Things to Know About DVD’s

Your carefully crafted video presentation has been through creative development, production, and post-production, and now it’s time to get it out to your audience. For years, the default method of placing your program out in the field has been to make copies on VHS cassette tapes. You could be pretty sure that the person receiving the program had access to a VHS player. Unfortunately, the image quality of VHS recordings was always disappointing to a producer who had slaved over issues like lighting, effects, and graphics to create a program with optimal impact.

Now come DVD’s capable of reproducing video signals that rival the original master, and we producers rejoice. DVD players have become so inexpensive that we can now be reasonably certain our viewers will have access to one in the field. In addition to stand-alone players selling for $50 and less, many newer PC’s and laptops have DVD drives built in.

Now here’s the rub. As DVD recording has been developed by companies competing to create the dominant format, some issues of compatability have arisen with playback on PC’s and older stand-alone players. At the risk of oversimplifying, here are some issues you’ll need to consider when choosing DVD distribution.

There are two methods for reproducing multiple DVD copies, replication and duplication. Replication is sometimes referred to as manufacturing or stamping. It is the method used to create the copies of Hollywood movies like the ones you get at Blockbuster. They are the most universally compatible copies on both stand-alone players and in PC drives. The downside of replication for most business communicators is that a minimum run for manufactured DVD’s is usually 1000 copies. If you need that many copies, then replication is definitely the way to go. But what if you only need 250?

The choice for smaller quantities is duplication, or burning. At our shop, for example, we have an automated system that produces duplicated DVD’s singly or in quantity in a format known as DVD-R. DVD-R is the most universal of recordable DVD formats which also include DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R DL, and DVD-RAM. Unfortunately there is no 100% guarantee that any of this dizzying array of formats will work in all players, but DVD-R is, at this point in history, the safest choice. The good news is that newer model players accommodate most of the current formats. So as people update their equipment this will become less of a problem.

One other thing to look at if you’re considering DVD distribution. Let’s say your sales force is equipped with laptop computers, and you’ve been sending them materials on CD for several years now. Should you send out your next sales training video on DVD? The answer will depend on whether those laptops actually have DVD drives. CD drives do not play DVD’s (although DVD drives will play CD’s). If your field equipment is limited to CD, you’ll need to create a video CD, not a DVD.

If all of this is enough to make you want to dust off that old VHS deck, give us a call and we’ll help sort it out. And you can save your energy for learning how to work your iPod.