on to the Advanced interface, we must stop and mention the one single feature in DVD Studio Pro 2 that blew us away for its sublime ease-of-use: the inclusion of context-sensitive Drop Palettes.

One of the most annoying and even dull aspects of DVD authoring is making sure all assets are assigned to the right menu or buttons and so on. These Drop palettes not only make it a breeze to assign assets, they also make the whole procedure quite fun. As you drag an asset over a menu, or drop zone (more on these in a bit), a palette appears asking you what you want to do with the asset. You may want to simply set the asset, for instance, or perhaps create a button and track from the asset. All you have to do is select the option from the palette and everything is applied. When Apple boasted that this tool would enable drag-and-drop authoring, it wasn’t lying.

Another feature that brings amazing ease of use, and complements the drag-and-drop functionality of DVD Studio Pro, are Drop Zones. You can define Drop Zones from shapes on the canvas by simply Control-clicking and choosing the appropriate option. You then simply drag and drop assets from the Assets palette (or even from the Finder) into the relevant Zone. It really is a joy to use – and once again proves how Apple has successfully brought drag-and-drop functionality to DVD Studio Pro without sacrificing any of the app’s professional features.

The Advanced interface doesn’t actually add that much more to the working environment in terms of creative features; rather, it brings tools for creating copy-protected DVDs, exporting to DLT devices and generally building and formatting pro-quality DVDs. Whatever interface you go for, everything is fully customisable. Simulator is the new Preview, enabling you to quickly preview your DVD using standard remote control features.

It’s worth noting that DVD Studio Pro 2 also comes bundled with Compressor, for transcoding media, A.Pack, for encoding audio into Dolby Digital 5.1 and other surround sound formats, and Peak Express – which gives you the ability to quickly edit audio files.

Top marks
There’s no doubt that DVD Studio Pro 2 is a powerful DVD authoring tool. From v1.5, it’s been the number one choice of Mac DVD pros. What version 2 adds, however, is an ease of use never seen before. Even if you have no experience of DVD authoring, you’ll get to grips with this in no time.

By mixing the experience it’s gained from its consumer DVD tool with its pro application knowledge, Apple has created a superb and extremely intuitive tool accessible to all. £399 for this app is a nominal amount. Combine DVD Studio Pro 2 with Final Cut Pro 4, and you have a suite of high-quality editing and authoring tools that’ll bring you professional results for just over a grand. Amazing.