Israeli multimedia software house Optibase Ltd has launched a low-end, desktop version of its DVDFab! package for creating digital videodiscs, called DVD Fab!Xpress. The new package is a slimmed-down version of the former package, aimed at the corporate market, where it is suitable for sales or institutional presentations, as well as multimedia houses wanting to get into DVD. It runs on an NT platform, and boasts the ability, in a single package, to add interactive features, thanks to Daikin Industries Ltd’s Scenarist NT Basic software, and create audio along with the video in the Digital AC3 standard from Dolby Laboratories Inc. Fabrice Beer-Gabel, Optibase’s product line marketing and business development manager for DVD, said the economy version of DVDFab! Is for people who want to produce digitally without all the tweaking elements or the full extent of DVD programming capabilities. He cited, for instance, the high-end product’s multi-pass variable bit rate, which re-encodes content, allocating a variable bit rate according to the complexity of each sequence. In Fab!Xpress, this feature is substituted by a real-time variable bit rate, which, as he explained, means the quality of the end product is slightly less, but, on the other hand, reduces production times. Again with an eye to a wider market, the new offering supports the entire production process, and includes video, audio and interactive features such as menus with buttons. It also allows the end result to be in any medium. Thus it need not take the form of a videodisc, but rather DVDRom, hybrid DVD, video servers, the kiosks used in malls and trade shows, video CDs or CDRoms.
