Director and DVD - digital video disk - Statistical Data Included

Emedia Professional, August, 1999 by Philip De Lancie

new tools

PROMISE TO BREAK THE BARRIERS

Five years ago, CD-ROM was riding high as the undisputed delivery vehicle for interactive multimedia, and Macromedia Director was the leading integration tool for the multimedia market. The Internet, meanwhile, was a quiet, static world of text with occasional graphics, just beginning to be known outside government and academia.

Much has changed in the intervening years. Multimedia CD-ROM developments has continued, but out of the spotlight, which has shifted to the Web. Web-enabling technologies have rapidly extended their multimedia capabilities, though the average modern-equipped user still struggles with performance that makes a 1X CD-ROM drive look speedy. And the DVD format has emerged as a next-generation alternative for disc-based multimedia delivery.

While DVD has the potential to serve many markets outside its current home video base, these alternatives have been disappointingly slow to develop. And with the World Wide Web long since overshadowing optical media in both media coverage and equity markets, Macromedia has worked much harder to ensure a role for itself as a provider of tools for Web content creation than as a provider of tools for DVD. The introduction of Web-centric products such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks, the emphasis on Web tools in company advertising, and the promotion of Director largely as an authoring tool for Shockwave have all given the impression that optical media have slipped from the top of Macromedia's priority list.

There's nothing sinister or mysterious about Macromedia's commitment to the Web. As Director product manager Kevin Ellis explains, Macromedia is a packaged software company rather than a provider of specialized software solutions. The pool of developers for the Web offers a market large enough to support the company's business model, while the number of developers for DVD does not. Thus, despite DVD's role as heir to CD-ROM, the company has done little to allow Director to take full advantage of the multimedia capabilities inherent in the DVD-Video specification. Instead, Macromedia is leaving it up to third-party developers to create Xtras (Direct plug-ins) to bridge Director and DVD.

In its most basic form, a DVD-ROM is essentially a larger-capacity "bit bucket" for storing all the different types of files that might otherwise be stored on CD-ROM, including a Director file. So the challenging part of using Director and DVD together involves going beyond simply delivering a Director projector via a computer-hosted DVD-ROM drive. Many developers want to be able to take advantage of DVD-Video-specific features--MPEG-2 quality, Dolby Digital audio, subtitles, and multiple angles, to name a few--when playing video from within a Director projector. And some are attracted as well to the possibility of not having to give up the familiar Director interface to author DVD-Video-compliant material. Based on recent product announcements from a variety of third-party tool vendors, these two distinct concerns will each be addressed in the months ahead. But until these tools reach the market, it's not clear how thoroughly the practical barriers to Director/DVD integration will be eased.

THE PERKS AND PITFALLS OF DVD-VIDEO PLAYBACK

The appeal of DVD-Video support within Director stems not only from the image quality of MPEG-2 video, but also from unique characteristics of the DVD-Video specification. "DVD-Video is ideal for publishing multimedia content," says Ralph LaBarge of Gambrills, Maryland-based Alpha DVD, a developer and publisher of DVD-Video and DVD-ROM rifles. According to LaBarge, who serves as chairman of the Software Publisher Association's DVD-ROM Technical Working Group, DVD-Video "allows a developer to fully integrate broadcast-quality video, audio, and subtitles into seamless playback, while supporting up to nine camera angles, eight audio tracks, and 32 sub-picture streams. "The weakness of DVD-Video," he continues, "is that it has no features or functions that are specific to playback on a personal computer. For example, there are no provisions for long-term data storage in the DVD-Video specification--which means you can't store bookmarks--and no provisions for Internet connectivity."

Developers can potentially skirt these limitations by using DVD-Video in tandem with Director in a computer-hosted setting. But LaBarge feels strongly that in order to do so, DVD-Video must be fully supported as a cast member within Director. "It's not good enough to have a third-party developer release an Xtra that allows Director to play back a DVD-Video file," he asserts. To illustrate his objections to currently available solutions, LaBarge uses a hypothetical training title as an example. "Let's say Nike wants to develop a training and presentation tool for its sales and marketing force," he says. "As a global company, Nike needs support for up to eight different audio languages, and as many as 20 written languages. The company is also very concerned about the image projected by its sales materials, so it would use very high production values for audio, video, and graphic content."