Glass master vs dvdsp master

[Mark Shea]

I have previously produced copies of a dvd I mastered in dvdsp and experienced no problems.

I am now producing another project and have been informed by a duplication house that I should get a glass master done, as I wish to do over 1,000 copies in PAL and NTSC.

It is going to cost me a bit of $$ to get this glass master done, and given that I have had success duplicating a dvdsp master dvd, is there really a need?

[Gareth Watkins]

Hi there

This is the procedure of most repro houses if you want more than 500 or so copies. I guess it's easier to manage than burning the disks. Also it gives you a more universally compatible reproduction.

I've done a promo DVD for the last 4 or 5 years and for our runs of 8-15000 they have always done glass masters.

I'd guess money wise it is proportionally more expensive to get 1000 done than 10000 as you'll be paying $$ for your glass master.

Cheers
Gareth

[Mark Shea]

Thanks Gareth

I spoke with another helpful duplication house and they summed it up thus:

duplication is a copy of a dvd-r and has 95% compatibility across dvd players, your master dvd is burnt onto other disks

replication requires a glass master, which may well be produced from a betacam master, it has 100% compatibility across dvd players, and requires information to be stamped on other disks

[Gareth Watkins]

Hi Mark,
Yes my first post wasn't very clear, that exactly it...duplication is basically what you do at home, but certainly on higher end multiple copy duplicators.. but we all know how DVD-R's can behave, or not as the case may be.
A glass mastered version is pressed like your old vinyl records...Don't think we've had any that won't play... certainly no one has ever said anything, yet the duplicated ones often have issues.
Again I suppose it's down to cost.. Over a few hundred copies you're better off with a glass master.

Gareth

[Paul Cascio]

How much does a glass master cost?

[Chris Burgess]

I would shop around a little bit. I have had companies try and charge alot for glass masters and others that waive the charge, as well as the charge for any check discs. The company I am using now has a decent fee for the master and charges for check discs but their techs are very good and they have a two week turn around time on initial replication runs...plus all of the printing and artwork prep is in house which helps as well.

[George Kroonder]

Originally Posted by Paul Cascio

How much does a glass master cost?

The price is usually included in the total reproduction cost.

The difference between duplication ("recording") and replication ("pressing") is that the cost for duplicating is pretty much constant and pressing DVD's much cheaper. So somewhere around 1000 copies the added cost for the glass master is offset by the lower reproduction cost.

In total it should not cost you any more. Also repeat orders will benefit from the lower replication costs, but it does have a higher minimum re-order count.

In general I'd say it is a positive thing.

George/

[Dave Christensen]

Costs aside, which vary widely from place to place, here has been my experience in a similar situation:

I needed about 2000 DVDs for a small run, with about a zero dollar budget. I mastered a disc using Taiyo Yuden's high quality stuff and tested it across a few different platforms for compatibility. I used this as a master on a duplication machine to burn off copies to TY media. Out of approximately 2000, 2 discs had failures to write due to physical issues with the discs. Out of the 2000+ discs shipped out, I only received 1 report of issues playing back. I replaced the disc, worked fine.

So take from that experience what you will. The determining factor for me was the final quality of the discs. They were printed to with a laserjet and looked great - just a notch below having the thermal printing you see on Hollywood DVDs. But in terms of reliability, I'd say the above numbers are pretty good.