DVD Studio Pro for Mac OS X: Visual QuickPro Guide

Apple has made waves with its revolutionary digital-video-editing packages, such as iMovie, Final Cut Express, and Final Cut Pro. With the release of DVD Studio Pro 2, Apple has completed the digital video picture by providing a full-featured, reasonably priced DVD-authoring program that lets you get your videos off the computer and onto televisions. DVD Studio Pro 2 is a completely new DVD-authoring product, built from the ground up to take advantage of OS X's Unix base to provide powerful processing and multitasking abilities. Version 2 brings you a breakthrough user interface packed with innovative features that redefine professional DVD authoring, timeline-based track editor, enhanced menu tools that now let you add text and composite video buttons right in DVD Studio Pro, integrated MPEG-2 encoding and new, professionally designed templates. DVD Studio Pro 2 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickPro Guide is ideal for anybody who wants to output their video projects to DVD discs, including independent filmmakers, video professionals, corporate trainers, event videographers, and proud parents everywhere! Each task is broken down into concise step-by-step instructions, illustrated with informative screenshots and plenty of time-tested tips and tricks to help you make perfect, pro-caliber DVDs with interactivity far surpassing anything Hollywood has to offer.

The 600 pages of text hold ideas I've never thought of, like making sure my menu buttons are placed correctly in the "title-safe zone," or making transitions for my menus. In fact, there's a whole discussion of 4:3 video, drop vs non-drop frame, pixel aspect ratio, GOPs and I-Frames in MPEG video - in many ways this book feels more like a course than a reference manual: I learned a lot about video in general!

I also now know what dialog normalization is, and that alone was worth the money. This book will be beside my computer for a while to come!


Lacks some vital information   January 24, 2004
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

In his book ver 1.5 Martin covers scripts and play all buttons. However in ver 2.0 he does not cover scripts in the book but has you go to web for that information. Plus he does not cover scripts with enough information to feel you understand it.

Feels like he was rushing to get this book out fast and then decided at last minute he left out vital information.


In a slim field, this is pretty much all there is.   November 25, 2003
 8 out of 9 found this review helpful

This book was definitely helpful to me; but it didn't expand a whole lot further than the 500+ page manual included with the software. Some additional helpful information on creating appropriate graphics, but I didn't learn a whole lot. I'm waiting for a really good DSP 2.0 book to come out. But until that happens, this is really the best you can do.