Who's got Netblender DoStudio, and What do you think?

[alanwiggin]

I've been using the trial version for a couple days now, it seems pretty decent, a nice interface overall. I am getting a massive amount of unhandled exception errors though, is this happening to anyone else? I am hoping its just a trial version issue.

[Eric69]

Haven't used it yet...used the HD DVD version. However, I'd imagine there be quit a few bugs for awhile until the tool matures.

[bbjay]

I've been using the trial version as well. Are you getting these errors on Vista or XP? Also do you get them after importing your PSD menu files through DoStudios Mosaic? or trying to import them into DoStudio?

[alanwiggin]

I am using XP, I usually get the errors when trying to assign an action to a button object, although I have gotten the errors a few other random times. What OS are you using?

[reykroona]

I downloaded it but they haven't emailed me my trial key yet.

I did scan through the help file a little bit. It looks to me like it will be a good program for maybe wedding videographers and things of that sort. Kind of like DVD Studio Pro is. I don't think it will replace Scenarist HDMV or Blu-print, but it'll be good for small production shops/personal projects.

The first big thing that jumped out at me was that I didn't see anything about animating buttons in the help file, does anyone know if it supports it? I saw it does basic slide in animations for the main and sub menus, but I didn't see anything about activation/selective/normal state animations for individual buttons.

[bbjay]

I have one on vista and one on XP. on vista I can't get the project to compile. Gets "unable to create interactive layer" however it compiles in XP fine. I dont think it is an operating system problem I think I may be missing some Java applications on Vista. I am working with their support to figure that out. I have not had any problems with assigning button actions. The only problem I ran into was a couple runtime errors within the Mosaic PSD importer but was able to figure out what was causing them.

I do like that the program is very simple to use. It does not seem that powerful at first but is possible to do some pretty impressive stuff. I do agree that this will not replace Scenarist or Bluprint right now but they do have some great features coming in the next release.

It can not do animated buttons, however I am pretty sure these can be created in a 3rd party application and plugged-in to DoStudio (OnQ, Eclipse).

[reykroona]

I got my key and tried it real quick and got a bunch of errors. I got in an endless error loop when I clicked on the "top" box in the mosiac thing and had to crash out of it. After a break I tried it again and had a little better luck, though I get an error every time I go to the "windows" menu and just get a big red "X".

Overall, I'm pretty impressed once I got over the fact it wasn't a BD-J authoring tool (which I thought it was for some reason). It seems easy to use and I think the learning curve will be much easier than Scenarist. I'm also impressed with how good their help is, something that Scenarist doesn't exactly have. It seems to lack a few of the more advanced features, but I have a feeling the kind of projects people will be using this for it those features won't be missed.

[CreativeX]

I did have trouble with a couple of things so I contacted their support, very helpful and quick to respond unlike Sonic, especially when you have a evaluation version, they were able to get back to on the issues I had. I wasn't setting up my actions right when when I was compiling. I do get the an error every time I go to the "windows" menu and just get a big red "X". They told me they have a couple of reports on this and are going to provide a fix soon. I went to their site this morning to see if there were any updates. I didn't see any but I did find this new page of samples http://dostudio.netblender.com/dostudio/sandbox.asp. I also did a quick search and saw another person using it here: http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=41048&tstart=0 who is looking to create BD-J applications for it. I am hoping for some animation plug ins in the near future. I'll post more as I find more stuff.

[CreativeX]

p.s. I should mention my goal of the trial was to recreate a title that I know very well (Ocean's 13) I was able to recreate the exact same menu, with sound effects and everything by today. Most of our titles for our clients do not have animated menus, aside from slide in so DoStudio is going to work well for those titles.

[DennyB]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for information about your personal experiences with DoStudio Authoring Edition (DSA). Please don’t hesitate to contact our sales team with any issues you might be having and we will work very hard on addressing those issues so you can fully evaluate if DoStudio will fit your workflow, your budget, and your clients needs. In the past week we’ve had companies from all 6 continents download DoStudio which is good news for you alanwiggin and bdjay because we are able to pull in all different types of languages and pc environments from around the world to quickly fix the issues and fix them so the work on any machine. If you are able to send your issue along with your pc configuration we can let you know where the issue stands and when you’ll be able to download a fix.

One thing that DSA does do is it creates 100% pure BD-J code which looks and performs like a HDMV title. Aside from the multiple frame menu animations. :) Our DoStudio MX HD DVD product had a complete scripting engine and a key frame animation tool. With DSA we took a slightly different approach with pre built actions. However those actions are based on the same scripting language as our DoStudio MX tool so if you are interested in building a game engine or a some multiple frame animations please don’t hesitate to contact me. We are actively looking for companies and developers who have some really great ideas and they need a BD-J tool to implement their idea. If you have an idea and want to see it built into DSA by all means let us know, you can contact me directly if you want as well. We are constantly adding features to DSA and we are looking for your feedback at all times. One of the major features coming up is the integration of BD Touch to DSA. With this release you can do things like: send files from a pc, mac or a website to a BD Live Player or sending files from the BD Live Player to a mobile device, pc or a mac with no scripting required.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me or anyone at NetBlender on how you would like to see DSA evolve or become and let us know if you are experiencing issues, we don’t bite and want to help.

:thanks:

Denny B.
(part of the DoStudio Development team)

[DenisRodman]

Hello guys.

Anyone has old version 1.7 or 1.8 trial setup? I'm looking for only installer. If anyone has please share a PM.

Regards.