Adobe Systems is expanding its line of multimedia management products to include Encore DVD, a Windows tool for high-end DVD authoring. The new program, which was unveiled at the National Association of Broadcasters show, is scheduled to ship in the third quarter in the US. The Australian launch date for Encore DVD is yet to be confirmed.

With Encore DVD, you can edit a video, create menus, and then use a rewritable DVD drive to burn it onto a DVD disc. With its US$549 price tag, however, Encore DVD is aimed squarely at high-end and professional users who already work with video but want to output their productions to DVD as well as video tape. It won't compete with products such as DVD Movie Factory 2 or MyDVD that target home and casual users. Many other companies have already launched DVD authoring products to accompany rewritable DVD drives, which have been dropping in price; you can now pick up a rewritable DVD drive for just over $200.

"Adobe Encore DVD opens the door for video professionals to take advantage of powerful DVD features and deliver their video projects in the format embraced by both consumers and professionals," says Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of digital imaging and video products at Adobe Systems.

Plays With Others

The new program also integrates with other Adobe products. You can transfer video projects straight from Adobe's popular high-end video-editing program Premiere, for example; and you can create or edit the DVD menus in Adobe's popular Photoshop program, which offers a huge range of image editing tools.

Users will be able to edit menus with Photoshop from within Encore DVD, instead of having to pass them from one program to another. This will make the process of creating a DVD movie quicker and easier, according to Adobe. Alternatively, the program can be used as a stand-alone DVD authoring program, but most users will probably use it alongside Premiere and Photoshop. It can also integrate with Adobe's video processing and special-effects program After Effects.

Premiere already includes a basic DVD authoring program in the form of a bundled version of Sonic MyDVD. Adobe representatives say that the company will continue to bundle MyDVD with version 6.5 of the video editing program.

However, MyDVD is a basic program that doesn't sit easily with Premiere's powerful and feature-rich video editing tools; for instance, MyDVD offers very limited DVD menu-editing tools. Adobe's newest entry is intended to fill the gap.