understanding dvd authouring

free ur dvd's region

2005-03-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

As a lot of people don't seem to be aware, patching your drive with a region free firmware is only half the trick to be completely region free. For there exists other region counters WITHIN the software (OS, players...) that need to be bypassed. There are actually up to 3 region protections on a system: - 1 in the DVD drive - 1 in the Operating System (windows) - More info on Windows region management. - 1 in the software player (eg. WinDVD, PowerDVD...) When you flash your drive with a region free firmware (RPC-1), you remove the region counter from the drive itself completely, but with this counter gone, the software counters kick in to replace the one from the DVD drive. This means that you still have these other 2 to defeat!!!. An alternate region free solution that is available for some drives is known as an "Autoreset" firmware: Instead of removing the counter from the drive completely, the counter simply resets itself to an unlocked state when the computer is restarted. This way, the drive appears as region protected (RPC-2) but the counter can be changed indefinitely. Creating autoreset patches is slightly more difficult for the patcher, but makes the life of the user easier because DVD Genie and Region Killer are not required as they are for RPC-1 firmwares. On the other hand, it's easy for software manufacturers to detect autoreset firmwares, and if they decide to do so, you will still need a software patch in the long run. This is why RPC-1 firmwares are seen by most as the long term solution. So, unless a program like DISCInfo or Drive Region Info (see the Utilities section on the Homepage) tells you that your drive is still protected or you used an autoreset firmware, your drive IS region free, and any region counters that you still see come from software region settings. To bypass that, you need to use programs such as DVD Genie or DVD Region Killer (the later is highly recommanded). Note: Currently, the only software region free solution when using WinDVD Platinum to play DVD's is WinDVD Tweaker Pro ($18.00 US) xvi has written up an excellent article with even more information here.

understanding dvd authouring

2005-03-01T18:27:00.000-08:00

MPEG-2 video is the heart of DVD. Done right, it yields the kind of delightful clarity we've come to expect from DVD. But when something goes wrong, you can end up with the kind of mess described above. In this first installment of the DVD Nightmares series, we'll give you a little practical MPEG background, discuss some of the most common problems encountered in preparing MPEG video for DVDs, and show you how to avoid them. Everything you see on a DVD goes through the MPEG-2 video encoding process; without it, a disc would hold less than five minutes of video. A little knowledge of how it works will make the rest of this article make more sense. Feel free to skip this section if you already understand codec theory, or if you optimize DCT algorithms for fun! Video is a series of pictures. If you've saved photos as JPEGs before, you already have an idea of the tradeoff between the number of bytes an image takes and its quality. You can compress an image into fewer bytes if you're willing to sacrifice some quality. And some images compress better than others. JPEG and MPEG both spend more bytes on preserving high-contrast edges and lines than on preserving subtle shadings. So, for example, a picture of a simple green leaf will generally compress better that of a rose garden. If you imagine MPEG as being a series of JPEGs, you're halfway there. One frame every half-second or so is an "I-frame", which is pretty similar to a JPEG. However, that technique (technically called "spatial compression") alone would only fit twenty minutes or so of video onto a DVD. So a second technique ("temporal compression") is also used. Temporal compression takes advantage of the fact that most video frames are pretty similar to the frames immediately before and after them. MPEG therefore stores most of its frames ("B" and "P" frames) with just information on what is different, rather than re-encoding everything. As a result, MPEG is more efficient with video containing modest motion and change, such as a conversation - and less efficient on rapid motion, such as a close shot of a soccer match. And efficiency is what it's all about. The more efficient the encode is, the better quality you will achieve in a given number of bytes. And while a DVD seems big, there are still only a finite number of bits to store your video. The more you need to put on the disc, the few bits per second ("bitrate") you can afford.
I spent weeks editing my 4-hour masterpiece, "Shakespeare in Space". But now that it's on DVD-R, I can barely tell Mercutio from his Wookie sidekick! The MPEG format is an effective way to store digital video, but it isn't perfect. Ultimately, it all comes down to how many minutes of footage you need to fit onto your disc. The more you need to squeeze in, the harder the encoder has to work to maintain quality.
As a rough rule of thumb, it's trivial to get 30 minutes onto a disc, and pretty easy to get 60. At 90 minutes the encoder is definitely starting to break a sweat, and only the best can get 120 minutes onto a disc and keep the quality up. It's possible with the right tools and content to get 180 minutes onto a disc, but you're well into the realm of compromise at that point. If you care about your video quality, you need to have realistic expectations about how much you're putting on your disc.
If you need to put an especially large amount of content on your disc, you might consider using MPEG-1 video or half-D1 MPEG-2. Both of these formats are significantly lower resolution than full MPEG-2, in exchange for storing 2-4 times as much video. Keep in mind, though, that many authoring tools don't support these options. Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD Author, DVD Authoring & Production These numbers all assume you're making the most common size of disc: a single-sided single-layer DVD-5, or DVD-R. DVD-9 holds nearly twice as much, so you can almost double the numbers above if you're using that format. DVD-9 has its own nightmares, though, and we'll talk about those in a later chapter. As you've seen in the previous section, MPEG has an easier time with some types of material than others. The figures above address "typical" video; all else being equal, an interview is less demanding than the typical music video or action film. Keep in mind that your disc holds audio as well. The more bytes your audio takes, the fewer there are left for video. As a result, audio compression (or lack thereof) can have an important impact on your video. But we'll get to that next week.
Okay, I cut out the guitar solo. Now it's down to 97 minutes, and I gave it one more run through the software that came with my wireless videocam. Still looks pretty bad! There is no single "right way" to encode a given video, so the challenge of the clever people who write MPEG encoders is to keep finding better solutions. They've been doing a good job. By some estimates, today's best tools are almost twice as efficient as those available when DVD Video was first defined. And not surprisingly, some of today's tools are substantially better than others. First thing to be aware of: if you're running older software, you're at a disadvantage. Apple's MPEG2 encoder, for example, has been dramatically improved in the last year.
One feature every MPEG encoder should support is two-pass VBR (Variable BitRate) encoding. This advanced encoding technique does extra analysis of your content, and then allocates more bits to the most challenging parts. It takes longer than single-pass encoding, but when you're trying to put more than an hour's worth of video on a disc, it can make a big difference. Ben Waggoner, Author, Compression for Great Digital Video The single most important quality of an MPEG encoder is its ability to maintain quality at a given bitrate. At the highest bitrates (around 9 megabits per second), most encoders look good. Even then, some may be more faithful to your film than others. And if you need to get more than about an hour on your disc, the encoders have to start working harder. Also important is how quickly it can crunch your movie. Hardware encoders often have an advantage here, typically running in realtime, but recently software has been catching up and in some cases going even faster. There's little truth in the widespread belief that hardware encoders are always better than software; there's nothing magic about silicon -- they're all running algorithms, and some are simply better (or faster) than others. To some degree, you get what you pay for. If you're not happy with the quality you're getting from free software that "came in the box", you should seriously consider upgrading. There are a range of DVD authoring/encoding choices on Windows which support the reccomendations of this series. They include Adobe Encore, Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5, Ulead DVD Workshop 2, and Sonic MyDVD Deluxe. Dedicated encoders such as Canopus ProCoder and Cinema Craft generally offer more control and may yield better quality in the more challenging cases. With ProCoder, make sure to upgrade to version 2, and use the "CustomFlix DVD" preset as a starting point. On the Mac, DVD Studio Pro 2's Compressor does a good job. The same cannot be said for version 1; if you're still using that -- upgrade! iDVD 4 is also a good tool, though it's really only suited to shorter projects. If you're looking for more control in your quest for video perfection, BitVice is worth trying.
Wow, that made a difference! But I'm still seeing this weird color flicker on the Dark Wombat's grey checkered cape, and... Your MPEG encoder can only work with what it's given. It's up to you to give it the purest signal possible. That's largely influenced by the type of videotapes you're working with. If you're working with DV (MiniDV, DVCAM, Digital8) then the good news is that your footage is already in a digital format, and it's relatively easy to get it into your computer. You just hook up your camera or deck to your computer with a FireWire / 1394 / iLink cable (they're all the same thing!) Capture it with your editing program of choice, maintaining the DV format for editing. Do not use an analog capture solution for DV footage -- doing so results in an unnecessary conversion of the digital data to analog and back again, losing quality at both stages. Higher-end digital formats (Digibeta, etc.) are generally best captured via SDI to preserve their full quality. If your capture solution doesn't support SDI, you are probably better off with a high-quality component analog capture, rather than using DV. This is because of a poorly thought out difference between the DV and NTSC DVD video formats, which loses half of the available color resolution. This tends to show up most prominently as fringing around bright red objects. If you are working with MiniDV sources... well, there's nothing you can do, so don't worry about it! Analog formats (BetaSP, etc.) require an analog capture solution such as the Aja Io, or an analog-to-DV converter such as the Canopus ADVC100. Many DV cameras will also provide analog to DV conversion. If your budget allows, you're better off with a high-quality analog capture solution, to avoid the color limitation mentioned above. Use component video connections if possible, to preserve the color fidelity. You generally want to capture at the highest quality (bitrate) supported, with a high-quality capture system. Skimping on disk space here means your video is already suffering from over-compression before it even gets to the MPEG codec. Avoid format conversions wherever possible. Each one loses a little bit of quality. Edit in the same format you capture. When you're done editing, export the final file in the same format without recompression, or as a QuickTime reference file if possible.
For more information on getting the most out of MPEG and other compression systems, we recommend Ben Waggoner's book, Compression for Great Digital Video. If you'd like your video encoded by some of the guys who wrote these guidelines, stop by CustomFlix.com, and order a Pro DVD Transfer. They can author your disc for you, or just handle the audio & video encoding.

