Releasing a commercial DVD - how?
 

I work at an HE college and am lucky enough to have been approached to release a DVD of original material of about an hour's length on the college's own new label. So far they have been interested only in CDs so haven't looked into DVD production but have asked me to look at the process / costs. Now I'm used to making my own DVDs on a computer of course but a commercial release is a whole different business so am pretty ignorant. It will be SD (one film is SD, the other HD so I assume SD is the way to go rather than Blu-ray / HD) and about 500 copies needed.

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to researching this area (I live in the UK)?

Much appreciation in advance

Geoff

I don't know if this is exactly what you are asking, I assume you're not talking about the actual video production,
but actual production of the actual disks, someone correct me if I'm wrong,
you have two options.

Replication and Duplication. You can no doubt find companies that do either, or both.

If the disk is to be commercially released you probably would want to favor replication
as it is a more perminant medium and will cost the least per unit. It also arguably has
better performance/reliability across DVD players. Usually companies won't produce less
than 1000 copies of replicated DVD's tho. (US $0.15 - $0.80 a copy depending on Qty, plus $1-2 for packaging)

Duplication is fine and now days are almost as reliable or just as reliable as replicated.
Used to have problems in some DVD players, but that doesn't seem
to be the case now. I've had hundreds of DVD's duplicated and had great results.
You can do small quantities, but they cost more per unit. You want to have a company
do it tho that has specializes in this tho, You don't want to do it on your machine
with normal foil coated DVD-r's. (US $1.00 - $2.00 a copy plus $1-2 for packaging)

If they are to be sold you will need to include a bar code on the artwork for stores to scan.

My appologies if this wasn't what you were asking.

As far as packaging....the sky's the limit.

Randal that is exactly the sort of advice I needed, many thanks. I'll look into replication to start with as that seems the best quality.