March 16, 2013 - 23:03
I have an edit saved on a NLE I would like to sell through eBay, self distribution. I have never done this before, so please bare with me.
I was planning on mastering onto large DigiBeta (which I always do). What is the process from there in creating a retail DVD - something of quality. Could anybody reccomend any firms in London (or perhaps somebody here does it?).
Would I be best of using the DigiBeta, or seeing as the project is still in the NLE, perhaps encoding a file off to give them on a USB would be benefitial?
Thanks for any guidance.
March 17, 2013 - 01:18
#1
Re: Creating DVD's
If you have an NLE, don't you also have a DVD authoring application? If it's just for self distribution, I'm sure any reasonable DVD authoring application will do a reasonable job, and avoid the extra (large) charges? of a London house...
Think of all the wedding DVD and Blu-ray producers - they never use a London house...
March 17, 2013 - 14:38
#2
Re: Creating DVD's
It all depends on final quality you want. Exporting from your NLE to Digibeta seems like a laborious route - the point of any workflow is to retain the best result with the least steps. Why not encode to mpeg directly from you NLE? The quality will be OK for your average wedding film maker but not for a Holywood movie director. Output a lossless file from your NLE and find someone with a really good encoder, and yes, this is what you pay for in Soho - even a copy of Carbon Coder which costs a load is still only as good as Canopus Procoder ever was, which was pretty good. TMPGenc 5 is also good - but none of these are professional, say industrial tools.
You can create really well authored DVD 's in Encore or whatever, but they will only ever be as good as the encoding allows. Look for someone who makes commercial DVD masters for film companies. and get your encoding done by them, then author your own DVD using these files - the difference is huge - ever wonder why blockbusters look so much better on a DVD than anything you can ever make at home?
Author your DVD, create an ISO file and either duplicate yourself, have it replicated or, if you are in the big time, make a DLT for glass mastering.
Most users are happy with muddy DVD's but it is worth working with a specialist in this area if you want the best results -
Paul :-)
March 18, 2013 - 15:55
#3
Re: Creating DVD's
We do lots of encoding and mastering for DVD with menu creation and onward disc pressing or burning depending the quantites you need, I will be more than happy to dicuss your project, the options open to you and likely quality and costs if you feeel the you would like to outsource this part of the job.
March 19, 2013 - 21:56
#4
Re: Creating DVD's
Chris, please feel free to PM me quotes.
Paul, anybody who I have worked with always requests footage in a physical format, in my case DigiBeta L.
I don't want the quality to be "OK" either, I put a lot of effort into the filming. So far from the tape it has been transferred to my system by hiring a J30 and converting by firewire, so so far everything should be optimum quality.
Out of interest, what sort of tools do the bigger companies - or even your average independent DVD distribution house use? I imagine they spend big bucks on their equipment?
March 20, 2013 - 16:44
#5
Re: Creating DVD's
a mate runs a bluray company in Soho, I'll ask him.
The days of laying off to tape are pretty much gone.
It's better to send a hard drive containing a file than send a tape
March 20, 2013 - 17:34
#6
Re: Creating DVD's
Hi Dave M,
Why is it that you think tape is dead out of interest?
Like I say, I always deliver on tape as its what is always requested of me.
March 20, 2013 - 17:50
#7
Re: Creating DVD's
With tape you are limited to the maximum quality of that format, you can probably supply a milder codec on file than by tape via a firewire connection.
March 20, 2013 - 17:56
#8
Re: Creating DVD's
what chris said - you're adding an extra layer of complexity by going back to tape.
in large post houses there are guys who specialise in data wrangling now, ensuring that data is transferred between companies or departments but fewer people are arriving with tape or want it put back.
It's not that long ago that something like Harry Potter would be shot on film, telecined, edited in Avid, then printed back to film
Now stuff is shot on a Digital Cinema camera and delivered to the cinema digitally