I was recently very fortunate to receive an email from Larry Applegate who is the driving force behind the DVD AfterEdit software now, having bought out Trai Forrester’s interest. Larry invited me to use the software on the projects I do and I was thrilled to be a part of this development.
Simply put, DVDAfterEdit is a ‘post-build’ editor for the mac. It takes a VIDEO_TS folder from a built DVD and gives you access to every single feature, right down to the nav pack level, and enables you to alter each piece to make the project do things the authoring application wouldn’t let you do. You can also put right any mistakes you have made, such as incorrect button navigation, re-set the region coding and so on.
However, it is FAR more powerful than that. You can essentially strip out all of the commands that your application has created and re-build them from scratch, import pieces from other projects and discs, reset the navigation for the entire disc…. and much more. Why would you do this? Well, simply put, you can streamline the way the disc plays in a player and make it far more efficient, and include features you weren’t able to include when the project was first conceived.
DVDAfterEdit comes in different versions depending on what you want to do. Arguably the best version is the ‘Mastering Edition’ which gives you complete control of writing out to DLT before sending the project to replication. The tool set is simply enormous, and you’ll get far more info from visiting the web site. Incidentally, it’s Drupal based, so should immediately feel familiar if you are a drupal fan!
I do wish Trai the very best. He is a passionate advocate of DVD and has done so very much for the world’s community of DVD authors. At times he can be controversial, but in nurturing this software from an idea into a reality he has brought about something extremely useful which hundreds of authors use, and which has been used on hundreds of thousands of commercially released DVDs… who knows – you might even have one in your collection!