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I suppose I shouldn't be shocked to see the price of a video product go up. Prices of just about everything in our lives go up all the time. But the trend in digital video over the last several years has been the opposite, especially for DVD authoring products. In fact, nowhere has the bottom fallen out of "professional" prices more than with DVD creation tools, which about five years ago started at $10,000 and now cost in the hundreds.
However, raising the price is just what Ulead has done with its new version of DVD Workshop 2. The new DVD Workshop 2 lists for $495, about $200 more than previous versions, and on the surface that's a bold move to say the least. But it's easy to see where Ulead is going with the move. Today's prominent professionally oriented DVD authoring products - Apple's DVD Studio Pro and Adobe's Encore DVD, as well as Sonic's ReelDVD - sell for roughly $600 to $700. Ulead essentially broke into DVD authoring about three years ago by way of its video editing software (Video Studio and Media Studio Pro) and with modest, "accessible" capabilities. The company believes DVD Workshop has matured enough to join the aforementioned heavy hitters.
DVD Workshop 2 now has many professional features, starting with support for DVD's eight audio and 32 subtitle tracks (there's also a new subtitle editor). There's full 16:9 support, region coding, parental control, Dolby Digital support (stereo only on output), CSS encryption and Macrovision copy protection, DLT and DVD-9 support, as well as better design tools. Feature for feature, Ulead is now essentially playing in the same game as those more expensive tools. But $495 is a little bit below the prices of the others, and that's probably good. DVD Workshop has matured, but it still hasn't shed all of its consumer origins.
DVD Workshop 2 still looks much like the previous version, with a single authoring and preview window dominating much of the...