DVD Duplicator Rental

[Vence Vida]

I hope this is the right forum for this:

I have a job coming this summer where I will be providing DVD and CD duplications for a live convention in Nashville. I will need to be able to duplicate around 200 dvds per hour to meet the demand of the contract.

In the past, I have always taken the live footage back to my offices and done post production and dvd replication through a replication house after a convention, but this client wants everything available to attendees before they leave the event.

Does anyone know some good leads on where I might rent the necessary equipment to handle the duplication load?

Thanks,

Vence Vida

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by Vence Vida

I will need to be able to duplicate around 200 dvds per hour to meet the demand of the contract.

Vence Vida

What exactly does that mean, you'll need to pump these things out within an hour of the show ending?

[Vence Vida]

This is a week long event and they want me to be prepared to pump out 2000 dvds per day. I figure I could do that in about 10 hours at roughly 200 per hour, which would leave me a 2 or 3 hours to create each master from the line cuts of each nights main event. (A typical work day at one of these events is anywhere from 12-18 hours)

[Craig Parkes]

There is a company in the UK that specifically does this for live recordings of gigs, working with CDs. I can't remember the name of them, but they basically built a custom built truck with all the gear in it so they could rock on up to do basically legitimate 'bootlegs' that the fans could buy as they left the concert, so I have heard of people doing similiar things in theory.

However, it sounds like a pretty big ask for DVD's for a one off event in that quantity - I doubt there are many places that would hire you what you need in the quantities needed - I would say you would need to mak a significant investment to be able to do it - hope it's a well paying gig.

[Vence Vida]

Actually, this kind of thing is done all the time. I've worked in professional level tech production for almost 20 years, and anything is available for a price. This is really not that big of a request for an arena level show.

I've already found some rental houses that can provide the gear - and it's really not all that much gear, just a couple of duplication towers that run at 16x. I just want to make sure I find the best rental price, so I thought someone here may have a lead.

Thanks,

-Vence

[Mark Holland]

Vence,

Just curious, what knid of manpower do you need/use at something that big?

Thx,

Mark

[Vence Vida]

For this event, really not much. I will probably take 2 other people with me. There is another production company that is doing I-Mag (image magnification) so they are bringing all the tv cameras and crew and doing the live-to-screens stuff during the shows. My company's only job is to sit in the video booth and control my recording equipment (Sony DSR-11, and a Mackie 1202), then take that recording to our duplication room, dump it into Final Cut, check and perfect the audio, output a compressed final version to Studio Pro and crank out a master. Then some one just has to sit there and oversee the duplicators.

I have done other events where I take a crew of 5 or 6 and we shoot highlights of all the various events going on, then we edit all that footage along with the line cut from the I-Mag company and create a finished, polished highlights reel which we then have mastered and replicated at a replication house.

Usually, we also have to do a quick turn-around 5-10 minute highlights bit of each day to play at the beginning of the next day's main event as well as create fun little video spots relative to each day's happenings. That requires shooting all day, editing all night, and sleeping when you get home.

We also often do pre-production video work for the organization, helping create their motion screens, video logos, and video production spots that run during the event.

But this event is really just all capture and duplication. Nothing creative, interesting, or difficult.