Do you check every minute of finished DVD?

[Clive McLaughlin]

Or do you stick it in the post and hope you did everything right in your timeline work?

I've had a two corrections to make out of 20 clients. I'm talking about things like a few seconds of blank video, tripod nudges, missing audio.

My finished product is two hours long. Should I really be sitting myself down to watch it through?

I'm hoping the replies aren't going to be "Yes! Of course!".

[Katie Fasel]

We burn a master DVD and a master Bluray. We check each one start to finish. Sometimes, yes, they are upwards of 90 minutes long. Once I know the masters are OK, we make the couples' copies from those. We do not check those 100%, but rather put them in, make sure they play, and check a few buttons.

If the masters are fine, the copies should be too. But I don't ever want a DVD coming back because of some strange timeline error or compression glitch. I feel comfortable knowing we checked the masters beginning to end.

[Paul Mailath]

By the time I'm finished editing - I can't, I just can't. I setup the menu system and before I burn the disc I scrub quickly through looking for errors - sometime I miss.

I alway check with the bride and if there's a problem I get on to it straight away

[Chris Harding]

OK, here comes a no!!

My weddings are done by event and each event is one clip. As I edit and complete each clip I play it from start to end to make so there are no mess ups, footage or audio errors or titles mis-spelt.

My weddings are a two DVD set and I give the bride 3 sets so after compiling each DVD I burn just one copy of DVD 1 and then test the menus and play each clip thru but not completely! Just the start middle and end (probably the first minute, the middle minute and the end minute) and make sure the next clip starts automatically. When I'm happy all clips play correctly I'll burn the other two copies and then repeat the whole process over with the 2nd DVD ...

Never had to do a re-burn and deliver replacement DVD's to a bride cos of an error by me which could have been avoided by testing. It's easier to spend 20 minutes testing than have to drive an hour to replace DVD's at an irate bride's house!!

Chris

[James Manford]

I check every minute.

May be because I'm just not busy enough? I only plan to do 10-15 films a year.

A bit worrying though that I would need to save time 'somewhere' should I take on a larger workload... which means something like this i.e. not checking the film for errors.

[Don Bloom]

Clive, YES OF COURSE YOU SHOULD! NOT!!!!!!!!! ;-)

Another emphatic NO! ;-) If I did, I'd end up sticking a fork in my eye!

I edit like Chris, so I check each section before I render and when I put it together I spot check each section again. After I author I make sure the menus work and after I burn the discs, I spot check them, make sure the menus and buttons do what they're supposed to and frankly I can't remember the last time I had a disc that had a boo boo like you mentioned.

[Chris Hewitt]

Yes, always. I find I'm looking for things on a big 40 tv that doesn't always make itself known when editing.
I rarely find a problem, but one niggly thing that does come up now and then is the mercali plug-in "You need to re do the scan" or whatever the message is...because that particular clip has been lengthened, shortened, that sort of thing.
I'm also looking at the effect of the plugs I've used, I'm listening to the audio in a totally different setting, much like the bride will be....in other words, I'm out of the studio and looking at the film as a whole. I'm not necessarily looking for mistakes but as it's got my name on it, I want it to work and to be special for the clients. What's another two hours?

[Warren Kawamoto]

I recently shot a theatrical performance, made a master dvd and checked it before burning 50 copies. When those 50 copies were burned and printed, I checked one of the copies to be sure. To my horror, there was a skip about a minute into it. I checked the next one, and the skip was in exactly the same place. I checked the master again, no skip. How could this be? About 10 dvds later, I found a pause in a different place, and the next 10 had similar pauses in the same place. In the end, ALL of my copies had pauses or skips ! I traced the problem to my duplicator, a Bravo SE.

Moral of the story...even if your master is perfect, it's still possible to get a defective copy.

[Roger Gunkel]

I'm another who edits every single clip and check them through as I go. I also run back over the last 10 or so edited clips to double check that the audio is correct and things like making sure clips with church bells are cut on beat to avoid audio jumping. After editing I run the first copy and check a couple of minutes at each menu point. I never check a full length dvd in it's entirety.

Roger

[John Estcourt]

My wife checks every film for me. I find it almost impossible to sit and watch the whole DVD having just edited it. She doesn't miss a thing !

[Noa Put]

I always see the entire movie once the edit is done, but I run it directly from the timeline on a big tv so I can make changes as soon as I see a error, after that I build the dvd's and then just check if the dvd menu works like it's supposed to or if I didn't make any spelling errors in chapternames.

I actually like this checking part a lot, I just relax, sit back and enjoy the movie, I couldn't imagine not doing this, looking at the end result is the whole reason why I shoot in the first place, only then I know if the movie "feels" right and I couldn't do that by looking at the separate segments over a longer period of time, I think once I would hate doing that it's time to find another job.

[Rob Cantwell]

ive just this minute finished burning 20 copies of a DVD for the local Town Hall, I've got to print out inserts for the DVD cases in the morning, and because of the question posed here i'm going to check some random DVDs too
:-)

I'm not sure what others do but the way i do it is; I do a rough cut first, then edit it down to what hink is ok, then i export the footage to the project folder usually in their own sequences, I then check these using windows media player, (i use a thirty inch monitor) so it's relatively easy to spot an error. I then send them to the authoring program where I make a ISO file. At this point i check the entire DVD by mounting it on a virtual drive and viewing from start to finish. I burn one DVD and test it in a player with the telly. But good point about the master being ok and not the duplicates - gotta check in the morning!

[John Knight]

I could think of nothing more nauseating than re-watching my over-priced cheesy wedding videos, or hearing Bruno bloody Mars any more times than I have to. I probably make a silly mistake one in every 50 weddings, otherwise I'll be playing with my kids thanks. :)

[Adrian Tan]

The way I'm currently doing it:

-- shorter films (5 minutes, 15 minutes, 25 minutes) definitely watch before and after they're burnt to DVD
-- ceremony and reception I supply as separate videos, and I only spot-check these after editing them, unless I'm worried. Usually end up with 30-60 min for each of them. On first edit, I do it pretty carefully -- but, ironically, this can mean I miss bigger things, like switching off and forgetting to turn back on a colour adjustment track or an audio track. So I pick up the bigger misses, if any, in the spot-check.
-- after DVD is burnt, I'll stick it in the player and make sure it works, but I don't watch ceremony and reception all the way through. I make sure the links work. I skip chapters and spot-check. Occasionally I do pick up errors at this stage, to do with aspect ratio, or sound levels varying too much, or something misspelled in the menu, or not leaving enough black at start/end of a video.

Haven't had any complaints from clients so far... not for DVDs and BluRays at any rate (I also supply files on USB, and sometimes the clients can't read them for whatever reason).

[Don Bloom]

John,
You sir are a true wordsmith!
;-0