It's called DVD Video. But odds are pretty good you want audio in there, too. The good news is, the DVD Video format offers better support for audio than CDs do. But DVD is a much more complex format than CD, and there are a few things you should know to stay out of trouble. I don't get it! I used MPEG audio on my disc, and DVDs are all about MPEG, right? So how did I end up with 2,000 silent discs?? The DVD Video specification clearly states that all players must support MPEG-2 (and MPEG-1) video. For audio there are three standard formats: MPEG layer 2, PCM, and Dolby Digital. For NTSC players, MPEG layer 2 is an optional format, and therefore some players don't support it. If you play your disc on one of those systems, you're going to hear silence. Not good. The only way to make a disc which is guaranteed to play properly is to use PCM or Dolby Digital audio. Well, I tried again, choosing PCM this time. I'm getting audio on the conference room DVD player, which is a relief! But for some reason I can't get the "History of Cheese" special feature to fit on the disc any more. PCM stands for "pulse code modulation", which is engineer-speak for uncompressed audio. This is the same format used in CD audio. It's also the simplest, so it's supported by nearly all authoring tools. Since there is no compression, there are no audio compromises. In fact, with a sampling rate of 48 kiloHertz, it offers higher audio fidelity than CD Audio. As a result, PCM audio tends to be used on some musically oriented titles. However, the lack of compression means that PCM audio takes a lot of space: 1.5 megabits per second, or almost 700 megabytes per hour. That wouldn't be an issue, except that you're also trying to get video on there -- and video needs all the bits it can get. In next week's Nightmare we'll talk about bit budgeting in more detail, but in general you're better off using fewer bytes for audio and more for video. Which means... Okay, so it's down to Dolby Digital then. So how does that work? Dolby Digital (also known by its code name, "AC3") uses sophisticated compression techniques to squeeze audio to a fraction of its size. It's actually a better audio codec than MP3. Most people won't be able to hear any difference between a properly done Dolby Digital track and the uncompressed original. There are a number of parameters to fine-tune, but you can generally leave most of them at their defaults. There are two that matter most: number of channels, and bitrate. Make sure to check your authoring tools before you start your project, to make sure they support Dolby Digital. If not, consider upgrading. Windows-based tools with this feature include Adobe Encore, Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5, Ulead DVD Workshop 2, and Sonic MyDVD Deluxe. On the Macintosh, DVD Studio Pro 2's A.Pack does the job. The majority of non-Hollywood discs have a stereo soundtrack, or "2.0 channels" in Dolby-talk. When encoding stereo audio in Dolby Digital, we generally recommend 192 kilobits per second (kbps). Going much lower starts to reduce your quality without much benefit. If you want to be conservative on a musically oriented piece, there may be some benefit to 256 kbps; beyond that, you're facing diminishing returns. Dolby Digital also supports 5.1 channel surround sound: a pair of front speaker, a center speaker, two rear speakers, and a subwoofer. This is a more advanced use of the format, and generally best suited to higher-end titles. The final option is DTS -- think of it as Dolby Digital's big brother. DTS is generally only used on very high-end titles. It's an optional format for players, so DTS tracks can only be used as an alternative on a disc which already has PCM or Dolby Digital. DTS encoding almost always requires a dedicated encoder such as Minetonka's SurCode. Hmmm. Everything's pretty good now, but the audio is a little fuzzy. Was it the compression? Probably not. If you've followed the guidelines above, you should have audio that's nearly identical to your source. However, there is another little detail to beware of. DVDs sample audio at 48 kiloHertz, which provides for a slightly wider frequency response than CDs' 44.1 kHz. All well and good -- except that 44.1 kHz was so commonly used for audio that some tools get a bit careless when converting to 48 kHz. When creating or capturing new assets, try to start off with 48 kHz. For example, if shooting DV make sure your camera is set to 48kHz instead of 32kHz if possible. Otherwise you're not taking full advantage of the audio capabilities. If you have 44kHz assets, convert them to 48kHz as early in the process as possible, and stick with 48kHz from that point on. Extra conversions are just another way to lose quality. "There are some older DVD players as well as audio receivers that can take up to two seconds to "lock" onto the audio stream. With this older equipment it is possible not to hear the first 1-2 seconds of audio on a new track. To play it safe, make sure that the first two seconds of audio on any track is silent." - Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author of DVD Authoring & Production I've got my disc sounding great, so I decided to celebrate by taking a break and watching the directors cut of my favorite movie, "Long Kiss Goodnight". Wierd, I don't remember it being so loud! Ideally, all discs should play at the same volume: conversations comfortable to listen to, whispers quieter but still audible, and explosions impressive but bearable. This requires your audio to not only sound good, but to have the right volume level. In general, you want to adjust the volume of your audio track until the peak volume of a typical section is -6dB. The loudest points on the disc may go higher than that, but of course since it's digital audio you never want to quite reach 0dB or you'll hear some very unpleasant clipping. One approach is to normalize the audio, so that the loudest peaks are at 0dB. Then reduce the volume (never raising it) until a typical section peaks at -6dB. If those peaks are already below -6dB before you start changing the volume, then you may consider using an audio compressor to reduce the dynamic range. This is an artistic decision, and depends on the content. An interview typically has a fairly narrow dynamic range, while action films with explosions have a wider range. Used properly, rises and dips in the volume can be an effective tool adding emotional impact. If overdone, it can just be annoying. Most professional video editing tools, such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, or Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5, will provide the features mentioned above. "Just as you should preview your DVD video on an external television monitor, also preview your audio and levels. Check the speaker volume to set it to a reference point when you preview your DVDs. It's also a good idea to compare your DVD audio to sample commercial discs." - Doug Dixon, Manifest Tech, Author of Desktop DVD Authoring 1. Use Dolby Digital (at 192kbps for stereo audio) if possible, PCM otherwise 2. Convert or create all assets at 48kHz at the beginning of your project, and avoid any conversions back to 44.1 kHz 3. Adjust your audio levels so that a typical section peaks at -6dB, and it never reaches 0db Jay Rose's audio column at DV Magazine is a great place to learn more about digital audio. If you'd like your audio prepared by some of the guys who wrote these guidelines, stop by CustomFlix.com, and order a Pro DVD Transfer. They can author your disc for you, or just handle the audio & video encoding.

