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Apr 12, 2000 DVD Musings Sonic Solutions makes a high-end DVD authoring solution for the Macintosh, but they also make a low-end authoring tool called DVDit! Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows. So I was really excited when the following press release arrived today: "SONIC INTRODUCES DVDIT! FOR MACINTOSH WORLD'S LEADING DVD AUTHORING APPLICATION ARRIVES ON THE APPLE MACINTOSH" I was really excited. Here's a description of the features: DVDit! for Macintosh is compatible with QuickTime video and audio files, allowing users to incorporate virtually any video content &endash; from DV to D1 &endash; into DVDit! projects. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, building DVD titles is as easy as selecting a menu background and then dragging and dropping a QuickTime file. DVDit! automatically builds buttons and interactivity, transcodes video to MPEG-2, multiplexes and formats content and writes it to CD-R or DVD-R for playback in consumer set-top DVD players or DVD-equipped computers. Users can also incorporate web content into their titles using Sonic eDVD and publish in a wide variety of formats including DVD, cDVD and Streaming DVD. And while no price was mentioned, the price of the Windows version is between $499 and $999 (there are three different versions of DVDit! for Windows.) But then I read the rest of the press release and got to the following: DVDit! for Macintosh will be available in IE (Introductory Edition), SE (Standard Edition) and PE (Professional Edition) configurations and is targeted to ship in October 2000. Uhh. Notice that the "targeted" ship date is six months away. For a piece of software that has already been developed for Windows... Now I don't want to say bad things about Sonic; they have a great high-end DVD authoring tool, and I'm thrilled that they have now announced a Macintosh version of DVDit! But I can't help thinking that they haven't even started development of this tool. And if that's the case, why announce it so far in advance? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Apple yesterday announced it had bought the DVD authoring software from Astarte? And that amongst these applications is a low-end DVD authoring tool (DVDelight which sells for $999) and a tool that lets Director users author DVD titles (DVDExport $899)?
Well, whatever. Sonic has announced other new products and bundling of DVDit! with other products. Here's just some of their news: Sonic DVDit! Professional Edition (Windows) $999 targeted to ship in June 2000. DVDit! PE adds these features:
FutureTel,
a provider of MPEG encoding systems, has chosen Sonic DVDit!
LE for their new MPEG content creation package,
MPEGWorkShop. MPEGWorkShop 3.0 combines FutureTel's
MPEGWorks 3.0 software, VideoMedia's VLAN Express RS-232/422
device controller, FutureTel's PrimeEdit MPEG editing
software and Sonic DVDit! for a list price of $995.
Avid
Technology (NASDAQ: AVID) will bundle Sonic DVDit!
&endash; the world's leading DVD authoring solution &endash;
with Avid ePublisher, Avid's new streaming media
publishing tool.
Dazzle, the developer of Digital Video Creator MPEG-1 video capture and editing system, has chosen Sonic DVDit! for their new MPEG-2 system, Digital Video Creator II. About Digital Video Creator II:
Dazzle
Digital Video Creator II will sell for $349.99 and will
begin shipping in the second quarter of 2000.
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