Customer Reviews

DVD Studio Pro 3 In The Studio (O'Reilly Digital Studio)

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This book breaks new ground for O'Reilly. I'm used to finding great technical content in their books--that's what they're famous for--but media tools like DVD Studio Pro require a more visual approach for explanation, and Marc delivers this extremely effectively.

The examples are numerous, on target, and very thorough. They walk you through the process of learning and achieving anything you might need to produce a compelling, professional DVD experience. And what really struck me is how unbelievably good the book looks. Every page is beautiful, glossy color with a clean, easy-to-follow layout, and huge numbers of screen shots and visuals.

If you have a chance to flip through this book in person you'll realize how much you need it when you're starting to create DVDs. Or you can order it sight unseen and be pleasantly surprised.

The Apple DVD Studio Pro is a popular but very complex tool for authoring DVDs. This book shows why it is popular, and also offers an improvement on the Apple documentation. The program has immense ability to record audio and video and to merge these in as intricate a fashion as you desire. There is a panoply of editing functions. For such things as adding subtitles to video tracks. Or supporting several languages using the audio tracks. Or to have a multistory project.

Where ever possible, the book shows how Studio Pro has automated the steps in each of these tasks. There are many colour screen captures revealing the menus you invoke, and the results they generate.

Plus, in today's Web oriented world, Studio Pro lets you insert hyperlinks using DVD@ccess. These links can go into menus, markers and slides. So that the user can reach out into the Web (or local files). In this way, you can use the DVD and Web to complement each other. Imagine producing a game DVD with links to your website. So that a gamer can easily engage in a multiplayer scenario, or download the latest 3 dimensional world. In this way, you can offer more fresh material to the gamer. Increases the value of your website, and helps you get paid.

If ever Apple made an application that could use some usability work it's DVD Studio Pro. It's a comprehensive and powerful application that has a user interface that only a mother could love. That's why I found this book so critical. It's an end-to-end guide from the very basics of DVD construction through to using templates and building custom transitions. There are also pitstops along the way into building DVD games and creating easter eggs.

As with O'Reilly's other book on DVD construction, Adobe Encore DVD, one of the other benefits of the book is the content ideas that it gives you. Though I found the examples in this book slightly less appealing than those in the Encore book.

Very well written with appropriate, not overwhelming, use of screenshots and illustrations. This is a must have for DVD Studio Pro users.

but I found this book to be one of the most difficult tutorial references I've ever used.

Firstly, it appears that there was a second release of the DVD that accompanies the book and some of the file references don't match what's in print (e.g., you are told to look for a file called "filename_unfinished", but that file isn't on the DVD). Secondly, some of the lessons either omit steps or don't include all of the information you need to thoroughly understand it. The author will say "Don't worry about setting the target for this button - we'll do that later" and then you never do that so when you run your simulation, your project doesn't do what it's supposed to (unless you figure it out for yourself). I've been through most of the chapters at this point and I did learn a lot (thanks to already being an advanced user) - but I have to say it wasn't easy and that's not because the software is difficult to learn, but because this book is really not well written or organized.

Thirdly - my biggest pet peeve - the author loves tangents into lessons involving other software and it sometimes feels like this book was really just designed to sell you about 6 other programs. I do realize the value of all of those programs because I already own and use most of them - but if you didn't, you would simply find this book too frustrating to deal with because of all the constant sidetracking. The examples that involve forays into Final Cut would require you to have at least intermediate skills in the program to be able to finish the lesson. Ditto for those that involve Photoshop and After Effects. To add insult to injury, in those lessons, the explanations for using the other program are either skeletal or non-existent (barring one example in iMovie for creating a slideshow, which for some odd reason walks you through ever single step). In a nutshell, this book assumes you already know a lot.

Also - the scripting information is almost useless. I struggled with the second lesson (which I'm convinced has an incorrect figure in it), learned a few minor things, and afterwards went online and found at least four tutorials that were leaps and bounds better and easier to understand.

Don't get me wrong - this book can teach you something, if you're persistent enough. I spent four evenings with it and I've already authored one great project. But I'm an advanced user with some video/audio background already and I still found the book frustrating at times.

If you're really interested in learning DVD Studio Pro 3 in an organized and logical manner, save yourself some hair follicles and find a different tutorial.