Blu-Ray on a MAC
 

Hi Guys

Does anyone know when blu-ray will become available on DVD Studio Pro i am starting to get potential clients asking me about Blu-ray

Rob

Robert Cringely speculates wildly that "Apple wants to slow the success of Blu-ray, probably in hopes that downloads -- especially downloads via iTunes -- become the de facto method for delivering HD content." But, yea, that still leaves wedding/event producers hanging.

Nobody outside Apple knows the answer to this question, however tens-of-thousands are waiting for an official answer. Trust me, the minute that DVDSP5 or FSC2.5/3 is announced the web will explode with information and we'll all know.

I cant see apple just upgrading DVDSP for blu-ray they will make you pay for a FCS upgrade which will cost me another $1800

cant wait for that

Rob.

This is probably true, but if you're paying that much for an upgrade the exchange rate is more favourable to us than i thought! From memory, an upgrade cost in the region of £300 if you have a previous version of FCS

Since nobody knows exactly how or when BR will come to the Mac fully I wouldn't waste energy trying to second-guess the manufacturers.

However, you do have some limited options for a basic BR author that will play on set-top players:

1. Toast 9 Ti and Encore (part of PP CS3) will perform basic BR authoring and burning. Do a search and you'll find many people who have successfully created BR jobs with acceptable results. Authoring options are extremely limited however. Toast 9 Ti is like iDVD with far less options; Encore would be comparable to iDVD's menu options.

2. Using BootCamp you could install and use more powerful BR authoring apps such as Roxio DVDitPro HD which has more options than Encore, but not many.

3. Same as #2 but go all the way to a $50k Scenarist publishing outfit; aside from the major cash outlay you're also looking at a steep learning curve since Scenarist is not an abstraction-layer authoring app, but more a code-monkey tool.

Beware that right now not all BR discs burned on a Mac regardless of app will always play in a set-top or PS3 player. This is exactly the scenario for when DVD authoring came around with it's teething problems and BR will certain be full of it's own. And, you *cannot* create a BR disc for duplication or replication right now; that process requires being able to author BR to it's complete spec and neither Toast, Encore nor DVDitPro HD come close to doing that, only Scenarist and Sony Blu-Print can - for now.

Outside of these options and you'll have to wait and see what Apple does.