Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

Posted Jun 22,2005 11:58 PM larryapple

1. The official program name is now changing to DVDAfterEdit Mastering Edition. It is still in beta, and the program name as stored on the disk will be DVDAfterEdit 3.0b32, etc., for now. The full name shows in the about box. The next (soon) beta release will incorporate the name change.

2. A lower-priced version of the program will soon be released, named DVDAfterEdit Pro. It will be priced at $449. This version will not support Pre-Mastering nor Seamless Branching. It will be released after a very short beta cycle with a few selected users, since it does not introduce any new code but only omits other code. Ben Weinrach and Ian Shepherd are assisting with beta testing and reviewing the new Tracer documentation and tutorial. When we are satisfied with Tracer and a very few outstanding known bugs are fixed, DVDAfterEdit Pro will be released.

3. A third, free demo version of the program will be released at the same time as the Pro version. It will have a timed expiration date, and will not support saving of the project, but will have nearly full Tracer capabilities.

All of this will require changes to how the site membership works and how new releases are obtained. Also, the Pro version will have a different set of serial numbers from the Mastering Edition. We are waiting until this work is complete before we make an official site announcement, but feel free to tell your friends about the pending changes.

4. The name change affects the preferences and serial number registration. That is why we are changing the Mastering Edition name now, to work out these changes and get things running smoothly. The current serial numbers will continue to work for the Mastering Edition, but you will probably have to re-enter a valid serial number again. DVDAfterEdit Pro will have its own unique set of serial numbers. (We have already generated and tested them).

5. The program registration, preferences, project preferences, and logs will now be named DVDAfterEdit instead of TFDVDEdit 3. We are still working out whether to have separate preferences for the two versions, probably not. Most users will run only one version or the other.

The preferences are found at: user name/library/preferences

The program preferences are com.tfdvd.DVDAfterEdit.plist.

The logs are in the folder com.tfdvd.DVDAfterEdit.Logs.

The project preferences are named com.tfdvd.DVDAfterEdit.project.projectName.plist.

6. You will notice that all of the beta releases prior to TFDVDEdit 3.0b31 have been removed from the download area. Purchasers of DVDAfterEdit Pro, when it is released, will have site membership privileges, and therefore the download area will not have the Mastering Edition available for download.

Instead notices of program updates will be emailed to all members, with a one-time user name and password to download the new update, which will time out after a week or so. Don't worry, we'll make it available on request if you miss a download. Obviously this will mean less frequent updates.

Please post any comments or suggestions here.

Regards,

Larry, Trai, and John

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Posted Jun 23,2005 3:56 PM ianshepherd

Hi Guys,

I think this is a great move, as you know, and hopefully will lead to a much broader user-base for AfterEdit. I have a couple of suggestions you might like to think about ( sorry Larry, I know I promised to email these to you ages ago ! )

All of these ideas are aimed at overcoming what I see as AfterEdit's major marketing challenge - it's just too n*v-p*ckin' useful ! By which I mean - it contains many valuable features, each of which will appeal to different types of potential user. But, not everyone needs all of them. For example, I can imagine Creator & Fusion authors who would love to be able to easily create playlists/stories, but have no real interest in post-authoring... yet ;-)

So with that in mind, my first suggestion is -

1. How about an even more affordable version, possibly called DVDAfterEdit Lite ? This could be the same as "Pro", but with all VTS & VOB import/export/add/remove functions disabled. So, it would essentially be a command editor with the added functionality of Tracer. I feel this would be a useful tool for many DVDSP authors, for example. Although there are several freeware alternatives available, none have the professional programming skills or rock-solid spec-compliance behind AfterEdit, so it would be well worth a modest price ($199?). Support could possibly be offered through a new public forum, rather than here.

2. This one is a more "blue-sky" suggestion, but please give it some consideration. In the same way that I can imagine users wanting only some of the less heavy-duty editing features, I feel there may be a market for users keen to "play" with genuine seamless branching, without necessarily wanting to use it on large commercial releases - I'm thinking of smaller, "indie" productions. In addition, I wonder if this group of potential users might well be inspired in their imaginative use of the capability, and generate a serious "industry buzz" in the process ?

For this reason I think it would be fantastic to offer a Seamless Branching "upgrade" to the Pro version, but obviously still without the Mastering functionality. I understand this may be controversial, given the herculean efforts you've all made to make SB a reality, but I think some restrictions on the SB function's use would be appropriate in view of the lower price, and to help encourage serious users to upgrade to the Mastering Edition. So, for example, the "Pro-SB" version might only support interleaving on discs of 4 GB or less, say - and importing a VTS with interleaved material could also be disabled, to avoid any clever "workarounds" of this restriction.

