The DVD Foundry - Your Digital Video and DVD Production Resource

Supplying Content for DVD Production

General guidelines for presenting source materials to any DVD authoring/production facility, and The DVD Foundry in particular, are provided here.

In General...

It is helpful, although not necessary, for you to have an idea of what you want to present, and how you would like the material organized. It isn’t necessary that you have all the details worked out, since given their knowledge about the available options for building a DVD, the DVD authoring/production facility can often make suggestions for options that may be unfamiliar to you.

Source Videotape

You should provide the master videotape, since it will be the highest quality source material that you own. In general, the higher the quality of the source videotape, the higher the quality of the finish DVD disk or digital video file. Most DVD production/authoring facilities will accept almost any videotape format, including S-VHS as a minimum, miniDV/DV, BetaCAM, or DigiBeta. If you can only provide a copy of your source videotape, make sure it has no dropouts or other defects.

Text

Text for slides/stills, menus, subtitle tracks, or narration tracks should be supplied in a standard word processor format, such as Microsoft® Word® Alternatively ASCII text files or hard copy can also be accepted. Text files can be submitted as source material on floppy disk, Zip disks, CDROM, or via e-mail.

PowerPoint® Presentations

PowerPoint presentations often already summarize the key marketing points or features/benefits of your product or service. Often, using these existing materials as part of your Digital Video or DVD presentation can help provide a consistent, and uniform presentation of your marketing message as it moves to the new media. Your Digital Video/DVD content consultant will evaluate your PowerPoint presentation to determine its suitability for use in the Digital Video or DVD project. PowerPoint presentations can be submitted as source material on floppy disk, Zip disks, CDROM, or via e-mail, depending on file size.

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Photos

Photos to be used as stills in the DVD presentation should be high-quality photographic prints, or preferably original color transparencies (chromes). In general, JPEG files from digital cameras are not acceptable for use as high-resolution stills in a Digital Video or DVD project unless they have a minimum 1.5MB file size. If you have files from a digital camera, your Digital Video/DVD content consultant can evaluate them for their suitability for use in your project. RGB scans from a film or flatbed scanner may be suitable; again these must be evaluated prior to use. These can be supplied via Zip disk, CD-ROM, or e-mail, depending on file size. Please refer to the Graphics Files section below for more information.

Graphics Files

A wide variety of file formats exist for graphics. Certain file formats are preferred for certain types of graphics. For example, corporate logos are best provided from vector-based illustration (EPS) programs. Photographic images can be provided in virtually any PC or Mac format (such as TIF, BMP, PCT, PICT, PSD (Adobe® Photoshop® native preferred)).

The DVD Foundry will not accept Word files with embedded graphics, with the expectation that we can produce a stunning high-resolution still image from the embedded graphics. It won’t happen, so please don’t ask. We also cannot accept files saved as GIF or PRN files.

Macromedia® Flash®

Macromedia Flash files can be converted for use in a DVD project. We need the actual .FLA project (timeline) files and all supposting assets. We would be happy to preview your Flash animation and provide you with a determination as to its suitability for use.

3D Model/Animation Sequences

The DVD Foundry can build photo-realistic 3D model stills and animation sequences to illustrate difficult internal processes, or to show the internal function of a product. We can also accept animation sequences output from a number of 3D modeling/rendering software packages. These sequences should be rendered with a straight alpha channel if they are to be composited with live video or other graphics. They must be rendered at the proper resolution and frame rate to support digital video requirements. Please discuss these asset types with your DVD content creation consultant, BEFORE you render them.

Apple® Final Cut Pro®/Adobe® After Effects® Projects

If you do your own video editing and compositing, we can accept your FCP or AE project timeline and audio/video/graphic assets. We will do the final rendering to disk, at the settings required to produce the maximum quality footage for your digital video file or DVD project. This option also greatly eases the issues of file transfer to The DVD Foundry, since professional-level video files are quite large.

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