Unit 58: DVD Authoring

DVD's
Short for Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc, a DVD is compact disc able to store data, especially high-resolution audiovisual material such as movies. At the very most a Double sided, double layered DVD can hold a maximum of 17GB of data. DVD's can come in a few different forms such as:

+R
+R is a DVD that can be written and read. But once data has been put onto the +R DVD it cannot be erased and rewritten. This kind of DVD is commonly used for things as home movies as data on the disk can still be altered to an extent.

+RW
A +RW DVD is a disk that can have data written onto it and read. But if the user wanted to they could erase the data and rewrite new data onto the disk. This kind of disk is rarely used in the industry as the data can very easily be tampered with.

-R
This kind of disk is ideal for use in the industry as it can only be written once and after that it can only be read, making it much easy to protect copyright holders.

Blu-Ray
The Blu-ray disk was created to allow more space on a disk, therefore allowing the film itself to be less compressed. On a normal DVD the limitations of space on the disk force the creators to compress the film file, which causes the film to be lower quality. The Blu-ray does not have this problem and can play in HD 1080p.

 

ML
ML stands for multi layered. By adding a second layer of dye for data to be burned onto, the storage capacity of the DVD can be greatly increased.

Double Sided DVD's
A double sided DVD is a disk that uses both of its sides to store data, increasing the overall data capacity of the disk. sometimes these kinds of disk are used to store the film on one side and DVD extras on the other.

Writing Speeds
Writing speed simply refers to the speed at which data can be burned onto a disk. Almost all modern disk can support a writing speed of 5"2x". This means that data will be burned at 52x the minimum writing speed, which is 1,385,000 bytes per second.
Sometimes burning a disk at such a high speed can cause the data to be lower quality. Therefore some people opt to have disks written at 16x speed instead, to ensure high quality data.

Pre-Menu Conventions
After inserting the DVD, before the menu appears you will usually see a number of things. For example, trailers, anti piracy notices and disclaimers.

Trailers
Trailers are put on the DVD to advertise other films created by the same studio that created the film that you are watching. This usually only happens with blockbuster films from big movie studios such as Universal, 20th Century Fox, or Disney. Lower budget films will not usually have trailers.

Disclaimers
A disclaimer will usually just let the viewer know that the film does not represent the views of the film.

 

Anti_Piracy Notice

 

 An anti-piracy notice is an unskippable threat warning to the viewer. Reminding them of the possible repercussions of copying and distributing the film in violation of copyright laws.

 

In recent years DVD authoring has become more accessible to the general public, as software has been made available that is cheap enough for the average person to buy and use. Both Apple and Adobe have released Encore and iDVD; relatively cheap programmes for DVD authoring for the everyday consumer. For filmmakers with less funding, making a physical disk with their work on is no longer a lofty dream but a very easy to acquire reality.

Regional Codes
In different parts of the world DVDs carry different amounts of value. A person living in the United Kingdom may not pay the same amount of money as someone living in China or the US

There are 6 regional codes which are:

1. United States, Canada, Bermuda, Caribbean, US Territories.
2. Europe, Middle East, Japan, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Greenland, British Overseas Territories, British Crown Dependencies, French Overseas Department and Territories.
3. Southeast Asia, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau.
4. South America, Central America, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and a large proportion of Oceania.
5. Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Africa (Except, Egypt, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho) Central Asia, Mongolia, North Korea.
6. China.

DVD menus are often overlooked as a way to interest the audience through aesthetics and design a good example of this would be The Lord of the Rings menu.

The menu is stylised to fit the tone of the film. The menu appears with a slow zoom animation. The background has moving images of scenes from the movie, the buttons are in the shape of a ring in reference to the ring from the movie. Parts of the background has been made to look like parchment with a subtle smoke animation. The menu is covered top to bottom with references to the film. The amount of effort to incorporate the film into the menu design is very clear and it works very well as a positive advertisement for the film.

 

This menu on the other hand is much less inspired. There are no visual references to the film, apart from the scene buttons. If confronted by this menu you would not have any idea what kind of movie this would be. The background is a mishmash of greys and the buttons are clear presets. None of the scenes have names, only numbers. Overall there is an absolute lack of personality in this menu, making it very likely to discourage the viewer to watch the actual film.