Set your MPEG bitrates too high, and your video won't fit on the disc. Set it too low, and it isn't pretty. So how do you figure out the magic number? A number of tools automatically calculate the bitrate for you. But their defaults may not always be ideal, especially if you're going to be delivering your project on DVD-R. Others require you to figure it out yourself. We've provided an extremely easy-to-use bitrate calculator for subscribers to this series. You don't actually have the read this rest of this article to use the calculator... but it's worth understanding how it works, and you're likely to come back to this installment if you run into questions about the numbers. DVD is a digital medium. That means everything is stored in bytes. And a disc can only store a certain number of bytes before it's full. So it's important to avoid trying to put too many bytes on the disc. When a disc is played, those bytes are turned back into audio and video (among other things). To some degree the more bytes played back per second, the higher the quality. So it's important to avoid putting too few bytes on the disc. As you can see, it's a balancing act. Making sure that the numbers work out is called bit budgeting. And as with any budget, the first step is understanding how much you have to "spend". These DVD-Rs have "4.7GB" printed right on the side of them. But when I tried to burn one with that much data, it wouldn't fit. What's up? A billion bytes is of course 1,000,000,000 -- sometimes written as 1gB (note the lowercase "g"). However, computers use powers of two to represent large numbers, and a Gigabyte or "GB" (note the uppercase G) is 2^30, or 1,073,741,824 bytes. DVD-5 is commonly stated as having "4.7 GB" of capacity, but strictly speaking that is incorrect. The exact number is 4,699,979,766 bytes. While that is approximately 4.7 billion bytes, it is actually 4.377 Gigabytes. We'll do our math in billions rather than "Gigas" to avoid this confusion. DVD-5 and standard recordable DVDs (DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW) hold the same 4.7 billion bytes. Other formats hold more, as shown below. DVD-9: 8.54 billion bytes DVD-10: 4.7 billion bytes per side, or 9.4 billion bytes total DVD-18: 8.54 billion bytes per side, or 17.08 billion bytes total Dual-layer recordable discs are just now becoming available, and are equivalent in capacity to a DVD-9. Dual-sided recordable discs are equivalent to a DVD-10 (and also like a DVD-10, require the user to flip them over halfway through.) While it would seem desirable to use every last byte on the disc, you probably want to avoid that for several reasons. 1. It's not realistic to budget that tightly: you'd need to know the exact size of every file, which would take painstaking calculation and may not be entirely certain. Allowing a 1% safety margin avoids that, and covers non-motion menus and navigation overhead for simple projects. 2. The outer rim of the disc is the most unreliable area. In manufacturing, the majority of errors occur on the outer edge of the disc. Since DVDs are written starting in the center, the more data on the disc the closer you get to the outer edge. By allowing an additional 2% safety margin, you avoid putting data near the rim, and thus avoid production problems. 3. Speaking from experience, things will go smoother if you leave some extra room in your budget. In theory, you know how much audio and video you've got. But what if that 30-minute tape turns out to actually have 31 minutes of video? Or a 15-second trailer needs to get tacked on at the last minute? Allowing an additional 3% safety margin minimizes the odds of having to go back and re-encode everything to make room for these sorts of last-minute surprises. Adding these up, it's a good practice to leave about an 5% safety margin. So on a DVD-5 (or DVD-R) with 4.7 billion bytes, do your budgeting assuming you have 4.46 billion bytes. There are limits not only to how much data you should put on a disc, but also to how fast that data should be played back. The DVD specification states that players must accommodate up to a maximum of 10.08 mbps (million bits of data per second). This means that your audio and video (and subtitles, if any) must add up to no more than that number. However, many DVD-equipped computers don't do a very good of handling discs which are running at that limit, so 8.0 mbps is a safer maximum. In a similar vein, DVD-R and DVD+R media is subtly different from replicated media, so some players may have a harder time playing duplicated discs. By sticking to an even lower maximum bitrate of 6.5 mbps, you're giving the player the chance to re-read some sectors if needed without interrupting the video. This provides similar benefits for scratched or dirty discs, making them a bit more likely to continue playing correctly. Everything you put on the disc takes up bytes, whether it's audio, video, menus, slides, or other contents. Unless you have a lot of motion menus, or a lot of extra DVD-ROM content, though, 99% of your storage will be used by your audio and video tracks. Audio. From the previous installment, you'll recall we recommend Dolby Digital audio at 192kbps (0.192 mbps) for stereo. That saves you more than a million bits per second over using 1.5 mbps PCM, allowing higher video quality and capacity on your disc. Video. In general, you want to use the highest possible bitrate for your video given the capacity of your disc an the total duration of video that will be stored (including motion menus). The video bitrate is the main thing you need to figure out for each project. Everything Else. Feel free to ignore non-motion menus and navigation (remember, we have a 1% safety margin to cover that). Add up the number of bytes for anything else on the disc, such as PDF files. Make sure you're adding up the exact number of bytes, not the less accurate number of Megabytes or Gigabytes. "People often forget to take motion menus into account in their bit budgets. And if you're using DVD Studio Pro, keep in mind that it will make multiple copies of all menus, one for each language defined in the project, which can also skew things if you don't know to account for it." - Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author of DVD Authoring & Production The total number of bits per second, times the number of seconds, is the number of bits you're storing. Given, that, here is one way to calculate a video bitrate: (((disc capacity in bits * 92%) - (# bytes of "everything else" * 8)) / total video duration in seconds) - audio bitrate in mbps So for example, a DVD-5 with 110 total minutes of video, and 192 kbps Dolby Digital audio: = ((34,591,851,078 bits - 0) / 6600 seconds) - 0.192 mbps audio = 5.05 mbps video That's the average bitrate at which we want to encode the video. If it's higher than the safe maximums (6.5 or 8.0 mbps, from "speed limits" above) then reduce it to that maximum bitrate. You probably won't want to do these kind of calculations by hand all the time. So we've provided a simple calculator online, at http://CustomFlix.com/bitbudget . This calculator takes into account everything we've discussed so far, and works for simple or intermediate projects. Once you know the bitrate you're working at, there's another important decision for encoding the video: whether to use Constant Bitrate (CBR) or Variable BitRate (VBR). Remember we said that some things are easier to compress than others? If you were to chop up your movie into second-long pieces, you'd find that it's true on that timescale as well. CBR takes a simple, consistent approach: each second gets the same number of bits: the "average bitrate" we calculated above. VBR is a more sophisticated approach, which attempts to save bits from the easy sections, in order to have more bits to encode the harder sections. 2-pass VBR gets even more sophisticated, looking through the entire file beforehand to more accurately assess which parts are hard or easy. In short, 2-pass VBR gives the best results in some cases, but encoding this way takes longer. Even with VBR, you don't want to exceed the safe maximum bitrates (6.5 or 8.0 mbps) mentioned in "speed limits", above. In general, you will benefit from using VBR video if your maximum bitrate (see "speed limits" above) exceeds your average bitrate (from "the math" above) by about 1mbps or more. Otherwise, CBR will work just as well. 1. Remember that a Gigabyte isn't quite the same as a billion bytes 2. Only budget for 95% of the available capacity 3. Don't exceed 8.0 mbps for replicated discs (DVD-5), 6.5 mbps for duplicated (DVD-R) 4. Use the calculator at http://newzealand.mail.everyone.net/email/scripts/BitBudget.jsp For a calculator which handles complex projects, we recommend Bruce Nazarian's Recipe4DVD site. Jim Taylor's DVD Demystified provides far more detail on this and other parts of the DVD specification.

