The fastest path from production to Blu-ray Disc replication
The Sonic BD PowerStation is an all-in-one suite of professional applications that give you the power to deliver HD content on Blu-ray Disc and DVD-Video. The BD PowerStation includes Hollywood-proven video encoding, authoring and emulation that uses the same technology trusted to deliver the majority of commercial BDs and DVDs to consumers today. If you’re thinking about getting into BD, then the BD PowerStation is the perfect way for you to begin harnessing the power of Blu-ray Disc.

Blu-ray Disc is the perfect carrier for high definition content; with lots of storage on a world-wide standard format with vast creative possibilities. For professional videographers, Blu-ray Disc represents a great opportunity to expand the output choices for both your clients’ and personal projects. The BD PowerStation enables you to deliver on both Blu-ray Disc and DVD-Video using the same project, enabling you to easily add BD services to your client offering without doubling your efforts by having to author for both formats.

With BD PowerStation, you can create titles using the same Hollywood-proven encoding, authoring and multiplexing engine used to deliver the majority of Hollywood BD titles. You can also test your output using our Scenarist QC emulation application – in short, you get commercially proven title creation technology from the leader in BD to deliver your client projects with maximum quality, compatibility and playability.

The Sonic BD PowerStation suite is a collection of professional applications that are simple to learn and use; create stunning HD video, author with motion menus and buttons; full language and subtitle stream support; and then deliver your projects to either BD-recordable or BD replication - quickly, easily and with the ultimate in player compatibility.

Click here for the Sonic BD Powerstation with Blu-ray Disc Bundle

SONIC CINEVISION - HOLLYWOOD STANDARD ENCODING

The Choice of Hollywood
Sonic CineVision® is the #1 choice of Hollywood studios and professional authoring facilities around the world. No other encoder delivers the same pristine, crystal clear HD encoding quality demanded by the industry’s leading encoding professionals.

Produce Stunning HD Encodes
A professional looking Blu-ray Disc relies on many pieces coming together, but one aspect is paramount: stunning HD video. With CineVision you’re assured of producing the same HD video quality enjoyed by professional authoring facilities the world over. With BD PowerStation you can encoder either VC-1 or MPEG-2 video for your Blu-ray titles.

Comprehensive Blu-ray Disc and DVD Support
Unlike other encoders, CineVision has been developed during many years of industry leadership to focus on one single purpose – to deliver stunning video encodes for Blu-ray Disc and DVD. CineVision ensures you’re fully equipped for all aspects of Blu-ray Disc and DVD encoding.

Built-in Format Legalization
Comprehensive Blu-ray Disc legalization means your encodes are guaranteed to be compliant. Every parameter change you make is checked for format compliance using CineVision’s unique legalization technology.

Segment Re-encoding
Fine tune your completed encodes with exclusive segment re-encoding technology. Simply select a segment of any duration, adjust the bit rate and maximum quantization level and re-encode an unlimited number of segments.

Advanced Parameter Control
CineVision features extensive access to the low-level VC-1 and MPEG-2 parameter sets. Support for format-compliant VC-1 (Advanced Profile, Levels 2 and 3) and MPEG-2 (Main Profile, Levels Main and High) is included as standard.

PROFESSIONAL AUTHORING

Dual Format Support – Create Blu-ray Discs and DVDs with the same project
The BD PowerStation’s unique design enables video professionals to publish the same project to two formats - Blu-ray Disc and DVD – a huge time saver. When you’ve finished authoring, simply select your desired format and publish to the format of your choice.

Hollywood Proven Player Compatibility
The BD PowerStation shares the same Hollywood proven core as Sonic’s high-end DVD and BD production system, Sonic Scenarist. Scenarist has produced more DVD and BD titles than all other systems combined, making it the proven standard for professional production and ensuring your titles will be free from playback problems.

HD Motion Menu Compositor
Add that professional look to your titles. Choose from a huge library of menu templates - or create your own - and build fully interactive high definition motion menus with motion background and buttons – all within one powerful authoring interface.

