Adobe to give full Support to Blu-ray with CS4

[CptGreedle]

Due out this year, Adobe, creators of Photoshop, are going to be releasing their newest lineup for software on all their titles, CS4.
Creative Suite 4 will include refined and more advanced versions of all their software, which includes Premier and Encore.
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/
Premier is some of the industry standard software used for digital film editing. This software is much like Apple's Final Cut Pro, except it is supported on Mac and Windows machines. However, unlike Apple's FCP, Premier includes new features...
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/encore/
Premier Pro will include Encore with it, which gives people the ability to make fully capable Blu-ray discs. This means you can do anything from easy template designed for your own personal projects to fully customized and highly advanced professional Blu-ray discs.
http://www.adobe.com/solutions/profe...lvideo/bluray/
Adobe is dedicated to Blu-ray, so no matter what machine you use, Blu-ray production will now be possible.

Industry-leading Blu-ray Disc authoring with Adobe Encore CS4 —
on Mac OS and Windows

Maintain the pristine quality of your HD video all the way to distribution.

As high definition (HD) has become the new standard for video, and Blu-ray Disc has won the high-definition format war for storing HD content, it's more important than ever to be able to author professional-quality Blu-ray discs. Included with Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4 and Adobe Creative Suite® 4 Production Premium software, Adobe Encore® CS4 software makes output to a wide range of industry-standard media formats, including Blu-ray Disc, easy and efficient.

Adobe Encore CS4 software is a versatile, interactive authoring tool for video distribution that allows you to deliver your high-definition work complete with advanced functions such as pop-up menus, subtitles, and more to clients or consumers on standard-definition DVDs and high-definition Blu-ray Discs.

Save time during the authoring workflow by sending sequences directly from Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 to Adobe Encore CS4, where they open immediately without intermediate rendering, using Adobe Dynamic Link. From within Encore, open Adobe Premiere Pro sequences and then use the Edit Original command to make a change to the sequence. Any changes you make in Adobe Premiere Pro are automatically reflected in Encore. Plus, Encore reads chapter markers in the sequence. The Edit Original command is also useful when modifying a media file in Photoshop CS4 Extended.

Save even more time by eliminating intermediate rendering with Adobe Dynamic Link. Exclusively available in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, Dynamic Link allows you to edit a composition in After Effects and view your updates instantly in Encore and Adobe Premiere Pro.

Encore simplifies production and preserves control over interactivity and output. Instead of doing manual scripting, visually drag and drop assets to create your DVD and Blu-ray Disc navigation with the visual flowchart. Design full-featured interfaces by using robust text tools, high-definition royalty-free menu templates and art, and automated menu generation.

Learn how Encore CS4 can enhance your workflow by outputting to Blu-ray discs, even if you're working with Apple's Final Cut Studio or Avid's professional editing tools.

I personally can't wait to get my hands on this, and there is nothing preventing either pcs or macs from hooking up a BD drive.

[Elandyll]

I personally can't imagine that Apple will let Adobe get free bullet points on Mac, so will that push Aple to incorporate Blu Ray support in OSX and their Final Cut Pro Suite (including DVD Studio Pro)? One might suspect so

This being said, very well done Adobe!

[Bobby Henderson]

Adobe is hitting Apple in the "pro-sumer" area of video editing and disc authoring. Avid could hit Apple in the same manner, if it released a Mac version of the BD authoring software it makes. Obviously Sony Vegas Pro is a PC-only thing.

In terms of professional Blu-ray authoring solutions, and by that I mean the high priced turn-key hardware/software suites used by movie studios to create the Blu-ray movies we buy and rent, Apple has already given away that segment of the disc authoring market. Sonic Scenarist, Sony Blu-print and other enterprise level BD authoring systems run only on Windows.

Apple is way behind in this product niche. Obviously Apple doesn't think it's important. Unfortunately for Apple, HD camcorders are becoming much more common and much more affordable. The limited capacity and 10Mb/s bandwidth limit makes regular DVD a poor alternative to using BD-R discs to show off that HD video footage.

[ckenisell]

But does Encore CS4 do anything that requires BD-J other than pop-up menus? Like PiP or interactive games, etc.

How about compressing audio to Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA? Does it even support PCM audio?

[DrinkMore]

I swear, Adobe puts out a new CS suite every 6 months. Pretty absurd. Nice that they are always updating, but absurd. Especially for the prices they charge.

[Bobby Henderson]

That's an exaggeration.

The CS4 suites are supposed to ship to retailers at the end of this month (although registered Adobe CS owners can buy directly from Adobe right now). That's nearly 18 months since the CS3 suites shipped (April 16, 2007). The CS2 suites shipped in April of 2005. The first Creative Suite package shipped near the end of 2003. That's hardly a 6 month upgrade cycle.

As for the prices, the software is definitely worth the money for the creative professionals who use it. Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe applications are not intended, or priced, for amateur use. Likewise, having a copy of Photoshop doesn't qualify someone as being a real graphic artist either.