Menus are one of the best advances of the DVD format. Back in the bad old days of VHS there was no good way to navigate between multiple features on the same tape, access chapters, and all the rest we take for granted. Done right, they're a key part of the DVD experience. But there are a few things you've got to keep in mind to do them right. Most televisions are "interlaced" displays. Each menu is a single frame, but it's really composed of two fields of video which alternate sixty times per second. The first field makes up the odd lines of the image; the second makes up the even lines. This made a whole lot more sense back in the 50's than it does today, and we'll explain this in more detail in the "Fatal Flicker" chapter. The main thing this means for menus is that it's easy to end up with flicker when you don't want it. The best approach is to keep in mind some limitations as you design your menu graphics. Remember that you are creating a DVD menu for television playback, and that's where it needs to look its best. The main things you're trying to avoid are thin horizontal lines, and sharp high-contrast horizontal edges. As a rule, always design horizontal lines at least four pixels thick, and choose a bold sans-serif typeface font. Additionally, all graphic elements should be anti-aliased or blended, rather than have sharp edges. If you have already completed graphics and found them to flicker too badly, there's still hope. Take your design work into an image editing program, and apply a directional blur to it. For example, in Adobe Photoshop, use the "motion blur" filter with a setting of 0.5 on the 0 degree (straight-up) axis. You can also apply this selectively to troublesome sections of the menu if you want to preserve as much sharpness as possible elsewhere. The idea here is that we can soften the hard contrast transition of your menu elements by only blurring it in the vertical direction. With the right amount of blur, sharp narrow pixel lines will become wider and softer, narrow font tails will become less distinct, and less subject to flicker. Whoa! It looked great when I tried it, but now the client is calling and telling me that she can't see the play button?! What happened? Here's another difference between computer monitors and televisions that can get you in trouble. A computer expects every pixel on the screen to be visible, with (generally) a small black border around the edges. A television, on the other hand, is designed to maximize the image and minimize the border -- and will commonly push part of the image "over the edge" to get full coverage. Because of this, you cannot count on the outermost 10% or so of the menu being visible on all televisions. That means you have to keep all critical visual elements (text, buttons, etc.) to the safe area in the center of the image. You can ensure this by using a DVD menu template, or using the "safe zone" overlay feature of authoring tools like DVD Studio Pro, Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Ulead DVD Workshop 2, or Sonic MyDVD Deluxe. As always, testing your disc on real televisions is an important part of verifying it will look good after it leaves your desktop. But keep in mind that some televisions show more than others, so the only way to be sure is to keep everything critical inside the title safe area. The menu looked fine when I put together the menu in Photoshop, but somehow everyone seems to have gotten skinny on the television. Is this some kind of magical weight-loss technology at work? DVD menus are stored at 720 x 480 pixels, just as the video is. However, menus are generally viewed on standard 4:3 televisions. Because of this, the pixels have to be stretched a bit, and rather than being square they end up a bit taller and thinner. So if you use Photoshop to design 720 x 480 menu with circles on it, and then bring it into your DVD authoring program, the circles will end up skinnier than you might have imagined. The simplest solution for this is to do all your design work at 720 x 540, and then scale it to 720x480 as the very last step before importing it into your authoring application. (Many authoring applications can do the scaling for you, but some of them do a pretty lousy job.) Don't worry when you see it get shorter: anything which looked square when you laid it out will still look square when it ends up on television. "And yet another computer-versus-TV difference: NTSC televisions do not support the same colors as a computer monitor does. Pure black and pure white are not supported and vibrant reds will look terrible. Photoshop has a nice NTSC Color Safe filter that can correct these issues. Apply it as a last step when saving your menu graphics." Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author of DVD Authoring & Production I put almost an hour of outtakes and interviews on the disc, but nobody knows they're there! When designing your menus, step back periodically and try to look at them through the eyes of someone who's seeing your project for the first time. They don't know what's on the disc, and in many cases they're not willing to spend more than a few seconds figuring it out. If it takes more than a few seconds to get to the main feature, they're frustrated. First rule: putting the disc in and pressing Play should play the primary content of the disc. It's that simple. Try this with your DVD; if it doesn't work, redesign your menus until it does. Second rule: don't clutter your menus. Too many buttons makes for confusion, and it also means that the buttons are going to be small. You generally don't want to use anything smaller than about 18 point fonts. Once that works, make sure the rest of the content is easy to get to. Even the big Hollywood titles can get this wrong, as anyone who's hunted for the special features on Harry Potter has experienced. "Watch commercial movies on DVD to learn the common menu and navigation conventions that your viewers have learned to expect and use. Especially when you are designing for a mass audience, or for business users, follow these conventions in order to provide easy access for your viewers. Of course, you can get more creative with the possibilities of the DVD specification when you are designing edgier discs for more niche audiences." Doug Dixon, Manifest Tech, Author of Desktop DVD Authoring Of course it played Part 1. It's green, so it's selected, right? And Part 2's red, so it's not selected. Oh, wait, should it be the other way 'round? You've got a lot of flexibility in how you design your buttons and highlights. That's a good thing. Mostly. But it's awfully easy to make the highlights confusing. It's often not as bad when there are several buttons on the screen at once: the one that looks different is selected. But how about when there are only two? A little more confusing? Try to make it clear which one is selected, by having it outlined, underlined, or noticeably brighter than the other. (But again, don't use a single-pixel-wide underline unless you want obnoxious flickering.) Also keep in mind that there are two different ways to do button highlights on a DVD menu. The first technique uses overlays with a limited number of colors; the second uses more flexible graphics and allows for any highlight effect you want. While the second approach is flashier, you'll noticed it's not used much on Hollywood discs. The reason is pretty simple. To achieve the effect, the DVD player has to actually load a different menu each time you highlight a different button -- and that can take up to a second. This can make the simple act of going through a list of chapters into obnoxious drudgery. Because of this, you'll usually want to use the simpler overlay approach. Speaking of buttons, make sure to test the up/down/left/right navigation of all your buttons carefully. Most authoring tools will assign default behavior to each button, so that pressing "down" moves the highlight to the button physically below for example, and that's the right behavior most of the time. But most discs have a few cases where that's not what you actually want it to do, and it only takes one of those to make for a frustrating user experience. So once everything else is completely finished with your disc, give it one more careful pass through all the menus, and make sure that you always end up where you expect when you use the direction keys on your remote. 1. Keep text and critical graphics inside the title safe zone 2. Design menus at 720x540, not 720x480, to avoid distortion; but scale to 720x480 before importing into authoring program 3. Resist making overly complex menus, or using too many buttons per menu 4. Carefully test the up/down/left/right behavior of all buttons; adjust as needed

