Hi everyone,
I am looking at archiving a final copy of all of my weddings in case the bride and groom would like another copy later on. Is there a program out there that will allow me to burn the DVD with all of the menus, chapters, and options?

Thanks

ummm... if you want a playable copy and you've saved the assets and project file, use the same program.

I always burn the assets and project file to DVD-RW. I can restore any video at the project level, any time.

Hi everyone,
I am looking at archiving a final copy of all of my weddings in case the bride and groom would like another copy later on. Is there a program out there that will allow me to burn the DVD with all of the menus, chapters, and options?

Thanks

Im confussed as to what your asking. Are you not simply wanting a copy of the dvd you aurthor for them? If that's the case, just make extra copies for yourself, or am I missing something??

David,
I make a copy of the final DVD for myself and hold on to it. Say the bride wants another copy a year later. I will have erased all of the files off of my harddrive and only have the DVD I kept for myself. The way I would do it now is copy the timeline to tape and re-import it back into my NLE and then remake the dvd using Adobe Encore. Is there a program that will allow me to burn the copy that I have and give that to the couple?

I hope this makes more sense.

Craig,
Some assets are 22gb in size so I cannot copy them to a disc. A 2hour timeline will be rather large AVI file.

David,
I make a copy of the final DVD for myself and hold on to it. Say the bride wants another copy a year later. I will have erased all of the files off of my harddrive and only have the DVD I kept for myself. The way I would do it now is copy the timeline to tape and re-import it back into my NLE and then remake the dvd using Adobe Encore. Is there a program that will allow me to burn the copy that I have and give that to the couple?

I hope this makes more sense.


hey Jason,
as long as you didn't add copy protection, any dvd burning program such a nero will make a direct copy for you.
If you did encrypt it, there are many programs that will still copy it for you including free ones such as DVD Shrink
http://www.dvdshrink.org/

DVD Decrypter works nicely for this. It allows you to rip a DVD to your hard drive and then burn that image to a blank DVD.

You can find it here. http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd_decrypter.cfm

or dvd for free ;)

http://www.dvd43.com/

Hi David,
I recently borrowed a copy of Nero 6 from another local videographer for this purpose, however, when i chose copy in the menu selection it burned but the dvd is unplayable. I might of done something wrong. Any suggestions?

Hey Jason,

did you add copy protection to the original disc?

nope just a straight burn wiith Encore

copy disc in nero should work without a problem.

try this program
http://www.alcohol-soft.com/

download the 30 day trail. I have had issues burning image files before with nero, but alcohol has never let me down ;)

Thanks David,
From one fellow Canuck to another. Those Oilers sure look good this year, real fast..

hope it works..

as far as oilers go...having Pronger and Peca sure doesn't hurt :)
I am going to the game Friday, Colorado is in town, should be good, first game In a Long time :)

Craig,
Some assets are 22gb in size so I cannot copy them to a disc. A 2hour timeline will be rather large AVI file.

This is one of the follies of letting your DVD authoring software do the compression. Assests I was refering to were the assets after being compressed by a stand alone program. The suggestions you got here as far as duplication programs - will work... but in the big picture, it sounds like you don't have a versitle work flow. Having the compressed assets on a DVD-RW is definately a secure way to go.

A couple years ago, I made a followup call to a customer a few weeks after videos had shipped to get feed back. She said she loved it, all except that I cut the cake-cutting! I could NOT believe I made such an unforgiveable mistake! I always keep the DV tapes around for a few months after delivery so I recaptured the cake cutting, then restored the project from DVD-RW and modified it with an endjump at the right chapter - viola, it was fixed quickly. Without the compressed assets, it would have been much more complicated to fix. There was one other wedding when a guests hairpiece fell off during dancing at the reception (ha ha)... something I did not notice while editing... it was another easy fix.

It's not a bad idea to use a sperate program for compression, not only for workflow reasons but many of them give you more control over the compression & quality.

You can definitely just copy the DVD, but you should also instigate an archive regime.

How you do this depends on your workflow - if you don't recycle your camera tapes it's easy. Just keep your NLE project, any effects projects, graphics plus any effects renders, along with the DVD project and assets.

If you assume you are never going to have to re-edit a program, then you only need to keep the DVD assets, audio, graphics and project.

This is one of the follies of letting your DVD authoring software do the compression. Assests I was refering to were the assets after being compressed by a stand alone program. The suggestions you got here as far as duplication programs - will work... but in the big picture, it sounds like you don't have a versitle work flow. Having the compressed assets on a DVD-RW is definately a secure way to go.

A couple years ago, I made a followup call to a customer a few weeks after videos had shipped to get feed back. She said she loved it, all except that I cut the cake-cutting! I could NOT believe I made such an unforgiveable mistake! I always keep the DV tapes around for a few months after delivery so I recaptured the cake cutting, then restored the project from DVD-RW and modified it with an endjump at the right chapter - viola, it was fixed quickly. Without the compressed assets, it would have been much more complicated to fix. There was one other wedding when a guests hairpiece fell off during dancing at the reception (ha ha)... something I did not notice while editing... it was another easy fix.

It's not a bad idea to use a sperate program for compression, not only for workflow reasons but many of them give you more control over the compression & quality.


I think the assets being referred to were not the DVD encoded files, but rather the finished project files. 22GB sounds about right. I'm working on a wedding now with roughly 140GB of various project specific assets (the downside of having hours upon hours of footage between multiple cameras). I work into my costs/price buying a new hard disk solely for backing up the project when the whole thing is finished and delivered - as well as keeping copies of the DVDs. I also keep the tapes, but if something happens and I have to restore from the original tape, yikes. Best affordable backup solution I can think of (I don't like DLT).

Craig may I ask how u restore your projecy from the DVD RW??

