Can DVD Bring the World Together?

Can DVD Bring the World Together? - Part 1

illustration by Bek Shakirov

Producers soup up the Internet with the video horsepower of a shiny, spinning disc
By Bryant Frazer

Like a handful of other media pioneers, interactive producer Luke Livingston of Creative Convergence in Acworth, Georgia, is trying to make Web DVD work. Web DVD, which combines the broadcast-quality video of a high-density optical disc with the connectivity of an online application, has been a twinkle in the eye of forward-thinking producers since 1997, when DVD was first launched as a home-video and PC application. The synergy between the two formats is simple and unavoidable. DVD offers dazzling multimedia on a static, unchangeable disc; online applications deliver dynamic data on demand but struggle to send viewable video content down the pipeline. Streaming video, key to enriching the online media experience, suffers from high bandwidth demands as well as a lack of industry standards.

"DVD is a somewhat mature format," Livingston says. "It's robust, and it doesn't have 15 different codecs like streaming video. It's full-screen, you can store a ton of stuff on it, and it's the perfect convergence platform. Streaming video is on-demand and it doesn't take up a lot of storage, but you've got to push it through the pipes. If you've got a large company with limited infrastructure, it's hard to do that even with caching."

Livingston has just developed a prototype of a distance-learning application for a food-service company. Typically, such training materials are delivered on VHS tapes, then kept in the kitchens at individual locations. Employees pop the tapes into VCRs while they're on break and learn how to prepare specific dishes and use the kitchen equipment.

"The information resides on videotapes that are produced centrally, but then they are distributed so there is no way to capture and track that offline learning," Livingston explains. "Web DVD sticks with the same paradigm of media-rich training, but captures that learning and tracks it."

Zuma Digital placed video in a small window for the CD version of a recent project for clothing maker Guess.

Not So Straightforward

In theory, the combination of Web-based applications with DVD technology should be a straightforward equation leading to Web DVD. Unfortunately, some rough spots and roadblocks have blocked the way. "There are really no standards, and that's a drag," says Ralph LaBarge, managing partner of AlphaDVD, a DVD-development studio in Gambrills, Maryland.

Instead of adhering to an industrywide standard, Web DVD producers can choose from a number of different development options, depending on which DVD creation tools they already have installed, or simply on which environment makes them feel most comfortable. For building titles from the ground up, the plain vanilla PC strategy involves Microsoft's MSWebDVD, an ActiveX control that handles all aspects of DVD-Video playback and navigation, including menu selection, special DVD features (such as subpictures and multiple angles or audio tracks), and the use of the directional buttons found on remote controls for set-top players.

"The poor man's Web DVD is the Microsoft API, because it's free," admits LaBarge, adding, "It works pretty well, and I've done a couple of titles that way." Livingston is a bit more enthusiastic about the Microsoft system. "Microsoft has a nice solution that's all HTML and browser-based," he says. "What I like about it is that it's open and easy to use, and it's easy to go get a DVD PC that will use all this technology."

Above and beyond MSWebDVD, the best-known Web DVD tool is probably PCFriendly, the InterActual Technologies system that's become a de facto standard for connecting Hollywood movie titles to the Internet. PCFriendly is available as a stand-alone system, but the basic technology is incorporated into Sonic Solutions' eDVD technology, which is included in several different authoring systems, as well as in the Scenarist Enhanced DVD Kit (EDK) that was developed by Daikin and recently purchased by Sonic. (Most producers we've talked to consider the stand-alone PCFriendly software to be more advanced than either the Scenarist EDK or eDVD.)

Common Web DVD Tools
EDVD - Sonic Solutions
PCFriendly - InterActual Technologies
Daikin EDK - Sonic Solutions
MSWebDVD - Microsoft
Convergence - Spruce Technologies
DVD@ccess - Apple

"The best approach for most people is just to use PCFriendly," says LaBarge. "There's a pretty good installed base, and it's a pretty good tool set. It's the easy decision to make. But it costs money, and corporate developers and people on tight budgets often shy away from paying an up-front fee as well as a support fee."

Other currently available Web DVD tools include the Convergence system from Spruce Technologies (at NAB 2001, this was renamed SpruceLink and integrated the InterActual player) and, on the Macintosh side, DVD@ccess, a component of Apple's new DVD Studio Pro that embeds Web links into a DVD title, automatically launching a browser when the user clicks one. The functionality is limited, but it does offer cross-platform compatibility between PCs and Macs, which has become a sticking point for some producers (see sidebar).

(Continue to Part 2)

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