Checking DVD's

[Dave Partington]

I always watch the master DVD all the way through on a TV at a normal viewing distance. A couple of times I've noticed things that I've missed on close up screens during the editing and gone back and fixed it!

I also go through the chapters on the DVD itself (even though I did this on the simulator) to make sure it's good.

Once this is done (and I'm happy with the disc) I read the master in to my duplicator with 'compare master' turned ON. This reads the master and saves the image to the duplicator hard disk, then goes back and re-reads the master again, comparing it to the image on the duplicator HDD. At this point I know I have a good master AND a good disc image on the duplicator.

I send the print image to the duplicator and then write as many discs as I need with full compare turned ON at the same time. The duplicator will write/compare/print the discs automatically, and I know that all the discs coming out are the same as the master disc.

I always place each disc in a player to make sure it spins up and gets as far as the menu.

As an extra step I then grab the disc image from the duplicator (over the network) and this becomes an extra archive copy of the master disc. If I need more copies of this disc after the image has already been deleted then I can simply send the disc image back over the network and it saves the time re-reading the master.

[Hameed Aabid]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Rani
The REAL answer is an enthusiastic wife!! Mine loves watching weddings and will watch newly produced ones from start to finish..the perfect problem checker!!

Chris

My wife is harsh when it comes to checking my work. She just phoned me at work and told me off about my last one... She was like, "You are lucky I am not the bride..." lol

[John Wiley]

I also will watch a copy the entire way through, making changes as I go just as Noa described. The one thing that seems to get me every time is the crossfade between a clip with and without a vignette... I often forget to add the fade to the vignette as well. It's these kinds of very small editing mistakes that the Bride and Groom probably won't even notice and which can't be corrected by any data-verification software that are my biggest concern. Once I know I have the edit perfect, I will skip through all the duplicates to check for disk errors and have only ever found one; a music sync slip which somehow found it's way onto one disk even though the other disks and the original project were fine.

[Bryan Daugherty]

Happily with my current work-flow we have had 100% playback error free. After editing and rendering (Vegas Pro) and then authoring in DVDA, I first check the playback using DVDA's emulator often catching things like highlights that don't act right or button linking/order that is not cooperating. Once everything is fine, I prepare the folder and burn a disc image (ISO) file. I then burn a DVD master to test in a set-top box on the TV. I watch this disc all the way through looking for end actions, burn quality, sync issues etc. If it passes, then I either burn the short-run (3 or less) with data verification checking each disc for readability by the player, or for longer runs, I copy the ISO to the HDD on our 7-target duplicator and duplicate with data verification enabled. I test one disc in each batch on the set-top dvd player just to make sure nothing wonky has happened. The work-flow may border on paranoia but I enjoy watching the master to see the fruits of my labor and the quick test on the random samples gives me piece of mind and something to do while waiting for the next batch to burn...