I have a wedding on a RW which I want to re-import back into my timeline in FCP to make a few adjustments, any idea of how I do this. Anyone? Cheers...

Craig may I ask how u restore your projecy from the DVD RW??

I have a wedding on a RW which I want to re-import back into my timeline in FCP to make a few adjustments, any idea of how I do this. Anyone? Cheers...


It's saved as data on the DVD-RW so I just copy it back to the hard drive. When I said restore to the project level, I mean DVD auhoring project level, not prior to compression level. Using the time line within your DVD authoring software it's easy enough to add and subtract video but I wasn't suggesting that you could re-edit within your NLE.

I know this is an old topic and I hate to re-post, but I've had a lot of success with DVD Fab. It's a simple program, can copy DVDs straight to burnable DVD or to hard disk. I highly recommend it myself:

Only $60 for the platinum edition
http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-fab-platinum.htm

I'm not clear on a few points:

1) When you create a "DVD Volume", it contains all the individual elements that you used to create the DVD, yes? So if you "reconstitute" this from archives back onto your hard drive, do you have to rebuild the DVD structure?

2) Is a disc image" just a copy of the finished DVD in another format? (or simply, what's the difference or advantage between the finished DVD and a "disc image"?) I'm guessing that the "disc image" can be used to burn a DVD directly?, whereas the finished DVD can be copied to burn a new DVD?

3) is there any point in making a "disc image" and saving it on a DVD? or would this be the same as archiving the original DVD?

4) And for archival purposes, if I later on want to change something in the DVD, how can I save it so I can open it again in my authoring program and see all the titles and menus and buttons - and change their links, etc??

thanks -

Robert,

"DVD volume" and "disk image" probably mean several things to different people. The main difference as far as backups go is between a data DVD and a DVD Video. The data DVD is just files you used to make your DVD Video (it won't play in your dvd player). Of course, your DVD Video is your authored video that will play in your DVD player. Just trying to simplify here, but I'm sure you probably already know this info.

As mentioned earlier, you should be able to use any burning program to make a DVD of the data files instead of burning the actual DVD. I use NTI DVD maker to burn, but I've also used Nero, CopytoDVD, and others in the past.

For the data DVD, make sure you copy everything used in your project (files, menu buttons, mp3's, wav files), and above ALL, the original project file for the project. If you're using existing menu buttons, etc. from your program, you may want to back up those folders within your data dvd also including a copy of the .exe or .zip OF the actual authoring program you use in addition to your serial number. (I say this, because it's possible you may have switched computers or hard drives or upgraded your OS in the years between needing to redo a dvd; and you may be using a different program, or an upgrade of the same program that's not backwards compatible with that version.) I use DVD-lab Pro and the project files are saved as a '.dal' file, so I make sure to copy it to the data dvd.

If you need to change something and reauthor the dvd, you just copy the dvd data files to your hard disk into a new folder (reinstall the authoring program if need be) and open the project file with the same program. If it all won't fit onto one dvd, use several to back up the project. If you want to keep uncompressed .avi files or several .vobs that are larger than your data dvd can handle, you'll have to use several dvd's; and there are file splitters out there that will allow you to span several cd's or dvds for large files.

If I'm just making a copy of an existing DVD, I use what's also been mentioned before - rip the dvd with DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink - and then burn it from my hard drive with my dvd burning program.

Hope this helps!

I've got a program called Alcohol 120% that will make an image of a DVD/CD and let you burn exact copies of them. I've used it many many times and never had any problems with it. you can download a free trial version of it here

http://www.download.com/Alcohol-120-/3000-2646_4-10510582.html?tag=lst-0-1

Eric Hansen
www.ehansenproductions.com

hey Jason,
as long as you didn't add copy protection, any dvd burning program such a nero will make a direct copy for you.
If you did encrypt it, there are many programs that will still copy it for you including free ones such as DVD Shrink
http://www.dvdshrink.org/

There is no copy protection with DVD-R.. You can only apply copy protection to replicated DVDs..

Hi everyone,
I am looking at archiving a final copy of all of my weddings in case the bride and groom would like another copy later on. Is there a program out there that will allow me to burn the DVD with all of the menus, chapters, and options?

Thanks

Get yourself a DLT drive if you want to backup your entire NLE project with Renders.. Considering mine are usually 15-20GB in Premiere when finished.. 10-15GB buy a blu-ray drive and burn it to that..

Nice thing about DLT is you can backup and export your master DVD project to a DLT if you want to replicate and add copy protection..

Hi Jason,

Hi everyone,
I am looking at archiving a final copy of all of my weddings in case the bride and groom would like another copy later on. Is there a program out there that will allow me to burn the DVD with all of the menus, chapters, and options?


On a Mac I use Roxio Toast to duplicate DVD's, but I also leave a copy of all the VIDEO_TS files from my projects in their respective archived folder on back up hard drives. I go in to more depth here:

www.JoelPeregrine.com

Its one of the first entries, titled 'How Should We Archive?'

On my DVD software (DVDit pro), there's a "burn" option to create a DVD volume.

So I created one on my hard drive. When I examined the folder, it contained
VOB, IFO and BUP files - but no individual graphic or wav files.

The software also has the ability to burn a regular DVD from a DVD volume, so I tried that using my new folder, and the DVD was perfect.

Plus, it burned a lot faster than when I burned a DVD directly from my project.

But then I tried to edit the DVD Volume (just to make sure that I could), and got an error message "Cannot open this volume for editing because it is not an OpenDVD-compliant disc."

Anybody know why I'm having trouble? I sent an email to Sonic (makers of DVDit), but they don't always respond.

(and here's an interesting website that explains some of the structure of DVDs)
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/dvd-structure.htm