Need help with DVD reel

[John Thomas]

I've got a version of my new reel that I'm pretty happy with. I used Final Cut Pro and then DVD Studio Pro to produce a finished disc from my Mac powerbook dvd burner. Now that I'm done I need to make dubs. (Last time I burned them myself) What will the duplication house need from me? Is a dvd from my mac adequate? Any tricks to this? The best possible quality is my goal. Thanks

[Dan Goulder]

If this is just a small quantity run then a duplication facility will burn copies of your master disc. For production copies of 1,000 or more DVDs, the standard approach would be submission of a DLT tape to a replication facility, which creates a glass master and stamps your DVDs. This technically produces the most reliable disc. However discs that are duplicated (burned) have evolved enough to be close in reliability to those that are stamped.

[timHealy]

Hey John,

 

Do you know Brian Fitzsimmons the grip? He works with Dennis Gamiello a lot. He has been doing larger DVD replication (I think 1000 but not quite sure) where he exports a high quality quicktime file to a hard drive. Then the company creates the mpeg 2 files and the Video TS files from the hard drive file. I believe they were better than what DVD Studio Pro can do. They may be using a hardware encoder instead of just software, but Brian would have the details.

 

He told me he was happy with their work.

 

I can get his number if you like.

 

Best

 

Tim

[Jon Rosenbloom]

Is this JT who shot 6 Degrees and Sex & the City and Metropolitan and Barcelona and Last Days of Disco? (Love your work, love working for you ...)

 

Anyway, in my limited experience, my DVD has turned out better when, rather than go straight from final cut, I output from final cut or avid to beta or digi-beta and then took that tape somewhere for a "hardware encoding." The images just look more lively. PM me for the details.

 

Best,

Jon.