Apple Announces DVD Studio Pro 3

NAB, LAS VEGAS—April 18, 2004—Apple® today announced DVD Studio Pro® 3, the latest version of Apple’s professional DVD authoring application that gives users a complete set of tools for modern DVD design and authoring. DVD Studio Pro 3 features revolutionary new Alpha Transitions to create stylish DVDs and an innovative new Graphical View for easy visualization of a project’s entire flow. DVD Studio Pro 3 also includes Compressor 1.2, the latest version of Apple’s revolutionary digital media encoding and compression tool that provides high-quality HD to MPEG-2 encoding.

“DVD Studio Pro is the most sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, professional DVD authoring application on any platform,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing. “With its tight integration between Final Cut Pro HD, Motion and Adobe Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro 3 is the most complete environment for creating compelling DVDs.”

DVD Studio Pro 3 delivers 30 professionally designed transitions that can be blended seamlessly between menus, slides in slideshows and stills in tracks with just a click of the mouse. In addition to standard transitions, such as dissolve, radial blur and fade through color, DVD Studio Pro 3 features revolutionary new Alpha Transitions, which are stunning QuickTime® based movie transitions that add a new level of elegance and sophistication to DVDs. DVD authors can also build their own Alpha Transitions from scratch with Apple’s Motion or Adobe After Effects and quickly add them into DVD Studio Pro 3.

The innovative new Graphical View allows DVD authors to develop and interact with their entire project in a storyboard environment. Graphical View makes it easy to see the relationships between menus, tracks, slideshows, stories and scripts. DVD Studio Pro 3 also gives users the ability to print the Graphical View layout to clearly communicate ideas with clients for approval.

In addition to DV and SD, DVD Studio Pro 3 now provides the ability to scale HD and encode directly to MPEG-2 all in one step. Using Compressor 1.2, Final Cut Pro® HD editors can save time, money, effort and hard disk space by encoding directly from HD to MPEG-2, and users can maximize the integrated workflow between Final Cut Pro HD and DVD Studio Pro 3.

In addition to support for Dolby Digital, DVD Studio Pro 3 now includes DTS 5.1 audio support to provide users with the best options for creating the highest quality surround sound audio for professional DVDs.

DVD Studio Pro 3 offers unprecedented integration with Apple’s suite of professional applications, including Final Cut Pro HD, the latest version of Apple’s Emmy award-winning editing software; Motion, a breakthrough new application that redefines professional motion graphics production; Shake® 3.5, the latest version of the industry-leading compositing and visual effects software; Soundtrack, the innovative music composition tool; and Logic® Pro 6, the standard in computer-based music production.

Pricing & Availability
DVD Studio Pro 3 will be available in May through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $499 (US). Registered users of DVD Studio Pro 1 and 2 can upgrade to DVD Studio Pro 3 for $199 (US). Full system requirements and more information on DVD Studio Pro 3 can be found at www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro.