Mark R. Johnson, CEO of Javelin Ventures and former Vice President of Research & Development for Technicolor’s Worldwide Technology Group and co-author of DVD Demystified: Third Edition, and High Definition DVD Handbook: Producing for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc has been an active participant in the DVD industry since its launch in 1997. An award-winning DVD author, Mark helped define Technicolor’s standards and practices in DVD production on such titles as Disney’s “Snow White” and “Beauty and the Beast.” In addition, his development of tools and procedures in support of the DVD production group are estimated to have saved the company well over $5 million over 5 years.

Prior to that, he served as Technical Manager in charge of Product Design, Quality Control and Technical Support at Daikin U.S. Comtec Laboratories, the creators of the Scenarist authoring system. While there, Mark helped to launch programs such as the Scenarist Advanced Technology Layer, a command-line interface to the popular Scenarist authoring system designed to support automated DVD authoring for the tape-to-disc market segment.

Bhanu Srikanth, Principal at Synklarfor, the last six years has been involved in development of Blu-ray format, design and development of software tools for authoring in Blu-ray. For the last two years, she was involved in setting up Panasonic's Blu-ray production at Panasonic Hollywood Lab. Having been heavily involved in different aspects of Blu-ray - format creation, tool creation, title production, copy protection issues, QC and verification, she is well versed in the intricacies of Blu-ray. Her role as Manager of technology integration was to assess, evaluate, design/develop and integrate various systems to enable Blu-ray production while assisting vendors and other third parties to understand and create blu-ray content.

Phillip Starner, Senior Software Developer at Javelin Ventures, is an accomplished DVD author and HDi programmer. Prior to joining Javelin in 2006, Phil spent five years at Technicolor Creative services where he was at the forefront of programming for HDi and BD-J. Recently, Phil co-authored Programming for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc: the HD Cookbook, available from McGraw Hill in September of 2007.

DVD Demystified has served as DVD’s bible since the format first shipped in 1997. Demystifying not only basic technology issues but detailing production and authoring processes, making sense out of the plethora of battling video, audio, and data formats, and clearly explaining how DVD standards and specs dovetail or clash with related digital media standards, this book has not only become DVD’s standard reference, but also required reading for DVD enthusiasts who wanting to peer behind the scenes and figure out how to get the most from their technology.

DVD Demystified at Amazon

High Definition DVD Handbook is your one-stop resource for mastering the new HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats and successfully applying them to the entire DVD process-from authoring to design to production. You'll see how to fully utilize the amazing new resolution and features of high definition DVD, understand the major differences between the formats, navigate complex specs, and set up for either small- or large-scale production.

High-Definition DVD Handbook at Amazon