SANTA MONICA, CA - Spitfire Media (www.spitfire-media.com) got into UMD authoring right after Sony introduced the PSP in early 2005. The studio has an ongoing relationship with Universal, having authored a number of DVD titles, and found itself in a position to take on UMD work for titles it was already familiar with.�
According to producer/marketing director, Chris Vorhies, Spitfire's DVD authoring suite doubles as its UMD authoring suite too.
"We offer the ability to design from top to bottom," he says. "We can design menus, encode, author and deliver your final product without having to use multiple facilities. We can also take your original DVD and turn it into a UMD."
To date, Spitfire has worked on several UMD titles, including Rob Zombie's Hellbilly Deluxe, Prince's Live at the Alladin, Jimi Hendrix's Live at Woodstock, Def Leppard's Rock Of Ages, Eminem's Anger Management 2002, and Limp Bizkit's Greatest Videoz.
The studio uses Avid Xpress and Apple Final Cut Pro with an AJA Kona 2 card for editing, Avid DS for finishing, and Digidesign Pro Tools|HD for 5.1 audio post. It invested in Sony Media Software's UMD Composer toolkit in order to author UMD titles, which are then replicated to the 1.8 GB discs by Sony.