Drag-and-drop Slideshow Creation
Create beautiful HD slideshows using our built-in slideshow compositor. You can include up to 999 HD slides, choose from 65 slick transitions, and build an audio playlist with unlimited audio tracks – all combining to produce a professional slideshow that takes minutes to create.

Professional Authoring Timeline
The BD PowerStation’s timeline gives you detailed control over every aspect of your HD presentation including chapter point placement and 8 audio and 32 subtitle streams. And there’s no need to worry if your video presentation contains source files with different frame rates and resolutions either, the BD PowerStation can handle any combination and ensures your title is fully compliant.

Professional Mastering
The BD PowerStation produces replication ready masters for both DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Alternatively, for one-off discs or smaller runs, you can simply burn straight to a recordable disc of your choice. Regardless of your format choice, the BD PowerStation gives you access to every copy protection and mastering parameter you need to deliver fully compliant masters.

SONIC SCENARIST QC - ADVANCED BLU-RAY DISC EMULATION

Comprehensive BD-ROM Emulation
Scenarist QC provides Blu-ray Disc authors with a comprehensive QC emulation environment, enabling you to view finished BD productions directly from your computer’s hard drive at the same time as viewing valuable debug information.

Navigation Break-pointing
Need to investigate a problem? Simply set a navigation break-point on any Commands to step through your project to investigate any unexplained navigation behavior.

Extensive Playback Logging
See inside the BD player. View extensive color-coded logs that tell you everything you need to know about the player’s inner workings during playback.

User Friendly Log Filtering
Filtering player actions in Scenarist QC’s trace log removes any unneeded information, allowing you to drill down to the most pertinent information for fast project debugging. Data is also interpreted and presented in a readable format so you don’t need to know any spec jargon.

Encoding

• Video Codec Support - VC-1 Advanced Profile (Levels 2 and 3) and MPEG-2 Main profile, Levels Main and High
• Encoding Modes - One- and two-pass bit rate-controlled VBR and One-pass CBR
• Full preset editors giving complete parameter access MPEG-2 encoding parameters
• Segment Re-encode controls for bit rate and maximum quantization
• Parameter change logs for preset editors
• Batch encoding – queue multiple encoding sessions in a batch
• Import chapter points directly from CSV or Sonic StreamData files
• HD-SDI playback of source and movie (requires NVIDIA Quadro FX SDI GPU, not included)
• Sync mode playback - slave encoded movie transport to source transport for instant comparison
• QC Loop mode - Automatic alternating replay of a selected section of the source and movie
• Varispeed playback for source and movie files
• Parameter Legalization Tools - Blu-ray Disc primary video, Blu-ray Disc secondary video, DVD-Video
• Video Resolution Support - 1920 x 1080, 1440 x 1080, 1280 x 1080, 1280 x 720, 960 x 1080, 720 x 576, 720 x 480, 704 x 576, 704 x 480, 544 x 576, 544 x 480, 480 x 576, 480 x 480, 352 x 576, 352 x 480,
  352 x 288, 352 x 240
• Frame Rate Support - 59.94, 50, 29.97, 25, 24, 23.98, 3:2 pull-down insertion
• Supported Input Formats - QuickTime® files (.qt and .mov), AVI files (.avi), DPX image sequences (RGB 10-bit), Planar YUV files (.yuv), MPEG-2 video files, MPEG-4 video files, Windows Media Video files (.wmv)

Authoring

• Video Codec Support – AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2
• Video resolution support – 1080p, 1080i, 720p, and 480i
• Built-in motion menu compositor
• 8 Audio Streams
• 32 Subtitle Streams
• HD Slideshow creation
• 999 images per slideshow
• 65 slide transitions
• Slideshow audio playlists
• AACS and CSS copy protection support
• Region Coding Support
• Jacket Picture Support (DVD)
• DVD-ROM Creation
• Dual format mastering – Output to both Blu-ray Disc and DVD
• BD Volume and Image output
• Blu-ray Disc and DVD mastering
• Premaster DVD projects to DLT
• CMF support for BD mastering

Emulation

• Playback from local or network hard drive and BD-R
• Emulation of non-AACS encrypted images
• Color-coded trace log utility
• Command debugging control
• Command breakpoint support
• Profile 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 support
• Comprehensive player status reporting

