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DVD Provides Missing Link in 'Shoot, Edit, Burn' Mantra
DVD production has been around for a few years now, pretty much as the exclusive province of professional DVD "authors" and their counterparts.
Early in 2000, DVD was still a pricey solution, and technically complicated. To gain prevalence in the consumer and industrial/corporate marketplaces, DVD authoring had to be fast and easy and output to DVD discs had to be cheap.
During 2000 (and even before), Pioneer Electronics had been steadily working on a new DVD-R recorder that would dramatically lower the expense to accomplish DVD burning. At the same time, Apple Computer completed the acquisition of the DVD assets and engineering team of Astarte, GmbH, whose DV Director product, among others, had helped innovate simple DVD authoring on the Macintosh. The stage was now set-and the inevitable happened.
In January 2001, Steve Jobs announced Apple's breakthrough DVD products at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. DVD Studio Pro and iDVD authoring software were made available, combined with the fastest-ever 733 MHz Apple G4 CPU and a Superdrive (the new Pioneer DVD-R burner, now made OEM for Apple) in a complete DVD production system, and things haven't been the same in the DVD world ever since.
While the January Apple announcement had been preceded by a similar announcement from Compaq computers, heralding the introduction of its "My Movie" editing/DVD system, the two approaches are pretty different.
Compaq bundled a fast CPU with third-party video editing software and Sonic Solutions' DVDit! authoring software. While a good solution, the lack of a consistent work flow and unified user interface seemed to hamper many people's ability to produce good work in a timely manner.
In contrast, Apple's strategy of "keep it simple" worked.
In reviewing the new systems, The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg wrote, "When it comes to the actual experience of creating a DVD, Apple wins hands down. Apple has created a beautiful and simple DVD recording program. It's called 'iDVD' and looks a lot like Apple's brilliant iMovie program for importing and editing videos."
Apple's iDVD application provided a simple drag-and-drop implementation of DVD authoring, tailored specifically to those who wanted to take...