Sonic Solutions unveiled a new lineup for its professional Blu-ray Disc authoring, compression, and quality assurance products. The new BD product line features workgroup systems optimised for emerging segments of the BD production market, including professional videographers, video post-production houses, and high-end authoring facilities.

For the videography and corporate markets, the new line of BD production solutions includes the recently-announced Sonic BD PowerStation (at a recommended price of $2,499), which gives video professionals in emerging BD sectors all the essential tools they need to easily create top-quality, replication-ready discs from a client's HD or SD video.

The tools include streamlined, intuitive BD and DVD authoring with Sonic's DVDit!, Pro HD, MPEG-2 and VC-1 encoding and segment re-encoding with Sonic CineVision Studio, and professional-grade BD emulation with Scenarist(R) QC Studio

Other key changes are built around Sonic Scenarist BD, now available at a MSRP of $9,999. It provides BD authors with specification-level control over all aspects of the Blu-ray Disc specification, including advanced features such as interactive pop-up menus. Scenarist BD Studio also includes Scenarist Designer PS for efficient menu graphic creation and revision as well as Scenarist QC Studio for emulation and quality assurance.

For full-service authoring facilities, Scenarist BD Professional (at a new MSRP of $19,999) provides all the industry-leading capabilities of Scenarist BD Studio with additional authoring and emulation support for Blu-ray's advanced interactive BD-J specification, including BD-J debugging using Scenarist QC Professional.

Sonic's CineVision line of professional encoders for Blu-ray Disc and DVD-Video also benefit from significant changes including unique segment re-encoding technology available across the entire range. CineVision Studio, which features full support for all three Blu-ray Disc video codecs, is now available at an MSRP of $9,999 and CineVision Professional for $29,999. All CineVision products can also include exclusive DVO filter technology from Digital Vision.

"Recent AACS licensing changes, rising consumer awareness and falling player prices, have unlocked BD production opportunities in markets beyond traditional Studio feature film content," said Rolf Hartley, senior vice president and general manager of Sonic's Premium Content Applications Group. "There is now an increasing realisation that BD is a viable business opportunity for a far broader range of creative professionals and content owners. We are responding to this by adjusting the pricing of our professional product line to cost-effectively equip new market entrants with the tools they need to take advantage of this exciting opportunity."

Story filed 09.09.09