The DVD format supports playback in two aspect ratios. 4:3 or "fullscreen" is the traditional television ratio, and what most cameras shoot by default. 16:9 or "widescreen" is a wider image, closer to theatrical dimension, and the new standard for high-definition television. You might expect that widescreen video would require more pixels, but it generally doesn't. Instead it's stored "anamorphically", squeezed narrower while it's stored on disc and then stretched back out again at playback time. In the bad old days that was done with lenses; now it's done with narrow pixels. There are several ways to shoot widescreen video. You can use a camera such as the Canon GL-2 which has an electronic widescreen mode; this it the simplest approach. You can use an anamorphic lens (here's one example); this is the highest quality approach. Or you can shoot 4:3 video, and crop it in your editing application; this approach gives you the most flexibility during post-production. Of course, you may want to work with an even wider format, such as 2.35 : 1. The Letterbox/Widescreen Advocacy Page offers a good list of some of the historical formats used in theatrical films. When it comes to DVD, these wider-screen versions are generally stored in 16:9 anamorphic format, with black mattes above and below ("letterboxed"). I want to share my vision in glorious widescreen. But Marketing tells me that the majority of my audience will see it on a boring old 4:3 television. What do I do? Films can be either widescreen (16:9) or fullscreen (4:3). And so can televisions (or projection systems). This is fine when you're playing a widescreen film on a widescreen televisons, or fullscreen film on fullscreen televisions. Of course, if you're playing a widescreen film on a fullscreen television, you get those annoying black "letterbox" bars at top and bottom. And similar bars at left and right if you play a fullscreen film on a widescreen television. To avoid this, many widescreen films are available in a fullscreen version as well. It is possible to create a disc with widescreen content specially prepared to automatically play back properly ("pan & scan") on fullscreen televisions, but in practice the existing tools don't support this well. To make it more challenging, this requires the customer's DVD player to be properly configured, which is not always the case. If your content is short enough, it is also possible to make a single disc which contains both widescreen and fullscreen versions. Authoring this can be a bit tricky, and again it may misbehave if the customer's DVD player isn't properly set up. The safest solution, which is often used by Hollywood titles, is to offer a dual-sided disc, or two separate discs. Of course, that can mean you need twice as much inventory. Of course, if you're selling your DVDs on-demand, you can offer multiple versions without having to pay for inventory up-front or worry about how many of each to order. To find out more about how on-demand DVDs work, visit CustomFlix or stay tuned for the upcoming chapter 8, "Drowning in Discs". I don't believe it! It played fine on one television, but not on another. This is starting to seem like one of those bad recurring dreams. There are "flags" on a DVD which mark video as either fullscreen or anamorphic widescreen. Actually, just to make it interesting, there are two somewhat redundant flags. The disc directory contains one, which is set by your authoring software. The other flag is stored in the MPEG file itself, and may or may not be set by your authoring software. Always make sure to tell your authoring application when you're working with anamorphic video. And if you're encoding your MPEG files in a separate encoder, make sure to specify the anamorphic flag there as well when you're working with 16:9 content. If you need to change the anamorphic flag on an MPEG you've already encoded, the MPEG Append suite of tools comes in extremely handy. Arrgh! The video is perfect... but the menus were all designed for fullscreen. Now they're being stretched horribly on widescreen televisions. If you are doing separate widescreen and fullscreen versions of your disc, you should give each of them appropriate menus. Design any fullscreen menu graphics at 720x540, and widescreen menu graphics at 960x540, and scale both of them both to 720x480 for authoring. Make sure to set the anamorphic flag on the widescreen menus. "Newer tools including Photoshop CS and Encore DVD understand aspect ratio as an attribute of PSD files, and can scale on square-pixel computer monitors to compensate." - Doug Dixon, Manifest Tech, Author of Desktop DVD Authoring If you are mixing both versions on a single-sided disc, the first menu should be fullscreen, as that is the most common playback environment. Fullscreen menus don't look horrible on a widescreen television, and after that point everything can be in widescreen. If you're working with an authoring tool like DVD Studio Pro or Sonic Scenarist which supports scripting, it is possible to detect what size screen is being used at playback time and do this automatically. Of course, there's always the risk the customer has their DVD player configured wrong... the advantage of doing seperate discs (or sides) for the different formats is that it isn't vulnerable to that problem. "When working with 16x9 and 4x3 menus you need to create two different overlay graphics, one for each display mode. The number of buttons is also reduced to a maximum of 18, instead of the 36 normally supported. If the authoring tool supports the use of PhotoShop files as menus, this will all be done in the PSD file, but many authoring tools can't use PSD files, so you'll have to generate one background graphic and two overlay graphics for each menu." - Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author: DVD Authoring & Production As you can tell, things are a bit more complicated when you're working with widescreen video. The results can be worth it - if you can deliver a reliable product. Once again, the key is testing. At a minimum, you should test each disc on one set-top DVD player connected to a widescreen television, and another connected to a fullscreen television. In addition, test them in a computer DVD player. 1. If you are creating anamorphic content, make sure to indicate this to both your DVD authoring program and your MPEG encoder. 2. Don't just supply a widescreen version; you'll want fullscreen as well. 2. Make widescreen and fullscreen menus to match your video. 3. Test on multiple televisions, both widescreen and fullscreen.

No matter how many discs you've authored, there is always a feeling of relief when the final disc is approved by your client. The best line of defense against delivering an unplayable disc is to thoroughly test your final DVD, then package and handle it properly. Let's face it - by the time you're done authoring and testing your DVD, you will have seen it so many times that you'll be sick of it. It's hard to be rigorously test a DVD you've watched many different versions, since you tend to skip past parts that worked correctly in a previous iteration, such as menu navigation. Don't fall into this trap - while it's fine to spot check changes, any final disc must be tested completely, from top to bottom, to ensure there are no nasty, last minute surprises. To help you reliably test your discs, you should make a test plan. As a starting point for a test plan, we recommend you check the following: 1. Menu navigation: Does each and every button highlight when selected and take you to the correct sub-menu or video point? Can you get back to previous menus? Do your remote buttons (including Menu, Title Menu, Return) do what they are supposed to do? Do all chapters and titles jump to the right place? 2. Video: Does the video play smoothly and have good audio sync? Do you see any drop outs or noticeable macro blocking? Watch every single second of the video on the final disc before you consider it done. This takes a long time, but ensures a good result. 3. Audio: Does the audio sound good and have comparable levels to commercial DVDs? Is it stereo? Have you made sure it's not MPEG layer-2 audio (which some players don't support)? "Here is a sample Quality Assurance Form for a DVD-Video title. As you can see this form provides line items for each major element of a DVD-Video title, as well as signature blocks for approving the design and implementation of the title. It is a good idea to have the content owner, or your customer, approve the final QA Form so that if there are changes, or problems during the replication process you are not required to pay for any spoiled or non-working production discs." - Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author: DVD Authoring & Production The key to good testing is to check your DVD in the exact same way that your viewers will watch it. For the vast majority of discs, that means testing it on a set-top DVD player hooked up to a standard television set. Testing on computers has its place (more on that below), but you haven't really tested a disc until you've checked it on an actual DVD player and TV. Because TVs are interlaced and computer monitors are progressive, the video and menus will look different on a television vs. your PC. Pay particular attention to menu flicker from narrow horizontal lines or very fine details. Check the motion video quality: field dominance problems are often harder to see on a computer. And watch the edges to make sure nothing is drifting offscreen out of the safe zone. If you have problems with video stuttering on an old player, it may not necessarily mean you have a problem. Some older players don't like DVD-R media, which is often seen as periodic pauses or stutters. But if your DVD doesn't play properly on at least two different, new, highly rated players, you've got a problem. See our Compatibility Chart for a list of player recommendations. If in doubt, test more. "All DVD players are not created equal! This means that some players, especially older units, may have trouble playing DVD-R media reliably, or will have trouble with MPEG layer 2 audio. I strongly recommend that you test your disc on at least three different set top DVD players. Ideally, these should all be different brands. Running the same test on three identical players is a waste of time." - Doug Dixon, Manifest Tech, Author of Desktop DVD Authoring Because you're authoring your DVD on a computer, it's common to also do your initial testing on your computer. There are many DVD player software packages available, and some are more accurate than others. Many authoring programs also offer a simulation mode that lets you preview the DVD before you burn the final disc. This is a useful preview, but should not be trusted to faithfully represent the final DVD in all details. To be positive you have a good disc, you must burn a DVD-R and test it on an actual set-top player. Some DVDs are intended to be used in a computer, such as instructional videos. If this is the case, you should run through your complete test plan on your computer as well as on a set-top player. You should test your DVD on both Windows and Mac computers with the default DVD player software to ensure it will work for a wide range of viewers. If you recommend a particular DVD player to your viewers, thoroughly test your disc with that player as well. If you are creating a hybrid DVD which contains data files as well as video, you should make certain that you can properly access the data on both Windows and Mac computers. Check to make sure there aren't any extra files on your disc as well (some older versions of authoring programs actually added copies of your desktop files to the data portion of your DVD!) As mentioned in the previous chapters, there are several mistakes you can make which will render your final DVD unplayable. Please review these chapters to make sure you understand audio formats, bit rates, and MPEG encoding options. Even if you've produced a perfectly good DVD image on your computer, you can easily burn a bad disc, label it in such a way as to cause problems, or damage the final DVD. To avoid this: Use only high quality media. Cheap, unbranded media is often of questionable quality and may not play reliably. Saving a few dollars isn't worth the headache of unplayable discs. Some good choices are: Mitsui (now called MAM-A), Maxell, Verbatim, and Ritek (G04 or later; their earlier discs were less reliable). Verify each copy. During the burning process, make sure to turn on the verification pass as well. Even high-quality media occasionally fails on a burn, and the verification cycle catches these errors. Check data integrity. If you have a disc that you think may be damaged, a good way to check to see if the data is intact is to put it into a computer and copy the entire disc to the hard drive. Your computer requires each bit of data to be readable and verified during this copy process, so if there is a physical glitch in the DVD, this will make the computer stop and tell you that it couldn't copy the disc. Burn a new disc and toss the damaged one. If you are replicating your DVD, make sure to request a check disc before the final run is produced. There is nothing worse than finding a problem after thousands of discs have been replicated. This is particularly important with DVD-9 projects as a check disc is the only reliable way of testing the layer break. (We'll talk more about DVD-9 in tomorrow's chapter.) "Do not use adhesive labels. Labels add weight to the discs that frequently causes playback problems. Most importantly, they can disturb the balance of the disc, and cause erratic tracking, making the laser mis-read the data. Drive manufacturers specifically recommend avoiding labels entirely. For best results, you should print directly on to the disc faces with a dedicated inkjet or thermal printer. For masters being sent to replication, simply writing on the face (or hub) with a permanent marker is better than a DVD sticker." - Bruce Nazarian, Gnome Digital, Author of DVD Studio Pro 2.0: The Complete Guide to DVD Authoring Hands Off! DVDs are extremely delicate. Touching the surface of the disc leaves fingerprints that can render a disc unplayable. If you need to clean a disc, first try using a soft, lint free cloth and gently wipe from the hub outwards in a series of straight lines towards the edge. Do not wipe in a circle: this can cause a scratch along the data path, which can render the disc unplayable. For really dirty discs, you can buy special cleaner solutions and cleaning devices that work fairly well. However, if your disc is that dirty, burning a new one is a better plan. You may want to pre-emptively warn clients about proper disc handling. People are familiar with audio CDs, which are much more tolerant of dirt and fingerprints, and often abuse DVDs without knowing it. Pack carefully. As indicated above, DVDs are delicate, so carefully putting them in proper packaging is critical. Amaray-styles cases are always a good choice. Avoid sleeves which come in contact with the face of the DVD. And steer clear of clever "auto ejecting" cases that push the DVD out of a slot in a sealed case. These make it impossible to remove the disc without putting fingerprints on it, and often scratch the surface as well. Make a Backup! DVD-R media is relatively inexpensive, so save yourself some grief by burning at least four copies of your final DVD. Send two to your client or replicator, and keep two yourself. If one of the discs is damaged, you or your client/replicator has a backup to try. While you're at it, make sure to back up all the files you used to author the DVD with in the first place; your client may ask for "minor changes" in the future.

