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Topic: DVD production

Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-24-2004 10:08 AM

Assuming that someone here has been involved in small-quantity DVD production....

What's the best way to have about 50 DVDs made of a 10-minute film, and how much is that likely to cost?

This is for a short film I made in 1995 about my high-school senior class. My 10th reunion is coming up next year and I'm toying with the idea of having DVDs made. I have the following elements: 16mm timed low-con TV print with two-track 16mm sepmag soundtrack, made in 1995 for video transfer; Beta SP and 1" tapes of that transfer (one-light Rank transfer); VHS copies of same (which I assume are useless).

The original transfer isn't great, but I'd prefer to do this without spending $500+ on a new transfer. The Beta tape looks far better than the VHS tapes, and any quality improvement over VHS would be good. Can DVDs be made from Beta SP or 1" tape or do I need a new transfer to D1 or Digi-Beta or something else? What companies do a good job of mastering and how much do they typically charge for the master and then for the disks (I'm assuming that they will be DVD-Rs given the small quantity)?

If a quality job can't be done for less than, say, $5-10 per disk, then I won't bother. We'll be showing a 16mm print the the group, anyway. The DVDs would just be something to hand out.

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John Lasher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 493
From: Newark, DE
Registered: Aug 2001

posted 06-24-2004 03:54 PM

For having the tape transferred to DVD, Delaware Digital Video Factory seems to have the best prices, and they can convert any video format to DVD (as well as 16mm film). They will be doing the DVD mastering of "LIA".

DDVF

From the site, it looks like it would cost about $44.95 ($54.95 if you wanted Time Base Correction on the video, they recommend it for tapes older than 5 years)

They can do custom authoring too, probably the best solution for what you've described would be a no-menu auto play disc (you put it in, it starts the movie, when the movie ends, the disc stops (or you can have it start over)).

For the actual duplication, ProAction Media has a good rate.

ProAction

$3.95/disc for 50 plus 20-25 cents for packaging.

So, with authoring, it comes out to about $5.30/disc
(with TBC, not including shipping)

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Ron Keillor
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 166
From: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Registered: Jul 2003

posted 06-25-2004 04:19 AM

They're off-shore, but GMV video in Adelaide, Australia can do it also - here's their cost for comparison :
Wayne & Tina Gallasch
GMV Productions
PO Box 10164,
Adelaide, South Australia 5000

Website: www.gmv.com.au
Email: gallasch@gmv.com.au

Yes this is something we can do. It costs about Aust.$80.00 to put a short piece of video to DVD. We can work from Beta Sp and the quality would be very good. We don't have access to 1" any more. We can work fro VHS if we have to.

The cost to then duplicate 50 DVD would be $4.95 each which is inclusive of the clamshell case. (Plus freight of course).

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Jeff Taylor
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 601
From: Chatham, NJ/East Hampton, NY
Registered: Apr 2000

posted 06-25-2004 08:36 AM

Not sure of the actual quantity you are looking for, but for a real bargain job, Scott, you could simply digitize the beta master (plug it into a set top DVD recorder, or use one of the new capture cards) and burn your own. It would be a slow process for any real quantity, but you can pick up DVD-R's and cases for considerably less than $1 a set in quantity. Just a suggestion.

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Don Bruechert
Mmmmmmmmm, bird!

Posts: 340
From: Manitowoc, WI, USA
Registered: Jan 2003

posted 07-02-2004 08:56 AM

I just finished a project for a local theater group where I got the performance on mini DV tape, captured it into the computer, made it fit on DVD and burned it. Assuming you don't mind having the equipment laying around, you need a computer with a DVD burner, lots of free disk space (5 GB would probably be adequate for 10 minutes), over 128MB of RAM (the more the faster), some way to capture the video and DVD authoring software.

In my case the DV camcorder hooked up to the firewire port on my computer, but you can get a "Dazzle" sound/video interface that hooks up to a USB port for around $60. That would allow you to connect any video source with composite or S-Video jacks to your computer. I used Sonic MyDVD Studio Deluxe software (about $60) to edit and burn the video.

If you think you might do it again in the future, and you have a decent computer, you're probably looking at a hardware-software investment of around $300 to $350. It never hurts to have a DVD burner around anyway. If you go out and buy one, many times they come with some software so you could save a buck there. I would get one that does both (-) and (+) formats if you get one. I used (-) format disks for my project.

Once you have all the hardware, it will cost you about a buck a disk to buy them, plus if you want a case and to label them it will be a tad more. My project was pretty big, and I spent 15 hours before I got it edited the way I wanted. After that the disks take maybe 10 minutes a crack to burn depending on how much you put on them. I would be suprised if you spent more than an hour capturing your video and slapping on a title or dressing it up.

Of course if this is something that you're likely to never do again, you might want to just foork out the $300 to have someone else do it, and charge it back to your classmates that want a copy.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 07-03-2004 06:23 AM

I'd go down the homebrew route too. Over here you can get 8x DVD writers for the equivalent of around $100, which come bundled with basic authoring software. They'll burn off your discs at the rate of one every 5 minutes or so. Then you'd need the capture card, if you don't already have one. Good quality analogue capture cards are not cheap, though.

I guess that the big problem will be getting hold of a Beta SP playback machine. If you know anyone (e.g. at a university) who has access to an SP machine, my inclination would be to try and get the SP transferred to Mini DV that way. The quality of that will be as good as you need for DVD. If you can get that far and have a Mini DV camcorder (or can borrow one), then simply get a cheap Firewire card (assuming you're computer's motherboard doesn't already have a Firewire plug) and connect the camcorder to that. That will enable you to get the video into your PC. The editing needed will be absolutely minimal - even the basic video editing program supplied with Windows will probably be OK. All you then need to do is render the video to MPEG-2 for DVD burning. You'll find lots of free programs on the Internet which will do that if your DVD burning program won't (e.g. do a Google search for 'BB MPEG'). Then simply make up a basic menu screen, and burn away.

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