While AutoPlay Media Studio’s roots are in making beautiful interactive menus and launchers for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM applications, savvy software developers have been using it for years to rapidly prototype and build full-scale graphically rich software applications.

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 takes it to a whole other level, bringing visual WYSIWYG software development to the masses. What would take a professional programmer days or weeks to build using traditional software development tools like C, C++, Java or even Visual Basic can now be created by just about anyone in less time than you’d have ever thought possible.

While AutoPlay Media Studio is still the best tool out there for making autorun/autoplay menus, its true strength in visual programming now shines through. There’s no faster or better software development tool for combining multimedia elements like video, image, sound, music and animation with advanced business logic, database manipulation, text parsing, web interaction, data collection and graphically-rich data visualization.

You’ll turn to AutoPlay Media Studio 8 over and over again to quickly create full-featured software applications. It’s destined to become an indispensable part of your software development toolbox! Here’s just a taste of some of the features new to AutoPlay Media Studio 8…

NEW! Faster & More Powerful Lua 5.1 Scripting Engine

AutoPlay Media Studio 8′s scripting engine is now faster, more powerful and much more extensible. The Lua 5.1 system features a new module system, incremental garbage collection, new mechanism for varargs, new syntax for long strings and comments, mod and length operators, metatables for all types and a fully reentrant parser.

NEW! Support for Lua 5.1 Code Modules

With the new scripting engine upgrade comes compatibility with Lua 5.1 modules. You now have access to a wealth of free Lua code you can download and use in your AutoPlay Media Studio 8 projects. In most cases you simply copy the module files into your project and “require” them in your script. Just some of the useful modules out there include Bit Operation, Date, Canvas Draw, Imaging Tool, GD, Crypto, Colors, Speech, Alien, Social (Twitter), CURL, Regular Expression Parsing and so much more. It’s a whole treasure chest of addons and tools just waiting for you!

NEW! Blu-ray Disc Support

Do your projects contain huge database and video files? AutoPlay Media Studio 8 now includes full support for burning directly to Blu-Ray media (BD-R, BD-RE). The integrated Bluray disc burning allows you to publish your project directly to single layer and dual-layer BD-R and BD-RE media, supporting 25 GB, 50 GB and even 100 GB formats.

NEW! Application Styles / Skinning

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 gives you the freedom to create applications that look exactly the way you want. Perhaps you prefer that your programs to take on the same appearance as the operating system (e.g. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 Aero)? Or do you want them to be entirely customized with completely custom drawn background images, buttons and window shapes? Or perhaps you’d like to simply make use of the hundreds of ready-to-use MSSTYLES themes (like OS/X Tiger and Panther) that you can download on the Internet? In any case, AutoPlay Media Studio makes it possible – and easy!

NEW! Integrated Database Access

It’s never been easier to write database applications using AutoPlay Media Studio! Easily connect to a variety of popular local and remote/Internet database systems including MySQL, SQLite3, ODBC, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Execute any SQL statements you desire like CREATE, INSERT and more – even easily retrieve data results using a row-by-row cursor system. Features full integration with our fill-in-the-blanks style Action Wizard, plus intelligent code completion.

NEW! PDF Object

AutoPlay Media Studio now features integrated support for displaying PDF documents right in your application. This highly requested feature also gives you full control over the display and formatting. You can show/hide toolbars, scrollbars and borders. Layout options include “Single Page”, “One Column”, “Two Columns” and “User Preference”. View options include “Fit Page”, “Fit Page Width”, “Fit Page Height” and “Actual Size”.

NEW! PDF Actions

Take control of the PDF object with 18 easy-to-use actions. Fully integrated into the fill-in-the-blanks Action Wizard, you’ll be able to easily create dynamic applications to work with PDF files. Actions are provided to Print, Load, Navigate, Zoom, Resize, Hide and much more.

NEW! QuickTime Object

Thanks to the new Apple QuickTime object, Your AutoPlay Media Studio applications are now compatible with over 80 video, audio and image formats. Video formats include .MOV, .DV, .M4V, .MP4 and dozens more – including the amazing h.264 format. Audio formats include .AAC, .AIF, .M4A, .MP3, etc. Visual formatting options let you lock an aspect ratio, resize the media to fit the object dimensions or center it within the object area. Border styles include 3D, plain or none.

NEW! QuickTime Actions

The Quicktime object by itself is great – but a Quicktime object plus 22 built-in high-level actions is just plain awesome! Brought together, your AutoPlay Media Studio actions have exceptional control over the QuickTime object. Using simple script commands you can Play, Seek, Set Volume, Load, Mute, View Full Screen, Hide, Show and much more. Your only limit is your imagination.

NEW! xButton Object

If you’re trying to create an application that blends in beautifully with the operating system, the new xButton object is just what the doctor ordered. However, that’s just the beginning! The new xButton object supports far more customization than was previously

To help spread the word about these new applications, utilities, games and whatnot, we’re going to be highlighting some of them here on autoplay.org.

If you’d like to see the software you made using AutoPlay Media Studio featured here, please go submit it in the AutoPlay Media Studio Showcase Forum and we’ll try and get it up here at some point!

Or, of course, you can also browse the AutoPlay Media Studio forums and see everything as it happens…

w00t!