Future of Packaged Media 09 Conference Reflects Another Turning Point...

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Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray authoring was a strong focus of the conclave, specifically regarding how it has made the authoring workflow more complex than DVD. A panel made up of several leading independent Blu-ray authoring facilities—1K Studios, B1 Media, Giant Interactive, Deluxe Digital Studios, and RCDb—concluded that while progress is being made to establish templates that will streamline the authoring process, issues real and perceptual remain.

"While some [authoring] procedures have ‘settled in’ because there has now been time enough certain templatized processes to have evolved, there is still enough uniqueness in every BD project that makes it difficult to completely streamline the BD workflow in general," commented Bruce Nazarian, president of the International Digital Media Alliance (IDMA) and CEO of Digital Media Consulting Group, Inc., who moderated the panel. But, he added, workflow is challenged by the fact that "clients are asking for far more complex BD projects to be completed on DVD timelines—and sometimes even DVD budgets!"

And that’s before BD-Live enters the picture. Panelists agreed that while the Java-enabled interactive iteration of Blu-ray remains complicated, programming-intensive and vastly more expensive than even standard BD authoring, it’s definitely on Hollywood's agenda.

Brian Johnson, president/CEO of B1 Media, stated, "BD-Live is still very new but the studios are putting a lot behind it."

Despite the format’s slow progress toward gaining consumer traction and mindshare, Johnson says it’s a necessary step for the progression of games on disc. "We carved out a niche for creating games for DVD releases over the last ten years, but the technology was very limiting because standard DVD players had no persistent storage, so all gameplay had to be pre-rendered," he said. "Also, SD players do not randomize well, so we could not create complex games. BD-J has opened that up and allows us to create games that not only look great at 1920x1080 resolution, but that also play like true video games. Now the games we are creating in BD-J are visually impressive and also fun to play because they are a different experience every time. And it’s a great way for the studios to communicate with their audience directly. With a big installed base of connected players, the studios will have direct access to provide their customers with not only Blu-ray Discs, but also downloadable content, and possibly digital versions of their films."

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