Goal

To convert over 2 ½ hours of travel and entertainment footage to MPEG for use in an interactive travel planner. The planner allows users to view footage of San Francisco’s restaurants, hotels and attractions and then access various web sites to make reservations.

Problem

The planner is targeted to home users who have a wide variety of systems. The planner that’s currently shipping is a 3 CD-ROM set, but the next version will integrate all the material onto one DVD-ROM. ImaginOn needed tools that would keep pace with the changes in consumer’s home computer and home entertainment systems.

Solution

MPEG Power Professional—DVD is used to create MPEG-1 streams for the current shipping version of the Interactive Travel Planner. In addition, the software is used to create test variable bit rate MPEG-2 streams for the DVD version of the product.

Benefits

• MPEG Power Professional—DVD’s flexibility, allowed ImaginOn to create the files they needed for today’s consumer (CD-ROM) as well as tomorrow’s consumer (DVD) in one economical product.

• MPEG Power Professional’s manuals, help-system, and easy to understand user-interface allows ImaginOn’s post-production department to quickly become MPEG experts.

Quotes

MPEG Power Professional—DVD is the first MPEG encoder I’ve utilized, and it’s very user-friendly. The MPEG files look very good. We’re pleased with the visual quality. We’re especially happy that MPEG Power Professional—DVD is a software product. Since upgrades are frequent and inexpensive, we know that this product will grow along with the needs of our company.

Suzanne Schwilk-Smith, Digital Video Production Manager