Final Cut User

Studiodaily has this post this morning, but don’t get too excited its old news. It’s called a Hybrid Disc, and it’s been a possibility since High Definition Players were available. At one point playback was only supported on a G5, but then as HD DVD players began supporting burned discs, they functioned there as well and now subsequently with Blu-ray.

Basically you can make a short High Definition DVD and burn it to a standard DVD-R. This works because it functions based on format and file structure, the disc is just the storage medium - so in simplest terms, if the play back device supports the storage medium and you have the correct file structure you’ll get a functioning disc. Of course you’re limited to 4.7GB over the 25GB or even 50GB of Blu-ray, but you can do it. I think Jim may have actually written a tutorial on how to do this for HD DVD in the past - maybe we’ll swing something together for Blu-ray as well.

Another NAB has gone and lots of announcements big and small came but nothing from Apple camp about full Blu-ray support.This topic has been buzzing around for a while now and you can see it really being brought up in response to Adobe having the only solid way besides Sonic Solutions for full Blu-ray authoring .Look I am a Mac zealot and part of my workflow on a daily basis includes Adobe apps like Photoshop,After Effects and now Encore. To be fair I did not touch Encore until mid 2007 because  I needed to upgrade all my Adobe apps to Production Premium because I had never really needed to go outside Final Cut Studio for disc based authoring.We know Apple has been on the Blu-ray Board since 2005 ,remeber this Apple Blu-Ray Board Press Release. and we also know backing HD DVD was something they thought was the right option for that time only to see its demise happen.

So where does this whole mess leave us and by us I mean the smaller shops , the freelancers,  and even big studios on the being able to have full support for Blu-ray authoring on the Mac from Mac based applications ? The answer is who knows . Do I think Apple has been working on updates? YES they are .When you ask ?I hope soon because going from one app to another and having to worry about what will work and wont for file support and failed encodes I do not want to deal with.I want a solution that works so I also do not mind waiting a little bit longer and i would also like to not only be able to author my work or clients work on a personal level I would like to have the option to back up a huge chunk of personal and business information to a 50gb disc.With only a few big release’s that usually drop between now and September we have minor machine updates coming and WWDC in June could we see Blu-ray capable Mac’s? Let’s hope so because the Adobe workflow I have going now is pretty solid for authoring Blu-ray and testing on a PS3. Did I mention Dynamic Link and not re-rendering is also nice .

Here is also some helpful workflow between Compressor and Encore from Adobe’s Dave Helmly.

 Compressor & Encore workflow.

Old news, but incase you possibly missed this - Toshiba officially announced the discontinuation of HD-DVD yeaterday. It’s pretty much been dead in the water for a while now, but Walmart’s recent announcement regarding shifting towards solely offering Blu-ray became the nails in their coffin.

I’m pumped that Blu-ray stayed and HD-DVD went bye-bye. IMHO, Blu-ray out performs HD-DVD even to the eye. I’m not pumped that I picked up an HD-DVD at Christmas time and a variety of HD-DVD only titles. Looks like it’s all been bricked very quickly.

There will surely be a surge in the market now, due to all the wait-and-see people finally making their well thought out purchases.

I think we’ll be seeing prosumer Blu-ray authoring soon as well. Thank God!

Anyone care to take a guess how many cheap HD-DVD players and Xserve RAIDs will be on ebay this week?

Just picked this up from HDFORINDIES during a little render downtime. Looks like another huge bump in the Format Wars. Paramount and Dreamworks have dropped support for Blu-ray!!! Ugh. Man. I was really hoping that Blu-ray would hold strong. Not to mention that this pretty much just leaves Studios with shitty catalogs making Blu-ray movies. At least it will be the best looking, highest-capacity crap.
Read more at Times Online.

Another post today in the great and rediculous format war.  

The first season of Heroes will be released on August 28th, which is excellent in a super geeky way.   The completely discouraging news is that it will be available on DVD and HD DVD only - no Blu-ray. 

An article on videobusiness.com states that Universal is standing by it’s decision to support only HD DVD and to continue developing features that showboat the internet connectivity of most HD DVD players. Many of these format war articles keep touting the built in internet accessibility of HD DVD players as a feature over most Blu-ray players. The major point that many of these articles ignore is that over 3 million Playstation 3s have been sold, which act as Blu-ray players and have internet accessibility.

Manipulative marketing is all over the place in HD home delivery. I’m really starting to get annoyed with the companies that are only offering distribution on one format rather than both. I dropped a good chunk of change on my Blu-ray player and I love it. In my eyes it is superior than HD DVD image quality wise, the interactive features take a back seat to me. I am mostly concerned with the visual integrity of the film itself. Some of my friends own both HD DVD and Blu-ray players and all of them prefer their Blu-ray discs - but that is besides the point here. I want to be able to purchase the movies i want to be able to watch without having to keep dumping $300 - $600 on a new player every time someone decides they want to make money on a new format.

Damn, but I would like to own Heroes in HD.

Engadget reports that Target has announce they will not carry HD DVD players in their retail stores and instead only stock Blu-Ray Players. They will however continue to stock HD DVD movies and HDDVD movies and players will continue to be sold on their website.
Just last month Blockbuster also announced that it would only offer Blu-ray as a HD rental format. This looks like Blu-ray has just won another major battle in the format war. Now we just have to wait for Wal-mart to make a similar claim. Wal-mart, though hated by many, is one of the world’s largest retailers. Wal-mart DVD sales account for almost 40% of the market. This huge share gives the retailer unprecedented control in the availability and pricing of retail DVDs.

HD DVD is launching several major titles that will include features not available on Blu-Ray releases of the same films. Most of these features are based around using the built in ethernet ports on HD DVD players to access and share additional web based content.
From Yahoo News

The HD DVD version of “300″ will allow users to re-edit the movie, selecting and ordering the scenes as they see fit, and upload their edit to a server hosted by the studio, Warner Bros. The edit will be accessible to other users, who can download it to their players and see the movie in its new form.

“300″ will be available on the competing Blu-ray high-definition disc as well, but will lack the re-editing feature and a few other extras like a strategy game, Collins said, because not all Blu-ray players can connect to the Internet.

Pretty cool feature but nothing groundbreaking or even new. There was a criterion release of Beastie Boys music videos that allowed you to do something similar on a SD DVD and it’s probably about 5 years old. The sharing it online is newish. Most DVD players have a custom chapter playback which you can enable to watch scenes from any film in your own order. Some people share these online, but its simply instructions telling you which chapters to play when - though I doubt that it is a very wide-spread phenomea. An old favorite is watching Pulp Fiction in order.

The news report sites that Toshiba had a 70 percent market share of high-definition players as of April, though the 30 percent share of Blu-Ray players does not relect the additional 3 million Playstation 3 units Sony has sold.

Blockbuster has recently announced that it will only carry Blu-Ray movies. This should probably beef up Sony’s market share more, though with Toshiba’s price drops I think its safe to say that there is still a long wasy to go in the new format war.