Sonic Solutions has introduced Scenarist Designer PS 2.0, a tool for in menu-design creation for high-definition formats.

Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 automates the conversion of Adobe Photoshop graphics into standardized interactive menu components suitable for authoring for both Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD DVD format in Sonic Scenarist.

Designing menus for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles is very different from DVD-Video. Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is unique in that it returns the control of menu component creation to the professional graphic designer who can create menus for high-definition titles using the Adobe Photoshop. By basing the menu-design process on familiar concepts such as using layer sets to group button elements, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 lets designers stay focused on the visual aspects of their work without worrying about the details of conversion for various output formats. Once a menu?s background and button-state graphics are defined, the export from Photoshop of a compatible menu for one or more target formats is handled automatically via the Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 plug-in, saving hours of authoring work for each project.

Depending on the selected output formats, Scenarist Designer PS will output all components required to automatically reconstruct a menu in either Scenarist BD or Scenarist HD DVD authoring workstations, including button positioning information and graphics for each button state (dithered to associated RGBA palettes if needed for HDMV menus in BD projects). The menus are then completely ready for assignment of navigation commands by authoring specialists, either directly in the Scenarist environment (for Blu-ray?s HDMV and BD-J modes) or in a simple text editor (for HD DVD?s HDi mode).

Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is available immediately through Sonic?s resale channels worldwide, and will be demonstrated at NAB (Stand SL4314), April 16th to the 19th, Las Vegas, Nevada.