DVD-5 or DVD-R are both single-sided, single-layer, and hold 4.7 billion bytes. They are the easiest and least expensive types of disc to produce, so if you can fit your project into that much space, that's your best bet. The main factors that determines this are the duration of your video, the level of quality you require, and the efficiency of your MPEG encoder. In general, 90 minutes should be easy, 120 minutes starts getting tough, and 180 minutes requires a really good encoder and a willingness to sacrifice some quality. DVD-9 is single-sided, dual-layer, and holds 8.54 billion bytes, or about 80% more than a DVD-5. DVD-9 is a replicated format. There are also dual-layer recordable DVDs being introduced soon, but the media is not yet available, and is likely to be a bit expensive to be practical as a way of delivering discs to customers for a while. Be aware that DVD-9 authoring is generally not available in entry level authoring packages. For example, tools like DVD Studio Pro 2.0.5, Sonic Scenarist, and Ulead DVD Workshop 2 support DVD-9. But iDVD, MyDVD, and many other tools do not. Make sure to check before starting your project. And once again, make sure you are using the absolute latest version of your authoring tool. The best way to determine the needs of your project is to try the following test: 1. Add up the total duration of all video in your project (including menus). 2. Use the bit budget calculator to find out the video bitrate you would need to use to fit it onto a DVD-5 (or DVD-R) 3. Try encoding 10 minutes of your video at that bitrate, and watch it carefully to see how it looks. 4. If you're happy with the results, you can use DVD-R or DVD-5. If the quality isn't acceptable, you'll need to use a DVD-9, split the project across multiple discs, or find a better encoder. 5. If you're planning to use a DVD-9, try the calculator again to see what bitrate you would use, and do another test encode. If you're still not happy with the project, you'll need to split it across multiple discs or find a better encoder. As we mentioned back in "MPEG From Hell", another possibility is to use MPEG-1 or half-height MPEG-2. At the high bitrates typically used for DVD Video, standard MPEG-2 provides a sharper image. But at the lower bitrates required to squeeze more video onto a disc, MPEG-1 and half-height MPEG-2's video, while still softer than MPEG-2, don't suffer from as many compression artifacts. There are two versions of DVD with even higher capacity. DVD-10 is double-sided, single-layer - essentially it's two DVD-5's glued back to back, and therefore holds exactly twice as much as a DVD-5, or 9.4 billion bytes total. In addition to a slightly higher capacity than DVD-9, DVD-10 has the additional advantage of being easy to author: you simply develop each side separately, just as if you were doing two different DVD-5 projects. The downside, however, is that the customer has to flip the disc over to access the second side. DVD-18 is the highest capacity of all DVD formats. Double-sided, dual-layer, it is effectively two DVD-9's glued back to back, and holds 17.08 billion bytes total. Unfortunately DVD-18s are very difficult and expensive to manufacture, and many replicators are not equipped to produce this format. As a result, DVD-18 projects are extremely rare. There's one spot on the disc that's giving you ulcers. Some players pause there for a moment, right in midsentence, ruining that bit of dialog. Worse, yet, a few players lock up entirely at that point. What happened? On a single-layer disc (DVD-5 or DVD-R), the playback laser starts at the center of the disc and moves outwards as the disc is played. It never needs to change direction or move abruptly during a single feature, so playback can be smooth and continuous. On a dual-layer disc (DVD-9 or DVD-18), once the laser finishes playing the first layer it has to refocus (and possibly move) to the second layer. This results in a brief pause in the video (typically half a second or so, depending on the player) at the layer transition. Unfortunately there is no way to eliminate this pause, but there are ways to minimize its impact. First, see if you can find a way to place the transition where it won't be noticed. Ideally you can design your disc so that each track is either entirely on layer 1 or entirely on layer 2, so the transition never occurs during playback of a track, but rather between tracks where it's less obvious. Of course, that approach won't work if you have a single long video which fills most of the disc. In that case, you need to find a spot near the middle of the video where a brief pause won't be too obtrusive. Ideally you're looking for a black frame between scenes, when the soundtrack is silent. Second, use the "Opposite Track Path" recording mode. This reduces the distance that the laser has to travel to get from the end of layer 1 to the beginning of layer 2. Using this mode introduces an additional requirement: layer 2 cannot hold more data than layer 1, so you'll need to keep that in mind when planning the location of your layer transition. "If your project and your MPEG encoder support it, it's a good idea to lower the bit rate going into the layer break, and then increase it coming out of the layer break. This allows the video buffer to hold more frames of video since the compression rate is lower, which in effect gives the player more time to change layers. A layer break during compressed video with a data rate of 7.0 Mbps or higher is tough for many players." - Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author: DVD Authoring & Production You're clear by now that it's crucial to test your disc thoroughly. But how do you test something that you can't burn onto a DVD-R and put in a set-top player? This is one of the frustrating aspects of developing a DVD-9: it's too big to fit onto a DVD-R, so one of the most important parts of testing is short-circuited. That just makes it more important to focus on the testing you can do. Test thoroughly on your computer. You can still build an image of the disc on your hard drive, and use software DVD players to test its behavior. This isn't a substitute for set-top testing, but is critical for making sure menus work correctly, etc. Make a low-bitrate test disc. Build a special version of your disc, using lower-bitrate versions of your MPEG files. (Use the bit budget calculator for DVD-R to see what bitrates to use for this version.) The resulting disc won't show you your final video quality accurately of course, nor show you the behavior at the layer transition, but it will let you verify all menu and interface behavior is correct. Make full-bitrate test discs. Since the low-bitrate test disc didn't show final video quality, you need two more discs which do. These are very simple: just your audio and video assets on a couple of discs, so you can examine them closely on set-top players and televisions. Get a check disc. When you send your master off for replication, make sure to request a check disc. This is a one-off version of the final replicated disc. If you discover you've made an error at this stage, you're likely to pay for a new stamper to fix it, but that's less expensive than having to pay to redo thousands of bad discs. Fortunately, there's a better approach right around the corner. DVD-R drive manufacturers have announced support for recording dual-layer DVD-Rs, which is a recordable equivalent to DVD-9. The media is not yet available, and it's likely that authoring tools will need to be revised to support it. But soon it should be possible to burn test discs which accurately simulate the final DVD-9. 1. Use the bit budget calculator to determine which type of disc is best for your project. 2. Pay careful attention to the layer transition. 3. Make special DVD-R versions for testing. 4. Always request a check disc.

