Sony has just announced the arrival of a new program/product for the PSP platform, a UMD authoring software named UMD Composer. Don't get too pumped just yet though; this software will allow developers to create images of UMDs, which can then be sent to a UMD pressing facility where they can be mass-produced. This whole process is quite costly however, and with the software being sold at $2,000, and UMD pressing fees being high as well, this isn't for the Average Joe. And no, you cannot load homebrew on these discs via the software, it's just for UMD video... hmm... I think I may want to get my hands on one of these. Can you say UMD Composer image-writing exploitation for homebrew application/game images? Heh, I wish.



UMD Composer will feature the following components:
- Stream Composer: audio/video/subtitle encoding, multiplexing, clip information creation (multipass encoding support).
- Stream Viewer: a viewer for stream files.
- Playlist Composer: create playlist files.
- Script Compiler: compile UMD video scripts.
- Resource Compiler: create resource files from source XML, compiled scripts, PNG still images, etc.
- Interactive System Viewer: emulation of interactive menus and such in a PC environment.
- PSMF Composer/AT3 Tool: creation of video and sound displayed in the PSP's Cross Media Bar (XMB).
- Image Generator: create UMD disc images.
- Image Checker: verification of created UMD disc image.

Check out more information about UMD Composer at the official Sony website here.
Check out more information on this announcement here.

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