Spruce Technologies and Sony Disc Manufacturing have partnered in producing a groundbreaking web-enabled DVD supporting RESFEST 2000, the premier cutting-edge digital film festival hosted by RES Media Group. The disc, which made its premier at the SIGGRAPH 2000 convention in New Orleans, will be distributed to attendees of the RESFEST 2000 festival beginning in September.

The project was a collaborative effort that combined authoring from Spruce Technology using the award-winning DVDMaestro(TM) authoring system, replication services from Sony Disc Manufacturing, and a collection of the year’s most creative digital films provided by RES Media Group.

RES Media Group Managing Director John Turk said, ‘We had been relying on the Internet as our primary means of ongoing distribution for our audience. Unfortunately bandwidth limitations have remained a big problem when it came to showcasing the latest film projects. Spruce’s web-enabled DVD technology Convergence is enabling us to offer festival-goers the high-quality visual and audio experience needed to fully appreciate the artists’ work, while providing a lot of interactivity through the numerous connections to our continuously changing web-based content. The disc opens the door for RES and the artists to create an ongoing relationship with the audience.’

The Spruce Convergence(TM) Web-DVD solution allows web pages to be invoked directly by button clicks on the DVD title, as well as letting the Internet browser control the DVD video. By enabling the author to embed URLs directly in the DVD title during the authoring process, web connectivity can be created in seconds without resorting to any web programming.