A CPU meeting the following minimum requirements is recommended for use with the Sonic BD PowerStation:

• Windows® XP Professional, Service Pack 3, 32-bit
• 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM
• Microsoft Direct X 9.0c
• 75 GB of available hard drive space
• Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 or later
• Windows-compatible sound card
• Apple QuickTime 7 or later
• Windows-compatible DVD-R(W), DVD+R(W) or BD-R(RE) drive
• 3GHz processor (multi-core processor recommended)
• USB port for security dongle
• Monitor with minimum 1600x1200 screen resolution (1920x1200 recommended) and 32-bit color support

Click here for a FREE Blu-ray Disc bundle with the Sonic BD Powersation!!

The FREE Blu-ray Disc Bundle includes:

• Pioneer BDR-205 12x Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD Writer
• Vantec NexStar DX External 5.25" USB 2.0 & eSATA Enclosure
• Verbatim BD-R 4x 25GB 10-Disc Spindle
• Eye Scream Factory DVD Art Essentials

Sonic Launches BD PowerStation
Complete Blu-ray Disc Production Suite for Professional Videographers

NOVATO, Calif., Sept. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sonic Solutions(R) (Nasdaq: SNIC) today released the Sonic BD PowerStation(TM), a new cost-effective Blu-ray Disc (BD) production suite for professional videographers that's built on Sonic's Hollywood-standard CineVision(R) HD video encoding and Scenarist(R) authoring products, which have been used to create millions of DVD and BD titles worldwide.

Configured and priced to meet the needs of professional videographers, independent film and corporate video producers, Sonic BD PowerStation includes a special version of CineVision featuring multi-codec and segment controls, as well as DVDit!(R) Pro HD for authoring BD and DVD titles and Scenarist QC(TM) Studio, a specialized BD emulation system that provides a detailed title proofing step during the authoring process. The result is the world's first truly focused BD authoring solution for desktop video professionals that delivers the ease of use, quality, speed and the dependability required for meeting tough production schedules.

Priced at $2,499.00, the Sonic BD PowerStation breaks the financial barrier-to-entry and immediately expands the availability of high-quality HD title creation solutions to a broader range of post-production facilities and specialized content owners looking to enter the Blu-ray Disc market. In concert with the recent reduction in AACS-LA licensing costs, Sonic's introduction of the BD PowerStation is perfectly timed to energize a hungry high-definition content creation industry and initiate a new wave of BD title production beyond the traditional Hollywood community.

"Sonic's BD PowerStation is the perfect combination of technology, product and price positioning that independent producers and small production houses have been waiting for to start offering BD production services. Until now, producing reliable replication-ready BD masters has been financially out-of-reach of most businesses," said Gary Bettan, VP of Business Development at Videoguys.com a leading reseller of desktop production solutions. "Sonic is the standard in Hollywood and since BD PowerStation is based on that same proven technology we feel confident that this is going to be a very important product for our market."

The Sonic BD PowerStation leverages the same exclusive video encoding and title multiplexing engines used in Sonic's industry-leading products for high-end facilities, which are responsible for the vast majority of commercially released BD titles. Capabilities include: support for MPEG-2 HD, VC-1 encoding with segment re-encoding that provides significant video encoding image quality controls; simple-to-learn and use authoring application that offers HD motion menus and interactive navigation programming without the need to understand the BD specification; and detailed title proofing based on Sonic's BD and DVD navigation engine that is used by leading CE vendors worldwide for set-top and in-car playback devices.

"BD PowerStation is another example of Sonic's unprecedented tradition of constant development and investment in the growth of the professional content production and delivery industry. We've combined our expertise in video encoding, authoring and playback with our clear understanding of 'what's important' to content owners, videographers and producers and delivered an amazing new suite to jump-start their BD title production," said Rolf Hartley, senior vice president and general manager, Sonic's Premium Content Applications Group. "With tried-and-true technology and break-through-pricing, BD PowerStation makes it possible for post-production facilities, independent and specialized film creators, event and corporate videographers to increase their services and use BD to showcase HD content."