Sonic team with DCA to secure delivery of DVD Masters

Sonic Solutions and DCA have announced a co-operative agreement to simplify the process of secure electronic delivery of DVD masters to replication plants.
Effectively extending authoring deadlines by saving shipping time and eliminating traditional freight costs and lost shipments, the system will use DCA technology for secure data transfer via the internet.
Sonic professional DVD solutions will incorporate technology that outputs DVD image files as DDP files sets to hard drive. By outputting DVD image files in this way, DCA's OptiSend technology can securely transfer electronically the DVD master to the replication plant, preventing their access by unauthorised users.
DCA is the originator and licensor of DDP (Disc Description Protocol) for optical discs. DCA's OptiSend is designed to securely transfer DVD and CD images electronically. The process not only encrypts the content during transfer, it also optimises the data in a highly efficient way that ensures rapid data transmission.
Traditionally, DVD masters have been output to DLT tape, and shipped via overnight carrier. Delivering DVD masters electronically eliminates the potentially lost revenue caused by lost or late shipments, simplifies the process workflow between authoring studio and replication plant, and saves precious time in the DVD production process.
"When authoring professional DVD-Video content, timely delivery of masters is essential to achieve a successful DVD title market campaign. And masters that are late to the factory can result in millions of dollars in lost revenue and wasted expense," said Brett Symes, Production Manager at Stream Digital Media in London. "Tapeless delivery of masters to the replication facility provides us with a secure transfer medium, and actually extends our authoring deadline because we save a day in shipping time."
Sonic plans to enable the secure transfer technology through DDP image file generation to hard disk in its next versions of Sonic Scenarist, DVD Producer, and Sonic ROM Formatter.
Sonic Solutions www.sonic.com