Shawn,

Apparently there has been a "sea change" at Adobe. Adobe has historically been Mac-centric. Early editions of Photoshop had extra features in the Mac version and to this day Adobe Type Manager is vastly more fully featured in the Mac version. However, Apple's Final Cut Pro ate Premiere's lunch, and apparently Adobe resented that. And there must have been some other offense between Apple and Adobe that we don't know about. In any case, as SonicDennis indicated, Adobe recently posted a distinctly "un-Mac-centric" PC/Mac comparison. Notice that the web address of this page includes the words "PCpreferred".

The great render race

Like it or not, Adobe's Encore DVD software will be in direct competition with Sonic Foundry's DVD Architect. It will be kind of a David vs Goliath competition, since Adobe could buy Sonic Foundry "lock, stock, and barrel" out of petty cash. But despite Adobe's size advantage, DVD Architect may be able to acquit itself well enough in the coming head-to-head competition. The following quotes are taken from the Adobe Encore DVD PDF manual at:

Adobe Encore DVD New Product Highlights

"Adobe Encore DVD software takes DVD authoring to a new level of creativity and efficiency. Through its flexible interface and unparalleled integration with Adobe Premiere®, Photoshop®, and After Effects®, Adobe Encore DVD gives professional videographers, DVD authors, and independent producers the power to create sophisticated, multi-language DVDs with interactive menus, multiple audio tracks, and subtitle tracks for professional DVD production...Throughout the production of your DVD title, you can further polish the elements in your project using award-winning tools from Adobe—Adobe Premiere for video, Photoshop for still menus, and After Effects for motion menus."

Adobe Premiere = $548.95, Adobe After Effects = $649.95, Adobe Photoshop = $599.95. Adobe Encore DVD = $549. If my arithmetic is correct that totals $2347.85. Advantage Sonic Foundry's DVD Architect.

"

That could be a bigger advantage for Adobe than indicated. The text design tools in Photoshop fully support OpenType, and are not limited to basic 256-glyph OpenType. All versions of Adobe's InDesign and both Photoshop 6 and 7 take advantage of the extra OpenType features, so they are said to be "OpenType savvy". Other Adobe applications will be updated for full OpenType support as new versions come out. Adobe discontinued the development of Type 1 PostScript fonts some time ago, and Adobe's Type 1 PostScript font library has already been converted to OpenType. All new Adobe font development is in OpenType.

With OpenType-savvy applications, you can turn on various OpenType layout features that automatically substitute alternate glyphs from an OpenType font. Many of the OpenType layout features, such as automatic ligatures, small capitals, swashes, and old-style numerics are accessed through an OpenType pop-up menu on the Character palette in InDesign. Other OpenType-savvy applications have similar menu control over the invocation of various OpenType extensions. The application needs to have such controls because, for example, the user may or may not wish to have automatic insertion of ligatures.

Instead of being limited to 256 characters, OpenType fonts can have up to 64K (65,536) glyphs, so all of the features that used to require separate font sets, such as ligatures, small capitals, swashes, and old-style figures can now be included in a single OpenType font file. OpenType's Unicode two-byte character representation allows new operating systems like Windows XP to provide access to the extended language character sets available in OpenType fonts. Many languages require these large character sets.

Applications that are not currently OpenType savvy see OpenType fonts as Type 1 fonts with only 256 characters, although they are not constrained to be the standard Windows ANSI character set and variances adding Euro symbols or other special symbols are allowable. In contrast, Vegas has remained distinctly "font handicapped" or "typographically challenged" despite numerous user requests for PostScript font support, and Vegas cannot even use PostScript fonts much less OpenType fonts. Interestingly, DVD Architect shows PostScript and OpenType fonts on its font pulldown list, but selecting one creates a "No Text" warning in the text field. So DVD Architect is also still limited to TrueType fonts.

There would be no shame if Vegas and DVD Architect required the presence of Adobe's ATM Lite for PostScript support. Even dedicated font managers, like DiamondSoft's Font Reserve, also require ATM Lite in Windows 98, Win98SE, WinME, or WinNT. (Win2000 and WinXP have PostScript and OpenType support built in.) There is no point in re-inventing the wheel, and ATM Lite is a free download for anyone who needs or wants it. Adobe is at least two generations ahead of Sonic Foundry in fonts and typography. But even little bitty shareware programs and applets like NotePad and WordPad support PostScript and basic OpenType fonts. SoFo should fix this blind spot and cut Adobe's typographic lead to just one generation ahead. Right now, as a Vegas and DVD Architect user, if you are trying to include titles or DVD subtitles in any of many foreign languages, you are basically screwed, because you need OpenType. <end of font rant>

"

Eight audio tracks is not a lot. Advantage Sonic Foundry's Vegas 4 and DVD Architect.

"

AC3 and 5.1 Surround were not mentioned. Possible significant advantage for Sonic Foundry's DVD Architect. Adobe's Encore DVD is not scheduled to ship until Third Quarter 2003. That will give DVD Architect time to add some enhancements. And Encore DVD is limited to Windows XP platforms; another advantage to DVD Architect. Of course, from the standpoint of the programmers, that is an advantage for Adobe.

-- Seeker --

I dont know if they will add enhancements by then---(June I think it said on the Adobe site). I think there are other players that the new Adobe product is competing against.

I thought this was interesting - Apple switch to Intel?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,936078,00.asp

It's interesting you mention this system comparison. Check out this extremely interesting article that attempts an explanation (involves Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro)

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8542

Also this one;

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,84257,00.asp