Nice
 

Nice work everyone on your dvd packaging. I'll put mine up too... (sorry for the poor quality) but we do a custom design for each bride. I really like Miraj's... very clean!

I am quite interested in the booklet inside the DVD case, what do you put in those booklet?

This could have been a separate thread but sort of on the same topic...

For disc labels, do you print ON the disc itself? Or print on label stickers and stick them on?

Here are my packaging. Nothing special really.

http://www.estrellaproductions.ca/im...aseoutside.jpg
http://www.estrellaproductions.ca/im...caseinside.jpg

As you might tell, I print on label stickers and stick them on :p (for now)

I print on the disks, and I use the "hubless" disks from Verbatim with great success. I haven't used labels since the labels I used on some CDs actually separated it from the polycarbonate and ruined them. I had a whole spindle of them and virtually destroyed all of them.

Now the construction of DVDs is different than CDs and the danger of this happening is much less, but still...

The look of printed disks is much better and I think offers better protection for the top of the disk than labels will. Some folks will apply a light coat of urethane to seal the ink to the surface and reduce the risk of the ink running, although I haven't tried this myself.

stickers will eventually cause problems. For me, I decided that since the disc is likely to never be thrown away, that it should be made to last as long as possible. That is what I choose Lightscribe (though printable discs was a close second option).

The Taiyo Yuden glossy, water resistant, hub printable discs are my choice. I used to use LightScribe but it was just too difficult to get a good image. Everything that came out was too light, and it took as long to write the label as it did the data.

The Taiyo Yuden discs look nice, even coming out of a so-so printer like my HP C5280 All-In-One. They're archival quality, look great, and they don't have that coarse texture that most inkjet printable DVDs have.

... no, I do not work for that company :)

Oh I completely agree that LS is a royal PITA. If there were a competing product I would get it. I'm also very close to getting a disc printing system specificaly for the ability to print color and do it 10x faster that LS.

Is there a technology (besides Light Scribe) that will allow me to burn a graphical image directly to the top surface of a dvd?

I only know of LS and printable top DVDs.

We use white cd cases from Horizon Media and print the covers on standard photo paper. Our DVD's are verbatim hubless, printables. We have never gotten as creative with our covers as some of you all do. . . consider that idea ripped off now.

"System" sounds expensive. Unless you're going to do a zillion of them right now, a printer might be more cost effective. I've had great luck with the Epson RX595. I beat the snot out of it and no problems.

My idea of a "system" would be a laptop with two printers attached to it. (grin)

Can anyone enlighten me as to how LightScribe prints on the CD? I know you flip it on the same drive after burning, then it prints...but after some reading, I can't find any more information than that. Does it use ink of some sort? Is it expensive to refill?

I'm not fully convinced to get one yet...at approx 30 mins a disc to print, and some people here saying the image isn't as they want it to be, I'm not sure if it's worth it :/

Chris... There's no ink. What little I know of the process, the laser interacts with the "printable" surface of the disk and a chemical(?) reaction happens changing the color where the laser hits.

Although there have been some upgrades in the technology lately, the original technology yielded images that looked like dark gold-ish gray on a lighter gold background. For text only, it works OK. For images, it's rubbish. It's nothing but a duotone image. I think the new technology changes the colors available, but it's still duotone so it's still rubbish.

HP were the first to market the technology. You might want to check their Web site for old press releases and/or technology briefs for more detail information. Or, you can go here.

Thanks for that info. Sounds really interesting...

Having those gold discs would make for a decent wedding disc label. And having LS would sure save some change from constant colour ink refills and sticker labels.

But then again I'm hearing several negative reviews against it here, so I'm still torn! (but that's okay, I still have quite a few sticker labels to last me a while)

Yes the images are essentially monochrome. But they (in my opinion) look pretty classy. The resolution is 600dpi, so full photos print out just fine on them.

The LS discs are not cheap, running about ~$0.70 each (if you buy the largest packs you can find). B&H actually has good prices on LS discs. I also only ever buy DVD-R, and LS DVD-R discs are hard to find. No brick stores carry them. Only online.

And like I said, it can take ~40 minutes to burn at the darkest quality setting. And the system doing the burning is pretty well dedicated to doing only that. No because the process takes up too much CPU time, but for some reason it slows down the system. Probably the crappy drivers.

Unless I have clients asking for full color images on the DVD, I'll probably stick with Lightscribe.