Why did Apple DROP DVD Burning/Authoring from Compressor 4.8?

I'm just an end user like yourself. However, I formerly worked in development and support for a major non-Apple software product, and the maintenance cost of existing code is significant. It's not like an inert hardware item you can leave on a shelf.

From examining FCP and Compressor over the past few versions, I estimate a significant percentage of code in Compressor was C++ code dedicated to DVD authoring. From a UI standpoint, that was a "little" feature, but from a source code standpoint, it was apparently a lot.

Even 10 years ago, it was obvious that optical media was on the way out. See below graphs. Apple gave clear guidance many times that they planned to phase out optical media support in Macs.

In 2012 Apple VP Phil Schiller said this: "These old technologies are holding us back. They’re anchors on where we want to go. We find the things that have outlived their useful purpose. Our competitors are afraid to remove them. … Optical discs are mechanical, they break, they use power and they’re large. … It makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks.”

Hi (bonjour),

You can use user feedback in the FCP menu to make a feature request.

Michel B.

Tom,

4K Blu-rays are still the way to go if you value video and audio quality on movies. Streaming cannot compare. Maybe some day it will but we're not there yet. Plus what about when movies get removed from a streaming service and you want to watch it? The only digital service on par or better than 4K Blu-rays is Kaliediscape and that ain't cheap.

As for being a content creator, getting Blu-rays stamped is becoming much more of a hassle these last few years as plants are going away and the ones that remain have lowered their standards of quality. I also don't like the process of authoring the discs. Sadly the lack of physical media makes it difficult to sell content. Even if your stuff gets onto Netflix, the revenue split there is abysmal. You'd make more on Youtube. You could always just create your own website and offer stuff digitally, but doing that has a ton of its own caveats and expenses. Physical media will be missed. It's too bad that Mac NEVER had a decent Blu-ray authoring application (no, Adobe Encore was not decent).

It’s staggering the amount that’s still being spent on this obsolete technology. The amount was almost two billion as recently as three years ago.