Templated Authoring System

For movie/tv content providers, TAS is the only professional DVD authoring solution that offers a flexible templated workflow. This de-skills the creation of a DVD title, so creating titles is quicker and cheaper. Because TAS is systematic about the way in which titles are prepared, it ensures all technical requirements are rigorously adhered to. This means titles are produced right-first-time, reducing the labor needed for QC.

Key Benefits

TAS templates are unique because they respect the fact that all DVDs look and play differently.
There is no constraint on the visual appearance of titles because the templated element only applies to the programming of the disc and not the creative element.  Wide ranges of disc variations are supported without having to break out of the templated environment. e.g. the number and type of menus, buttons, audio, video and subtitle content can vary disc to disc and even be changed at the last minute, no problem.

TAS enables cost effective in-sourcing of functions that previously required specialists.
Because TAS simplifies the process of authoring a DVD and removes much of the repetition, in depth knowledge of the DVD spec is not required to create a disc and fewer errors occur during authoring. This reduces the cost of authoring and testing of a DVD title and operators within studios can undertake DVD authoring themselves without needing to outsource to a specialist.

The operator uses a simple interface to specify what type of disc it will be and what menus and content should be included.  TAS will then configure the disc structure and identify what assets are needed.  It is then a simple matter for the operator to drag and drop the necessary menu, audio, video and subtitle assets, place the menu buttons, set the chapter times and it’s ready to build.

Changes are accommodated up to the last second. Assets can be swapped out at any time, and number of items on the disc can change, including adding and removing languages without causing lots of rework.

Key Features

• Simple user interface - No authoring knowledge required so existing project managers and asset coordinators can create your international DVD products quickly and cost effectively
• DVD Spec compliance – Discs are guaranteed to playback correctly on all leading devices
• Incremental build – TAS only rebuilds areas of the disc which have changed, so builds take less time and by leaving unchanged work untouched, fewer errors are introduced
• Clone projects – Create a series of discs in a boxset by reusing the first and swapping the assets so more authoring and QC time can be saved
• Visual Button Editor – Easily set up menu buttons in one language and duplicate them across all the other menu languages so more authoring time is saved

Also includes

DVD Quick Template

Professional DVDs are made up of 100s of files produced by different divisions and companies. Linear testing of all materials needs to be done early in order to catch problems.  Traditionally, authors have to create special discs containing all the early content so that QC tests can take place.  Often this is before menus are ready so authors have to produce fake menus in order to give QC a navigable DVD. All of this creates many hours of work!

Key Benefits

TAS DVD Quick Template easily creates a complete, fully functional disc containing all the early content (video, audio, subtitles), with no authoring knowledge required, reducing the time and cost involved in the overall compression & authoring workflow.

Features

• Subtitle analysis report – TAS scans and lists any time sync, positioning (e.g. off center), duration or color irregularities at the play time as they would appear on the disc so QC know which areas to focus on first before they’ve even seen the disc.
• Automatic menu generation – No need to design a dummy menu structure for QC to playback all elements on the disc.
• Automatic intro slide generation – Disc contains automatically created description slides which appear before each video plays. As the disc can playback from beginning to end with no user intervention needed, this makes the QC process much more efficient.

TAS is available for license, or if you want to reduce costs without doing the work, ZOO offer a highly competitive compression & authoring service based on this technology.