Zootech has launched DVD-Extra Studio, a DVD-Video production system aimed at producers of highly interactive DVDs. DVD-EXTRA STUDIO is a new and revolutionary DVD production system that allows DVD authors, multimedia developers and programmers to exploit the full potential of the DVD-Video specification. DVD-EXTRA STUDIO is a quantum leap forward in terms of reducing the repetitive tasks involved in current DVD authoring systems and has been designed from the outset to save you time and money through the automation of asset generation and navigational linking.

Zootech claims that DVD-Extra will play on any standard, set-top consumer DVD player.

The application supports the full DVD-Video specification, including 99 menus, eight audio streams, and 32 subpicture streams. It supports motion menus, both PAL and NTSC video in 4:3 and 16:9 formats, and region coding and CSS copy protection – as well as offering graphics access to 16 GPRMs.

DVD-Extra Studio features an internal MPEG-2 encoder, with interfaces to third-party software and hardware encoders and support for Audio in Dolby Digital AC3 Stereo, or as 96kHz PCM. The software also features interfaces to Macromedia Flash and Director.

DVD-Extra Studio is available for Windows only. Although the software is free, under the licensing scheme producers will be charged 0.5 Euros (around 33p) for each commercial disc produced.