Anyone who thinks Adobe software is expensive should look at certain other professional level creative applications for 3D modeling/animation, node based compositing, large format printing RIP software, imposition software and more. There's a lot of tools that command price tags of $5000 and up. Some turnkey systems command five digit or six digit price tags.

I'm old enough to remember when the Quantel Paintbox had graphic artists scrounging for money to rent time on one of the things back in the late 1980s. From that perspective, Adobe applications like Photoshop have been a major bargain. I've been buying licenses of Adobe software, like Photoshop and Illustrator, since 1993. I've never regretted any purchase either -unlike certain upgrades of certain other applications.

[ckenisell]

Originally Posted by DrinkMore

I swear, Adobe puts out a new CS suite every 6 months. Pretty absurd. Nice that they are always updating, but absurd. Especially for the prices they charge.

They have an 18 month development cycle.

[ckenisell]

Bobby,

I paid $8,000 for the BASIC version of Softimage 3D and then paid $5,000 later to upgrade it to the advanced version. This was a couple of years after Jurrasic Park was released when it was owned by Microsoft. Before AVID purchased it.

Adobe products are hardly expensive. I can make my money back on one job.

[Bobby Henderson]

That version of Softimage was a serious price discount compared to the previous version used on Jurassic Park. That one cost $25,000. Alias PowerAnimator (a forerunner of Maya) was pretty darned expensive too. Back in the early 1990s you needed a seriously expensive SGI IRIX computer to run it.

Lots of people don't remember when RAM was really expensive. Back in the early 1990s it was running $40 or more per megabyte. You could end up spending well over $10,000 for a computer with 128MB of RAM. I remember the proxy-based image editing application Live Picture, a Mac-based competitor to Adobe Photoshop. It allowed artists to create high resolution, giant format images hundreds of megabytes in size using computers with small amounts of RAM. The application carried a $6000 price tag. But when prices of RAM began to drop Live Picture quickly fell out of fashion.

[MarekM]

Originally Posted by DrinkMore

I swear, Adobe puts out a new CS suite every 6 months. Pretty absurd. Nice that they are always updating, but absurd. Especially for the prices they charge.

well, you;ve got some wrong info about those 6 months...

M.

[MarekM]

Originally Posted by ckenisell

Bobby,

I paid $8,000 for the BASIC version of Softimage 3D and then paid $5,000 later to upgrade it to the advanced version. This was a couple of years after Jurrasic Park was released when it was owned by Microsoft. Before AVID purchased it.

Adobe products are hardly expensive. I can make my money back on one job.

yeah, same here with great old Softimage
and yes, Adobe package is very very cheap with all that stuff you can get there...

Marek

[CptGreedle]

Originally Posted by ckenisell

But does Encore CS4 do anything that requires BD-J other than pop-up menus? Like PiP or interactive games, etc.

How about compressing audio to Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA? Does it even support PCM audio?

Yes. It appears that this will allow for pop-up menus and other capabilities. It does not specifically mention BD-j, but since it is a universal language, I highly doubt they would not allow you to program it yourself, although I am not sure if they would have debugging software. It does have templates that will use BD-j.
This is professional level stuff. Perhaps not as high as the turnkey software out there, but it is much cheaper. Adobe always makes a good product.

I'll post more when I can find out details.

[ckenisell]

Originally Posted by CptGreedle

Yes. It appears that this will allow for pop-up menus and other capabilities. It does not specifically mention BD-j, but since it is a universal language, I highly doubt they would not allow you to program it yourself, although I am not sure if they would have debugging software. It does have templates that will use BD-j.
This is professional level stuff. Perhaps not as high as the turnkey software out there, but it is much cheaper. Adobe always makes a good product.

I'll post more when I can find out details.

Yeah, I visited the Encore CS4 "New Features" page on Adobe's web site and it only mentions pop-up menus. This has been my experience with Adobe products. It's enough for you to get really quality stuff, but it's never enough to get you Hollywood quality interactivity. I've used Encore all the way up to CS2 and it was HELL just to try to get my subtitles to work for the ceremony portion of my wedding video. I was making motion menus (using a combination of Digital Juice motion backgrounds and After Effects comps).

The DVD was nice, but I kinda gave up because of the subtitle bugs. And Adobe knew of the bugs, but NEVER released updates to fix it. It was like they didn't care and just wanted to get by until the next version was released. I don't think that Encore is a big money maker for them. Like a Red Headed step child.

[CptGreedle]

Well the other thing they mention is that you can use Encore with FCP. If you can do all the encoding in FCP, Encore can prep and author the BD.
I am going to take a look at what i can find on various other sites, like Lynda and NAPP and whatnot and see if I can find any more information.

For me, I am sure this will cover enough to do what I want to do. I am more concerned with the movie than extras and interactivity right now. But i am sure that when I am ready for interactivity, there will be a way to do it.

[DrinkMore]

I was spanked in this thread Lol. My bad.