The projects represent the first UMDs the studio has worked on and called for a completely new toolset for the encoding, authoring and emulation, notes production manager Geoff Spinks.
“UMD is based on the American NTSC video system, so all of the material needed to be converted to the correct format beforehand. Video material was converted at Wardour Street, the existing DVD graphics were converted in-house and all video and audio material was captured as uncompressed AVIs before being encoded.”
The DVD graphics, also created at Stream, were re-purposed to take advantage of the PSP’s power, allowing buttons to be individually animated to create a more dynamic experience for the consumer.
“These elements were then authored together using advanced scripting techniques to allow us to produce a product which complemented the existing DVD releases while utilizing the PSP’s own strengths” says Spinks. “UMD is an emerging market for Stream. We are really pleased with the result and are now working on our next titles for this new media.”