DSA Case Study:
Rivetal | Salt Lake City, USA

Independent studio Creates Hollywood level BDs without the excessive up front overhead required of other tools

Rivetal is a true multimedia agency that applies the best principles in design, functionally and operability to a wide variety of media types and technologies including, web, video & film, CD-ROM, DVD, Blu- Ray disc, interactive Kiosks and print. Rivetal currently employs 20 and is based in Orem, UT.

Their first Blu-ray title is “Emma Smith: My Story” an independent film about the wife of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church. “Originally the biggest challenge was finding an affordable authoring solution that allowed us to create replication ready masters. Existing solutions cost more than many houses in Utah,” said Jeremy Neish, of Rivetal. “DoStudio offered a cost effective Blu-ray authoring solution that allowed us to create Hollywood level Blu-ray discs without the excessive up front overhead required of other tools.”

Rivetal did their homework before jumping into Blu-ray authoring and found that other authoring solutions were either too complex or too unreliable for replication.”Other tools required the author to dig too deep into the Blu-ray spec to produce a workable title. DoStudio offered just enough of an abstraction from the complexities of the spec but not too much as to limit what we wanted to accomplish,” said Neish. Coming from a DVD background, Neish struggled a bit with the emerging conventions of Blu-ray pop-up menus. In the end, “Emma Smith: My Story” employs both a main menu that is displayed when you insert the disc, and a different pop-up menu that appears during playback. All of this is still implemented in BD-J, and created in DoStudio.

“We wanted to present the user with a standard DVD style menu for the features on the disc that weren’t directly related to the movie, like featurettes, trailers and outtakes. Then a separate pop-up menu that allowed the user to access the features that are directly related to the playback of the movie, like subtitles, scene selections, languages and commentary tracks, said Neish. “DoStudio allowed us to do that.”

Going forward, Rivetal is encouraging their customers to release in Blu-ray. Neish sees the interactivity if Blu-ray to be its strongest benefit. But with that benefit comes a new level of education for authors and their customers.

Neish counsels patience for authors who are new to Blu-ray. “Make sure you request longer timelines for your projects, because Blu-ray authoring is easily an order of magnitude more complex than DVD. But with that complexity comes the ability to create some cutting edge interactive experiences. We look forward to pushing the boundaries of the spec, just as we did with DVD back in the 90’s.”

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