DVD Solutions: Planning Your DVD

Getting Started

The process of creating a DVD starts with defining your requirements.

What do you want the DVD to do (promote, entertain, inform...)?
Who are the viewers and where will it be played (computers or home DVD players or both)?
Should the DVD be interactive to allow access to a website, or contain downloadable content (DVD-Rom)?
Do you want the DVD to play automatically when it is inserted into a player, instead of offering a menu selection?
Do you want to offer the ability to access chapters or additional features on the DVD?
Should the DVD be looped so that it will play continuously, for example for use as "wallpaper" at trade shows?
Do you want to secure your DVD content to prevent unauthorized copying or downloading?

Once you've answered these questions, you can start to plan your DVD.

What do you want your DVD to look like?
What assets are to be included?
How much information do you want your audience to receive, and how will they access it?

More Options to Consider...
Depending on the audience, most DVDs take advantage of features such as multiple languages (up to 8), multiple subtitles (up to 32), multiple aspect ratios (16:9, 4:3, letterbox, etc) and multiple chapter features. Enhanced audio options, such as Dolby® Digital or DTS 5.1 surround may be incorporated.

How Much Content?
The amount of material to be presented on the DVD will determine whether it will be a DVD5 (single side, 4.7gb, approximately 130 minutes of video + audio), DVD9 (double layer, 8.5gb, approximately 240 minutes of video + audio) or DVD10 (double side, 9.4 gb, approximately 250 minutes of video + audio). Actual minutes of content will vary depending on the number of other assets included on the DVD as everything takes up space. Through a process called "bit budgeting" - part of the DVD authoring process - our DVD authors will allocate the space required for all DVD assets and designate the highest possible average bitrate for the encoded video streams in order to deliver the best possible image quality.

Once the DVD assets and functions are defined we create a flow chart to map the layout of your DVD.

Content Creation
Post Modern Group has complete HD/SD production facilities on site.

Home video DVD releases, creation of bonus features such as director or celebrity interviews, commentaries, editing of director's cuts, compilation of production stills, etc., can all be handled under one roof—which facilitates project coordination and ensures consistency between the various DVD assets.