3. Finally, if you think there's any milleage in idea #2, you might even consider offering the same SB upgrade for the Lite version, so people wanting to experiment with interleaving could really afford it - albeit without any of the advanced post-authoring capabilities of the "Pro" version.

I understand these ideas will create further administrative challenges for you in terms of controlling the distribution of the different versions, access to the site etc, but I think it might be time & energy well-spent in the long run. Especially if, once the "word is out" on the SB capabilities, the need for professional features like dual-layer, CSS etc encourages all those new users to upgrade...

So, to summarise, I'm proposing:

ME ( Everything ) - For the DVD Professional
Pro ( No SB, DLT ) - For post-authors who don't need DLT
Lite ( No SB, DLT, VOB operations, no access to Pro forums )
- For people who don't need "heavy-duty" post-authoring features yet

SB Upgrade for Pro & Lite
( Adds SB, but only for 4 GB projects, and not possible to import interleaved VOBs )
- For anyone who wants to explore the creative possibilities of seamless branching

As I say, these ideas mainly stem from my feeling that in 'Edit you have several powerful tools, each of which could have valuable "roles" independent of each other in different environments, that and hopefully in time this increased flexibility will only serve to broaden the application's appeal.

Anyhow, whatever you decide, congratulations again on all the recent progress, especially with Tracer - I'm looking forward to the official release !

Cheers,

Ian

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Posted Jun 23,2005 6:41 PM larryapple

Hi Ian,

Thanks for your thoughts. Trai and I were already thinking along similar lines, though the maintenance problems multiply with the number of versions. We'll probably start with three - the Lite, Pro, and ME versions. $199 for the lite version is what Trai originally suggested, though we hadn't decided on what features to include at that point. Leaving out Import at that price point is a great idea.

So John and I are discussing how to implement all this. Stay tuned.

Regards,

Larry

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Posted Jun 24,2005 10:37 AM TONY

Hi Guys .. what would this mean price-wise for current holders of TFDVDEDIT ? would it just be an upgrade price ?
Thanks

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Posted Jun 24,2005 10:59 AM ianshepherd

Hi Tony,

Current owners will see no change ( apart from the name ). Basically the new versions are just more affordable entry options with reduced feature-sets. See Michael's post:

http://www.tfdvdedit.com/members/forum/openthread.cfm?forum=3&ThreadID=9...

Ian

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Posted Jun 24,2005 11:08 AM TONY

Thanks Ian didn't see that post .

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Posted Jun 24,2005 5:09 PM Nomad

May I spread the news to our German DVDSP users forum?

Regards,

Uli

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Posted Jun 24,2005 5:15 PM Trai

Yes, by all means.

Thanks Uli,

Trai

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Posted Jun 27,2005 9:05 AM Stevey K

So having read the related thread about the pricing structure on the Mastering edition for existing users what is the expected timeline for a fully tested version of 3? Whilst i have not heavily used TFDVD/DVDAfter Edit I have used it in the past for adding and extracting distributor logos and writing to DLT (about 20-30 projects) and can see a time in the not too distant where i use my sparkly new G5 for the basic work in DVD-SP and then moving project builds over to my old G4 for writing to DLT - therefore I really need the finished Mastering Edition??? I purchased way back at Version 1 (in December if memory serves) and am just curious as to when you envisage the version 3 being out of Beta?

Regards
Steve Kirkham

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Posted Jun 27,2005 4:02 PM larryapple

Hi Stevey,

The Mastering portion of DVDAfterEdit is ready for prime time. We are still working on a couple of other issues, the largest of which is seamless branching. It is difficult to predict when SB will be ready, since I've had to pull John in to help me with fixing other things. We will not release SB until we are confident that it will work on a wide variety of inputs, and can give the user some useful information when some particular input is not suitable.

We hope to release both the Lite and Pro final versions within about a week. Then there will continue to be bug fix and minor enhancement releases, but not as frequently as has been the case with the beta.

As soon as the Mastering Edition final is released, we will start on version 4, while still continuing with fix releases on the version 3 code base. Since we expect a much wider user base with the release of Lite and Pro, the version 4 development will be much more closely held, at least in the initial stages.

So feel free to go ahead and use the beta for writing to DLT - we will support you fully if any problems arise.

Regards,

Larry

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Posted Jun 30,2005 11:27 AM harold

hi larry,

what sorts of improvements and/or new features are slated for version 4 of 'Edit?

cheers,
h

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Posted Jun 30,2005 1:55 PM larryapple

Hi Harold,

For starters some kind of scripting engine. Two other major features we don't want to mention yet, until we investigate their feasability. Other speculation must wait until the release of the complete product line for DVDAfterEdit 3.0.

Regards,

Larry

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Posted Jun 28,2005 7:53 PM Joe Rice

First off, I think this is a great idea and will lead to more folks realizing the power of DVDAfterEdit by making it accessible to more users.

