Digital Video - March 2009 - (Page 19)

DVD DIY With your authoring complete, the ability to have a small manufacturing plant in your home or office is well within the reach of even modest budgets. Any mid-range computer made in the last five years can burn DVDs in their various incarnations (write-once –R or +R or write-many +RW or –RW) as well as CDs. Older systems can take advantage of USB 2.0 or FireWire external burners, which usually come with the necessary software to handle the task (such as the aforementioned Roxio titles, which can handle far more than simple disc burning). These low-cost tools will allow you to burn one disc at a time, and many modern inkjet printers allow you to print artwork of your choosing directly on the disc face. This is a big improvement over the days of adhesive labels that you’d apply to burned discs, which often wreaked havoc with playback. If you’ve outgrown single-disc duplication or have your eye on selling your content in volume, your options are many. Companies like Discmakers.com or U.S. Digital Media (aka www.cdrom2go.com) offer DVD duplication services and sell the equipment and supplies you’ll need to do it all yourself. If you want to stay hands-off, duplication houses can run as few as 100 discs at a time, complete with full-color artwork, case and outer wrap for less than $2.50 per piece. All you have to do is supply these vendors with a DVD-R master of your work as well as your completed artwork (generally as a PDF file) and they’ll handle the rest. For producers who have a steady stream of product or anticipate having it in the near future, your best bet may be to invest in the hardware to do the work yourself. Towers that can burn multiple discs at once, or even combo duplicator/printers — from Epson’s Discproducer ($3,495; www.epson.com) to Primera’s XRP Disc Publisher ($4,399; www.primera.com) to Teac’s WP-55T Explorer 1 ($13,500; www.teac.com) — will quickly pay for themselves if you’re doing more than a few hundred discs annually. U.S. Digital Media has an excellent line of Accutower duplicators ($199 to $4,699, www.cdrom2go.com), ranging from 1 to 50 discs at once, which can be coupled with an automated disc printer such as the Primera Bravo SE ($995), allowing full-color disc label printing for up to 20 discs at a time. With inkjet-printable disc media less than 50 cents per piece, the savings add up quickly. PACKAGING YOUR MEDIA Producers have myriad creative choices for packaging their final discs as well. While commercial clients may only need discs in a simple paper sleeve, content aimed for sale to the public is a bit more involved. You’ll want to start with a standard Amaray-style 14mm DVD case with a clear outer sleeve to hold your artwork, familiar to any- Ready when you are iva-Lites come ready for work with Hi-lumen lamps, switching, dimming, barndoors, gel frame, louver, reﬂector and center mount. Diva-Lites display both daylight and tungsten cool light as bright as a traditional 1,000 Watt hot light — using only 2 Amps of power! Its quick set up time saves production dollars while the small energy footprint helps save the planet. D Please Light Responsibly. w w w. k i n o f l o . c o m 2 8 4 0 N o r t h H o l l y w o o d Wa y, B u r b a n k , C A U S A v o i c e + 1 8 1 8 7 6 7 6 5 2 8 http://www.epson.com http://www.primera.com http://www.teac.com http://www.cdrom2go.com http://www.Discmakers.com http://www.cdrom2go.com http://www.kinoflo.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - March 2009

Digital Video - March 2009 Contents MX02 Instant Expert First Look: EOS 5D Mark II Powerlight 1735W Color by the Numbers A Versatile Disc Indeed Slice/Dice DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - March 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.