Final Cut Pro 6 is a solid upgrade featuring greater ease of use and enhanced workflow flexibility. Motion 3.0.1, Soundtrack Pro 2.0.1, Compressor 3.0.1, DVD Studio Pro 4.2, and the new Color.

Some household renovations add cosmetic niceties, such as a new decor. Other upgrades, such as a new roof, may not add curb appeal but are nevertheless important investments for the future. DVD Studio Pro 4 falls into the second category. Last year’s DVD Studio Pro 3 offered some gorgeous new menu-design and slide-show options (; ). The enhancements in DVD Studio Pro 4 are less cosmetic and more foundational. Because of the nature of DVD Studio Pro 4’s improvements, this upgrade, while excellent, may not be a must-buy for DVD Studio Pro 3.X users.

An (Almost) Familiar Face DVD Studio Pro 4 looks and works the same way its predecessors do. Chubold my clone shot video. You can work in any of three authoring modes—Basic, Extended, and Advanced—which provide varying levels of control over the authoring process. If you’ve used DVD Studio Pro 2 or 3, you’ll feel at home with version 4, but your existing projects might not. Apple changed the way DVD Studio Pro renders text in version 4, and when you open a project from an earlier version, its menu text may require formatting adjustments. Because of this annoyance, I don’t recommend switching to version 4 while you’re in the middle of a project you started with an earlier version.

Indeed, if you have complex projects created in an earlier DVD Studio Pro version, it’s smart to keep the older version installed in case you need to burn additional copies of a project or modify your work. Designing Discs DVD Studio Pro 4 lets you mix and match HD and SD content in the same disc. Here, a main menu contains buttons that, when pressed, play either the SD or the HD version of a movie. (Click image to open full screenshot) Unfortunately, Apple makes it difficult to retain this critical tie to your older projects. When you install DVD Studio Pro 4, the installer replaces any previous version. (This occurs with other members of the Final Cut Studio family, too.) It seems possible to retain the older version of DVD Studio Pro by renaming its application icon before installing version 4, though Apple discourages doing so.

DVD Studio Pro 4’s product manager told me that the only Apple-recommended method of retaining an older version is to install the new version on a separate startup partition or hard drive—or on a different Mac. Apple’s documentation should mention this. If you’ve created large projects in earlier DVD Studio Pro versions and you anticipate needing to access them again, plan your upgrade strategy carefully: either install DVD Studio Pro 4 on a separate startup drive or partition, or allocate time to tweak your old projects for DVD Studio Pro 4. HD for the Few of Us The most forward-looking addition to DVD Studio Pro 4 is support for high-definition (HD) video. DVD Studio Pro 4 supports HD from several perspectives. For one, you can encode HD video into standard-definition (SD) format, creating conventional discs that will play in all of today’s DVD players. This is similar to how iDVD 5 (; ) handles HD video, and it’s the most sensible approach for content producers who are shooting in HD but need to deliver projects in a format that most people can actually watch.