Thinking about use of the program with filesystems created by programs other than DVD Studio Pro, I wonder if it might be worth bringing up the topic of automatically fixing VTS sector addresses in the non-mastering versions, however. I suspect this causes issues when mastering with another tool (such as from Scenarist or Sonic ROM Formatter). Time map regeneration is probably ok, but changing the sector addresses may cause problems in this case.

I'm happy to help determine whether this is really an issue or not by opening Scenarist builds in 'Edit, saving them, and pre-mastering both with Scenarist and with 'Edit so you guys can run the resulting DLTs through a verifier and see what differences, if any, exist.

Joe

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Posted Jun 29,2005 12:41 AM larryapple

Hi Joe,

You've brought up a good point. Actually, the problem is quite complex. Each mastering system uses it's own algorithms to decide how much gap to place between files, in order to ensure that the BUP file always is in a different ECC block than the IFO file. If the authoring system always puts in a dummy black video of at least 16 sectors between them, as I believe DVDSP does, then there is never a problem. But in Scenarist, it is easy to have no VMG VOB. And I believe Toast just always adds 16 sectors in case the BUP might be on another boundary. Unfortunately, this would take quite a bit of research to discover all the possibilities, particularly since later revisions of programs might change how they work.

It's easy if you master with the same program you author with (unless it overwrites your changes), because we can just leave the sector addresses alone, and it will work -- unless you import something, then we must regenerate. The Toast case is the most frightening, and I haven't had time to verify what it actually does - I'm speaking from what someone told me.

Currently we adjust the gap to place the BUP file at the beginning of a new 16-sector boundary (the ECC block size). I suppose we could have a preference for what to do, and could discover what Scenarist and Toast actually do. We could even switch our algorithm to match the preference choice, which could include no change.

I am open to suggestions. We could figure out some things by writing a DLT with other systems, then restoring and looking a at the log to see what the directory structure was. If you could try that with Scenarist it would be a great help. A verifier will usually give only a pass/fail. Perhaps then we could match our algorithm to Scenarist, though that would take a bit of work to see how they adjust the gap for various scenarios. And maybe the Toast algorithm is as simple as I heard it was.

Thanks again,

Larry

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Posted Jul 01,2005 1:21 PM Joe Rice

Hi Larry -

No problem to run some tests. I'll take a Scenarist project and master it the following three ways, then restore each and check logs:

1. Straight from Scenarist
2. From DVDAE
3. From Scenarist after opening in DVDAE.

Cheers,
Joe

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Posted Jul 06,2005 12:30 PM ianshepherd

Hi Larry,

I'm not sure where you're up to with this, but I think the "Validate & Regenerate Time Maps" option should either:

A) Be disabled by default

B) Be a menu option, so the user chooses to carry it out

C) Pop up a warning message as the seamless/non-seamless changes do.

Ian

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Posted Jul 06,2005 4:06 PM larryapple

Hi Ian,

Why would you want us to not fix something that is obviously wrong? Have you seen a bug in this area?

Regards,

Larry

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Posted Jul 07,2005 4:43 PM ianshepherd

Hi Larry,

Actually I'm more thinking about new users. Let's say we just open a project to look around using Tracer. The sector addresses will be corrected "in the background" without the user realising. When they then choose to quit, they will be asked if they want to save changes. Many other pieces of software do this even if there are no changes, so I think many people might click "yes", assuming that nothing has changed ( because there has been no indication ) and therefore that nothing in the program has changed.

As discussed earlier in the thread, there are some cases where this might cause problems. Personally, I would find this unacceptable. ( A more trivial example would be users of DVDSP 1.5x. The sector changes would force a rebuild of the project if the user chose to format using DVDSP. When time is tight, this would be very irritating. ) As we've discussed before, my viewpoint is that simply opening and closing the program, even when agreeing to save changes, should make no alterations I that I haven't been warned about.

The simplest way to do this would be do disable the option by default, but even better would be a warning dialog saying "This project contains sector address errors. Would you like them corrected ? Yes/No". And, in the event that the user chooses "No", the option should be available to them later. Alternatively, a warning that the changes have been made, with an option to "Revert" would also be fine.

Hope that explains my viewpoint,

Cheers,

Ian

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Posted Jul 07,2005 5:50 PM larryapple

Hi Ian,

You've made some very good points. We'll see what we can do.

Regards,

Larry

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Posted Jul 07,2005 1:48 AM peternj

Hi guys been out of the loop o other projects. Well done pricing is okay. My only sadness is that seamless branching will require nearly 1300 USD and I was wondering if you could sell it as an add on for the near 500 USD product? I can't swing the price for the top of the line.

However a very small complaint,,,,, selfish one... and I think you have priced things well.

I think you have an excellent product. Well done. I kept my membership going just to see this happen.

Peter