[Mallrat]

My friend is looking to start a DVD burning business.

He wants to do the following:

1. Straight video to DVD transfer
2. Video to DVD transfer with a menu that indexes scenes selected by the customer
3. Edit video to customer specifications for transfer to DVD

What would you recommend?

First MAC or PC?

A decked out G5 or an eMac, iMac?

DVD Studio Pro 2, iDVD or some PC program?

Should he consider a stand alone option like panasonic offers?


thank you.

[Hydra]

Dual G5, FCE, DVDSP2, DV camcorder w/ built in analog to DV converter or a standalone analog-DV converter and that's about all you need to have a pretty good performing video to DVD conversion studio.

Add an Epson 960 and printable 4x DVD media to print nice professional looking DVD's and your pretty much done soup to nuts. PS wouldn't be a bad idea either.

-Jerry C.

[thePurpleGiant]

Realistically - I'd say that an iMac 17" would be just fine for the task. Max out the RAM to 1GB though.

iDVD is included - which would cover many of his needs for a consumer market. However he should definitely grab DVD Studio Pro 2 also.

Final Cut Express and Photoshop Elements would be the other two pieces of software I would recommend.

I haven't looked at the Panasonic option - so I can't comment.

[CambAngst]

Assuming that your friend is leaning toward a Mac ( ), how stout of a machine he needs really depends on the volume of projects he's hoping to do. iDVD took upwards of 8 hours to encode a half-hour worth of raw DV source into MPEG2 on my old B&W G3 with a 500 MHz G4 upgrade. The same process takes less than half an hour on my new dual 2.0 G5. Adding menus, sounds, effects and transitions to the project also increases the encoding time. Assuming that your friend may not be completely happy with a project until he's tinkered with it a little bit, he may need to encode any given project more than once. If your friend is hoping to do several jobs per week, the iMac might not have the horsepower.

The other thing your friend will want is to get the biggest, fastest hard drive he can. Video projects eat up gigabytes of hard drive space like candy. If he's planning to use external drive, he should be sure that the machine he's getting supports Firewire 800. Here, again, the lack of upgradability in the iMac could pose a problem.

[-Q-]

If he can afford it, I'd recommend a Dual G5 and FCP and DVD Studio Pro. You'll have a lot more flexibility with that software and better able to meet client needs.

Plus, b/c this is a business, the G5 is tax deductable.

[tooki]

Well what's his budget?

I agree -- a dual G5 with DVD Studio Pro and Final Cut Express or Pro is ideal. The dual G5 will significantly reduce the time to compress the video.

But that may not be within budget.

If that's not possible, I'd suggest getting -- gasp! -- a dual G4. They may not sound all ritzy like a g5, but they're so cheap now that the cost-per-unit-of-computing-power is very advantageous.

tooki

[ChrisB]

I do this on a regular basis as a service for my production company. For DIRECT transfers - ie: you don't have to worry about setting chapter points and menus, an actual DVD recording deck - like from Pioneer is a real time option for dubbing to DVD.

For all of your authoring, you will want to use a professional setup - iDVD does not cut it - you will get too much custom stuff unless you specify what options the customer has to choose from.

You will want at least a G4, 512MB of RAM, and around 300GB of HD space to start so you can handle multiple projects at the same time. Final Cut Pro is your option for bringing in and arranging your video. You can use Apple's software based compression to MPEG2 if you want, you can also get hardware based capture tools from Pinnacle Systems as well.

Photoshop is a must for all of your graphical work - itegrates perfectly with DVD Studio Pro - at least version 1.5 is a must.

Make sure you also get a SCSI card and DLT tape backup solution with Retrospect from Dantz. You need to backup your projects - at least a 15/30GB tape drive. Plus, if you ever have to master a DVD for duplication for a large client, must duplicators REQUIRE a DLT tape master, which DVD Studio Pro can write to your DLT tape drive.

As far as media, you will need to use DVD-R media. This is still the most compatible with all set top players, and some duplicators are taking DVD-R General discs for use to make glass masters for duplication, though most are still requiring DLT tape masters.

I hope this helps, message me if you have any other questions.

This type of service is easy, and hard to do. You have to watch your costs and make sure you are charging enough to keep a good profit margin on this type of service. If you don't you can lose a lot of money, and have to eat it on some jobs if you don't quote it right.