Apple Announces DVD Studio Pro 2

MARKHAM, Ontario—April 7, 2003—Apple® today announced DVD Studio Pro® 2,a completely new DVD authoring product, rebuilt from the ground up witha breakthrough user interface and packed with innovative features thatredefine professional DVD authoring. With professionally designed andfully customizable templates, an innovative new menu editor,timeline-based track editing and a new world-class, software-basedMPEG-2 encoder, DVD Studio Pro 2 is a must have application for everyFinal Cut Pro® editor, as well as any professional who creates DVDs fora living.

“Apple has taken the industry's leading professional DVD authoringtool, DVD Studio Pro, and rewritten it from scratch for Mac OS X andCocoa, turning it into a completely new product with a breakthroughuser interface,” said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president ofWorldwide Product Marketing. “With DVD Studio Pro 2, Apple hasredefined DVD authoring again and set a new benchmark for others tomeasure up to.”

DVD Studio Pro 2 features a breakthrough new user interface so easy tonavigate that both Final Cut Pro editors and users of consumer DVDauthoring applications, such as Apple's iDVD©, can get started rightaway. Packed with innovative new features, DVD Studio Pro 2 providesprofessionals with all the scalability and advanced features they need.With one drag of the mouse, the approachable interface evolves into aDVD authoring powerhouse, exposing the components of your project inthe new outline view, comprehensive asset information and thetimeline-based track editor.

New professionally designed templates in DVD Studio Pro 2 come with alibrary of styles, buttons and backgrounds for creating elegantlydesigned DVDs in a few simple steps. The templates are fullycustomizable allowing users to jumpstart their DVD projects with thelook of a Hollywood title or to create their own templates from scratchto re-use or share with customers and colleagues.

DVD Studio Pro 2's innovative new menu editor allows users to createtheir own menus by dragging and dropping content without worrying aboutcomplex DVD specs. Context sensitive drop palettes allow users tocreate and link to new tracks, build slideshows and automatically buildchapter indexes in one easy step, saving hours or even days needed tocreate a DVD. A built-in compositing engine in DVD Studio Pro 2 enablesusers to edit text directly in the menu editor and make changes to fontstyles and button graphics without leaving the application.

Based on the popular timeline in Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro 2's newtimeline-based track editing enables users to work faster and moreefficiently by providing a linear view of clips, audio and otherassets. DVD Studio Pro 2 users can now add and manage chapter markers,8 video angles, 8 audio tracks and 32 subtitle tracks, all from thetimeline.

Compressor, a new batch transcoding tool that comes bundled with bothDVD Studio Pro 2 and Final Cut Pro 4, lets users batch and exportdirectly to multiple formats including MPEG-2 for DVD, MPEG-4 forstreaming media or any supported QuickTime® format. Compressor includeswatermarking, real-time preview and 30 high-quality filters andeffects, providing an ideal platform for high volume or repetitiveencoding tasks. Compressor comes with a new world-class MPEG-2 softwareencoder, which provides professional controls for adjusting bit rateand selecting one- or two-pass VBR encoding. The MPEG-2 softwareencoder delivers pristine quality video rivaling the speed of hardwareand software encoders costing thousands of dollars as stand aloneproducts.

Pricing & Availability
DVD Studio Pro 2 is expected to be available in August through theApple Store® (102.p.syniva.es/ca/store) and Apple Authorized Resellersfor a suggested retail price of $729 (CDN). Starting today, Apple has alsolowered the price of DVD Studio Pro 1.5 to $729 (CDN), and customers whopurchase and register their copies of DVD Studio Pro 1.5 starting today canupgrade to DVD Studio Pro 2 for an Up-To-Date shipping and handling fee of$45.00 (CDN). Full system requirements and more information on DVD StudioPro 2 can be found at 102.p.syniva.es/ca/finalcutstudio/dvdstudiopro/.

Apple Canada Inc. is headquartered in Markham, Ontario and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. Apple products are available at more than 450 Authorized Apple Canada Dealer locations across Canada.

Press Contact:
Tara Hendela
Apple Canada
(905) 513-5853
[email protected]