Product Description: Author professional quality DVDs with Studio Pro 4
With Apple DVD Studio Pro just about anyone can author high performance DVDs -- easily and inexpensively. This heavily-illustrated complete tutorial, written by world-famous DVD trainer Bruce Nazarian, provides the step-by-step guidance necessary to unleash Studio Pro's full power and understand all the new features of Studio Pro 4.
Includes DVD with sample footage, authoring samples, graphics, and project graphical layout
Covers video and audio encoding, Photoshop for DVD authoring, and new Hi-DEF features
Useful, but not very clear The book has many useful tips and ideas, BUT it is not written very clearly and it seems to be an amalgamation of his writing about DVD SP 2 and 3 as well as version 4.
The quality of the book also leaves something to be desired. It is all in black and white--which generally is not a problem, but some of the illustrations are hard to figure out because I couldn't figure out what part of what menu he was talking about and there were no "color" hints to help me figure it out.
Although the book covers a lot of ground, it was missing some critical--at least for me-- issues. For example, can you create a 16 x9 splash screen that matches a 16 x 9 video. (If it can be done, I did not see any instructions about it and I can't seem to find a soluion to this problem is his book--or elsewhere).
Also, even though he talks a lot about Compressor, he fails to give any real practical advice about formats that need to be used to make a 4 x 3 video look okay on a 16 x 9 screen.
Maybe I am being a bit harsh because I wanted to know more about the practicalities of going from Final Cut Pro via Compressor to DVD SP4 and having a product that looks good when played on both the old 4 x3 format TVs and the newer 16 X 9 format TVs--and that was not there.
I will say that he had a lot of good stuff to say about menu designs and how to create good ones and for that alone the book was worthwhile.
A wealth of info, with a Final Cut bias. A wealth of important and useful information. However, AVID editors will find not one word in this book about preparing material and exporting from AVID systems to DVD Studio Pro 4. It's bias is Final Cut, which is the default standard for this guide
lots of info for experts- doesn't get you started the basics seem to be omitted. There is no "quick start" chapter on how to get moving. The minutiae are well covered. The practical hands on explanations are deeply buried. The included DVD is almost completely useless and does not even play properly on my Mac G5- not a good sign for "the DVD guy"
not for beginners This book is very dissapointing. Sure, this book is full of information, but does not know how to teach. This book is not completely written in step by step method. Before you actually start touch your project, you are fed up with information. I even found a couple of mistakes in earlier chapter. DVD comes with this book, but this DVD is not a lesson project like Apple Pro Training Series. Not useful. If you are beginner and start studying DVD Studio Pro 4, don't by this book! You're going to waste your money. Buy the one from Apple Pro Training Series, which is much better, easy to understand.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