Once you've authored your DVD and decided how to get discs made, you need to spend some time on your packaging. People tend to judge a DVD by its case, so you want to make sure your first impression is a good one. It's easy to procrastinate on the printing and artwork until you've finished authoring your disc, but it's a lot better to get them done early. You can't sell your title until it's finished, and that includes artwork. And if you're going to be selling through retail channels, you'll need a sell sheet developed so that you can send them to prospective customers about 2-3 months before the street date. Here are some things you should pay attention to if you want to avoid the packaging gremlins. There are a tremendous number of packaging case options available to you: amaray-style cases, jewel cases, preprinted cardboard sleeves, clamshells, Ejector™ cases, Digipack™ cases, thin cases, and many more. To pick the right case, you need to determine what you are trying to do with your DVD. Amaray-style Cases - Generally speaking, if you want to put your DVD on a retail shelf with other movies, you should use an amaray-style case. This is the standard case in a video rental/retails stores, and is what consumers expect for DVD movies. It has good "shelf appeal", with a spine thick enough to be nicely visible, but thin enough that retailers can pack a lot of units on a shelf. Amaray-style cases also work well for the do-it-yourself approach, since you can print and insert your own covers for a professional look (for best results, get a borderless printer and a cutter to make covers without borders). Amaray style cases come in many colors, though the standard for movies is a dark charcoal grey which looks almost black. Cardboard Hybrid - Cardboard/plastic hybrid cases, such as the Digipack™, are similar to the amaray-style case in form-factor, but have a cardboard outer cover and an internal plastic disc-holding section glued to the inside. These cases don't generally hold up as well as amaray-style cases, and must be pre-printed, which makes them expensive if you don't need thousands of units. Jewel Cases - These are the standard for delivering CDs, but should generally be avoided for DVDs. People expect jewel cases to hold CDs, not DVDs -- so many potential buyers will mistake a DVD for a CD if it's in a jewel case. Jewel cases have a very narrow spine, so it's hard to make a good impression with one on a shelf. Amaray-style cases were specifically designed to improve upon many of the weaknesses of the jewel case. For example, jewel cases are fragile and the hinge frequently breaks, whereas amaray-style cases are very durable. And the tight hub fastener in jewel cases may be likely to damage DVDs. Surprisingly, using jewel cases often cost more than amaray-style cases, because the jewel cases require two pieces of artwork (the front booklet and the tray insert) and the assembly is more complicated. Sleeves & Clamshells - If you are delivering a DVD for a special purpose in which it won't be handled repeatedly, and doesn't need "shelf appeal", sleeves or clamshell cases may be a good choice. In general, sleeves don't protect your DVD as well as rigid cases, and place the disc face in contact with the sleeve. This can scratch the delicate DVD surface, especially with repeated handling. Viewers are also more likely to get their fingerprints on DVDs in sleeves, since it is hard to remove them without touching the face. Pre-printed cardboard sleeves are very expensive for low quantities, so you'll generally only use them for very high volume distribution. Tyvek or paper sleeves that have plastic windows in them are a cheap way to minimally protect a DVD, but offer no resistance to bending, and may cause scratching of the disc face with repeated use. Clamshells, such as the C-Shell™, offer far better protection from bending than paper sleeves and keep the face of the disc out of contact with the case. If you need a cheap way to distribute DVDs without flashy cases, clamshells are often a better choice than paper sleeves. Ejector™ cases - These are about the size of a jewel case and are sealed around 3 of the edges. They have a small slot on the side into which you slide your DVD. While in the case, the DVD is held by the edges and is relatively well protected. When you want to get the DVD back out, you press a button on the spine that is connected to little internal lever that ejects the DVD. It's a clever design, but has a major design flaw: the DVD is only ejected about 1/3 of the way, so you must then pull it out of the case the rest of the way. Because the hub is not exposed upon ejection, it is very difficult to avoid touching the data surface when extracting the DVD. And as we all know, touching the data surface is a really bad thing to do... so avoid these cases. A word of caution: Avoid NetFlix Mailers We love the online rental company NetFlix™ but they are teaching DVD authors bad habits! NetFlix mails their rental DVDs in paper sleeves, which has lead many DVD authors to think that this is adequate protection. We have literally gotten DVDs submitted to CustomFlix in single sheets of paper folded in half and stapled to keep them closed in the mail... with the expected dismal results. DVDs are more delicate than the NetFlix mailing process might lead you to believe. NetFlix expects that some of their discs will be damaged in mailing. It's simply cheaper for them to replace the occasional damaged disc than pay for higher shipping costs that more robust packaging would entail. Whether you are mailing a DVD to a replication house, client, or customer, it's critical that the DVD arrive in good condition. That means not using a flimsy paper mailer, but instead properly packaging it in at least a jewel case or clam shell, or ideally an amaray-style case, and then putting this in a padded mailer or cardboard shipping box. If you are delivering a set of discs, multi-disc amaray-style cases are the first choice for the same reasons amaray-style cases are good for single DVDs. Dual cases are common, and you can get cases to hold several DVDs. A popular option for high-end multi-disc releases are boxed sets of thin amaray-style cases. Thin cases are the same outer dimensions as an amaray-style case, but approximately 1/3 thickness. The downside is that the box plus multiple thin cases is substantially more expensive than multi-disc amaray-style case. And while thin cases are attractive on their own, we don't suggest you use a solo thin case for retail, as it won't be visible on a shelf given the very narrow spine. Retail packaging is the main thing that potential viewers will see if they notice your title in a store or rental shop. The packaging is often the first time a street-level customer becomes aware of your project and usually determines what step they take next. This leaves independent film and video selections as the truest form of "judging a book by its cover." Some packaging tips to keep in mind for retail: 1. Check out the competition. Go to a video store and look around. What packaging draws your eye? What elements make it attractive?2. Use an image that is immediately identifiable with your film, ideally a comedic or shocking photo to attract attention.3. Try to use bright colors and lettering in your designs. On a shelf with hundreds of other tapes or DVDs, what will make your product stand out?4. Don't neglect your spine. If your DVD is sitting on a shelf, that's all your customer will see. 5. Know when to get help. If you don't have the experience or resources available to create a professional looking package, it's worth paying a professional graphic designer for a couple hours of work. A bad first impression will make it hard for anyone to view your film or video in a positive way, much less buy it. CustomFlix offers art services for exactly this reason.6. Be sure to check the specs for your artwork, and carefully inspect all proofs sent to you. It's easy to correct on-demand title artwork later, as each copy is printed when it's ordered, but replicated artwork must be thrown away if there are errors. "For discs that are going into retail the package needs to have a valid UPC code graphic placed in upper right hand corner of the back of the package. It is also a good idea to include an ISBN number along with the UPC code, particularly for discs that may end up be sold in book stores or on-line retailers that cater to the education and library markets." - Ralph LaBarge, Alpha DVD, Author: DVD Authoring & Production In addition to the cover of your case, you need to design the face of your DVD. For retail, the DVD face is less important that the DVD cover, since, since viewers generally make a buying decision based on the cover. That said, you want all your packaging to convey the quality of your DVD, so don't ignore the DVD face. As with covers, if you don't have the time, talent, or resources available to design your DVD face, you should get help. Also as with covers, it's a good idea to send along a printed sample showing how the final DVD face should look. Duplicated DVD-Rs usually have inkjet or thermally printed faces. DVD face stickers are a bad thing - be sure your duplicator won't use them. Thermal faces often support one or two colors, and are not good for photographic images. Inkjet faces work well for photographic images, and can produce a disc face which looks better than the silk-screening commonly used on replicated DVDs. A potential downside with inkjet faces is that they are susceptible to moisture. A lot of handling with sweaty fingers can cause the ink to blur slightly, though this is rarely a problem with normal use. Replicated DVDs usually have silkscreen faces, though a new process called offset printing is a higher quality, but more expensive, option. Silkscreening can produce very sharp line art, but uses a fairly coarse line screen for photographs, which makes photographic images somewhat less detailed than inkjet or offset printing. Look at some samples of inkjet vs. silkscreening to see what we mean. Replicated discs are silver, so if you want to print photographic images on them, a white base coat (or "flood") must be put on the DVD first. This means a full color DVD is 5 colors, not 4 colors. The final result is CMYK + white flood. Many replicators show the price for 3 color discs, so be sure you won't have pay extra if you need photographic disc faces. Generally speaking, silkscreening inks naturally have more variation than press inks, so exact color matching isn't possible on disc faces. Also, due to the nature of the silkscreening process, very light colors tend to disappear entirely, and very dark colors tend to "block up" and lose detail. These variations also make getting a very accurate proof more difficult for silkscreen faces. You can get a color key for 5 color DVD faces, though the proof won't be as accurate as it would be for paper printing. Please see our "How To Prepare your Artwork" for more details on preparing artwork that will work well for silkscreening. 1. Design for full-bleed. "Full-bleed" printing goes all the way to the edge of the page, and provides the most professional result. Make sure you understand how to use the template so that your title, logos, etc. don't get cut off around the edges.2. Color balance. DVD authors are often not familiar with print media, so it's easy to get confused on color calibration. Making sure what you see on your monitor is what the final cover will look like is fairly difficult. Your best bet is to send a print of your cover design made on a high quality inkjet printer along with your DVD master for the replicator/duplicator to use as a reference. 3. Ask for Proof. If your covers will be printed on a 4-color press, the color will be a bit different than your inkjet print due to the nature of press inks and processes. If color is critical, request a "hard proof" which should accurately show you what the final covers will look like. This often costs extra, but is the only way to be positive that there will be no surprises with the final result. 1. Start on your packaging artwork early. 2. Amaray-style cases are usually your best choice. 3. Pay attention to your printed artwork; the cover may have more impact on the purchase decision than the content. 4. Use the right templates.

