Sonic Solutions has announced Scenarist Designer PS 2.0, a plugin that serves as a major advance in menu-design workflow for high-definition formats. Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 automates the conversion of Adobe Photoshop graphics into standardized interactive menu components suitable for authoring for both Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD DVD format in the very popular and powerful Sonic Scenarist package.

Extending the efficiency and precision of automated menu generation to designers on all Photoshop-supported platforms, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 handles the advanced content modes of both high-definition formats and is now available for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Designing menus for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles is very different from DVD-Video.
Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is unique in that it returns the control of menu component creation to the professional graphic designer who can create menus for high-definition titles using the industry-standard Adobe Photoshop. By basing the menu-design process on familiar concepts such as using layer sets to group button elements, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 lets designers stay focused on the visual aspects of their work without worrying about the details of conversion for various output formats.
Once a menu’s background and button-state graphics are defined, the export from Photoshop of a compatible menu for one or more target formats is handled automatically via the Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 plug-in, saving hours of authoring work for each project. Offering flexible control and customization of dithering options for HDMV’s RGBA palettes, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 ensures that menu graphics are of the highest-image quality.
'Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is a huge step forward for us, as it seamlessly bridges the workflow gap between the environment preferred by our graphic designers and the authoring tools that we depend on to create compelling titles for both BD and HD DVD,' said Ole Lütjens, Creative Director, of MX Production Services in San Francisco, California. 'Once we’ve achieved just the right look for our menus, it's now a quick, painless task to bring them into Scenarist with all the elements appearing exactly where they’re supposed to be. And, the menus never look different after they’ve been multiplexed, which is a problem we have seen with many other systems. This simplifies our work tremendously, especially for projects that are to be released in more than one high-definition format.'
Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is available immediately through Sonic's resale channels worldwide, and will be demonstrated at NAB (Stand SL4314), April 16th to the 19th, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Source:
Press Release