Well, we've got our HP workstation up and running with DoStudio's Trial Version now installed. The Trial version is the complete application with only the commercial replication features turned off. First impressions are this thing is definitely NOT DVD Studio Pro or Encore. This is a very serious tool along the lines of Apple's Color compared to the 3 Way Color Correction filter in Final Cut Pro. There is a learning curve as a lot of programming is manually done rather than simple drag and drop type of operations. This feels more like a professional authoring tool and less like a toy. Don't get me wrong, I love DVDSP and it's simple drag and drop functionality, but it's nice to essentially have almost endless possibilities open to us and forcing us to actually learn what we're doing. Anybody can drag and drop, but it's nice to be able to get your "hands dirty" and go under the hood to see how to really operate authoring software. In just one day, we've been able to get a nice main menu and chapter selection pop-up menu already underway. A little snag on the pop-up where we can get it to pop-up but it's not going to the various chapters like we programmed. NetBlender's support has been great to work with so far and we've uploaded the project file for them to poke around and see where we went wrong. I'm sure it's operator error as we've been using the software all of about 6 hours. One big thing that is missing as of right now is an "Undo." This is reminiscent of Final Touch before Apple purchased it and turned in to Color. Final Touch did not have any sort of Undo so you had to be very careful of what you were doing. NetBlender tells me that Undo is a feature that will be added on this fall with an update and we're already looking forward to it! :-) The big adjustment is that we have to essentially "forget" the DVD mentality. There are so many different possibilities in authoring BluRay that you have to design the menus and even the overall flow differently. Still wrapping our heads around this, but using this software definitely calls for more planning and thought than just hurry up and get it done. More soon! | 
