Home DVD burning vs Pro DVD replication

[Aaron Marshall]

Warm greetings fellow DVXusers,

I've been in the process of authoring some DVD's lately. My production line goes: Vegas -> export Mpeg2 -> DVD Architect. The DVD's look incredible to me. On some DVD players it skips around and get these digital blocks and hiccups in the signal. It's almost as if you're watching TV on a satellite and a storm is coming in. The problem isn't terrible, just not perfect.

On some DVD players it plays back perfectly. On others, the above problem occurs.

I did some research. A film fest advised me to get it professionally pressed from a master. My question is: What could I purchase to create a DVD product that is closest to a professionally replicated DVD as possible? What is so special about what they use that is better than what I have?

I know in the music biz they make a glass master that actually presses out audio CD's. Do DVD's work the same way? Is it more of a pressing process than a burning process? Is that what makes them superior?

Thanks

 

[Blaine]

Yes, Aaron the replicated disks are "pressed glass", and the duplicated are burned. Replicated disks are more reliable but are also much more expensive until you get up into the 1000s of copies. There are many places that do this kind of work. For example: http://www.discmakers.com/

Norm Sanders would be able to give you a much more in-depth explanation, I'm sure. I'm not sure if he's still in the duplication business, but he was.

 

[Aaron Marshall]

Blaine,

Thanks buddy. I appreciate it. I probably don't have the resources to do a pressing on this project. I don't think it's big enough to warrant it. It's good to know, though. I think I'll stick to my sub par burned DVD's for now. I only need about 10-20 copies.

I almost bet a Plextor drive with Verbatim media would be of fairly high integrity. I'm burning them on my laptop as it is with Maxell and Memorex. It seems like the drive self shakes and probably doesn't burn as well as it could on a solid desktop.