Backing up the final disc
 

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.

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.

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/vi..._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 :)

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.