How to make your DVD-ROM region free

2005-02-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

While not directly DVD ripping related this is certainly an issue that many people are interested in. In order to manufacture a DVD drive one has to obtain a license from the DVD CCA (Copy Control Association). The licensing terms state that every drive must support certain mechanisms, among others CSS (Content Scrambling System) and region code. The latter has only become mandatory for DVD-ROM drives starting from the first of January 2000. Since then every DVD-ROM must contain hardware region code which the user can change 5 times, then send back to the manufacturer which can reset that counter 4 times. Before that date most drives did not have any region protection and it was rather easy to circumvent the software DVD player based region code protection by the use of a well know tool: DVD Genie. That region free state was also called as RPC-1. A none codefree DVD-ROM is called RPC-2.
Pioneer and Matsushita (they make drives for the Creative PC DVD kits) were the first to introduce DVD-ROM hardware region code protection. But after a while nice people found a way to circumvent this region protection. They argued that they'd been cheated when they bought a protected drive since it's nowhere written down that the drive comes crippled and can't play all DVD discs, and they were quite right. In fact it would be really interested to see what would happen if somebody sued the DVD CCA for violating WTO trade agreements - after all region codes are there to restrict global trade.
The solution to get your drive region free is to load another firmware which disables the region code protection. While loading a new firmware isn't the most uncritical of tasks it can be performed without problems if you take all the necessary precautions. However you should be aware that in some cases the warranty might become void if you mess around with your drive on your own. But I've done dozens of mainboard BIOS updates, router firmware updates and now one DVD-ROM firmware update and I've never run into any serious trouble. But don't blame me if something goes wrong, I warned you.
Who should get a new firmware?
Basically whoever needs it. If you live in the USA or Canada (R1) then you most likely won't need the ability to play DVDs from other regions, unless you are interested in some of the rare titles that are out in Europe (R2) but not in the USA: For instance the Buffy discs, or the 6 full seasons of Friends :) If you live in another region than R1 and you don't speak English or prefer to watch the movies in another language (shame on you!!) then most likely you don't have to flash your firmware either since you get all the titles you want in your own region. But if you, like me, prefer to get movies sooner, with more extras, and of course in English all the time then you're in for an upgrade.
The process
First of all go to the mother of all firmware sites and check if there's an updated firmware for your type of DVD drive. If you're unsure about the type of the drive I suggest you run driveinfo. Should you run into an ASPI error you have to install forceaspi first. Unrar the forceaspi archive, then run instaspi.bat. The package comes with detailed instructions which I won't copy here but you should definitely check them out first. After installing forceaspi you have to reboot your machine. Driveinfo will show you the type of your DVD drive as well as the current firmware, and whether or not the drive is regionfree. If driveinfo tells you the drive has no region protection of course you don't have to do anything.
As you can see this nice 8x/24x notebook drive is a Toshiba SD-C2402 and you an find that there's several different firmwares for that drive. The drive currently has firmware version 1015 so you should download the patched firmware 1015, not any other. This step is really crucial.. double or triple check that you have the right firmware, otherwise your drive might not work after flashing anymore (and unfortunately there are flash programs that allow you to load the wrong firmware).
After you've downloaded the right firmware you'll have to create a dos/win9x bootdisk. For this operation I simply took the W98 setupdisk. You can also format a disk and check "copy system files" and you'll get a working bootdisk. Then copy the flasher program and the firmware to the disc as well. In the Toshiba case the flasher is called resetcnt.exe and the firmware file 1015f.hex. Then reboot your pc and change the boot drive order if necessary so that your pc boots from the disk drive. Of course you could also create a boot-CD or as I have a boot-zip disc but a floppy is the most obvious solution (unless you, as I do, don't have a floppy drive anymore).
Since every BIOS looks different I can't tell you where to change the boot order. Please refer to the manual of your mainboard / pc or call customer support. You shouldn't change anything else in the BIOS unless you really know what you're going to do.
After rebooting run the flasher. In our example you'd type "resetcnt 1015f.hex", then the program will search for a DVD-ROM and ask you if you want to flash. Type yes, wait until the program has finished, then reboot your pc.
Once back in Windows run driveinfo again.
If everything has gone as it's supposed to that's what you're supposed to get. Enjoy.. you've just beaten the CCA :)
Parting words
Before you buy a DVD-ROM make sure that there's RPC-1 firmware for it if you intend to watch DVDs that come from outside your region. And make sure you flash the drive with the right firmware.