Advice needed about DVD workflow on the day

[Mark Suszko]

Well, you certainly are in a pickle. No one technology is going to solve the whole problem.
If it was me doing this, this is what I think I would try:

A rack mount (like the ones musician’s rack their portable audio stuff in) holding an audio and video Distribution Amplifier, a monitor with an outboard select switch so it can see 4 inputs, and four DVD recorders by Panasonic (I have liked using theirs, but you can also go Phillips). And a patch bay or simple routing switcher, all out of the Markertek catalog.

As you shoot each contest, you run a firewire or more practically, a composite video feed to one of the four DVD recorders in the stack. You still roll tape in-camera for later editing. If you buy the version of Panasonic that also has a hard drive, you have back-up master recording there as well, a nice feature.

As one competition finishes, you hit the stop and “finalize” buttons, then select the next recorder in the stack to accept the same live feed from the camera. A push-button router makes this far simpler than plugging cables into a patch bay.

By the time you have reached the fourth machine in the stack, the top one has finished finalizing and the disc is ready to hand off and a fresh blank ready to insert and go… For a nice professional-looking finishing touch, an assistant with a laptop and printer setup could inkjet the program title and other info onto the disk and a blank sleeve before handing it out. Delay from end of skate session to into client’s hands: not more than 40 minutes, perhaps as low as 20. If a customer comes running back and absolutely needs one more dub, you can take one of the four machines out of the rotation, and burn another copy from it’s internal hard drive to DVD-R, somewhat faster than real time.

The ironic thing about these recorders burning to DVD-R is, the longer the recording, the shorter the finalizing step. I have found if the program is fifteen minutes or less, finalizing takes 15 or so minutes. If you filled up over an hour, it’s like five minutes or less to finalize.

The racked stack of recorders can also be turned-around and used to dub as many as 4 at a time (feeding tape out of the camera to all 4 at once thru an audio/ video DA) in real time, but I don’t envision that being done too often. What you MIGHT do though is, record to two DVD recorders at once, then pop the second copy into a DVD dubbing tower with as many drives in the stack as you can afford, to be able to turn out maybe ten identical dubs or more per hour. But it sounds to me like your business model is more along the lines of one or maybe two copies of just one little segment of the show for people interested in their own famiy’s competitor, and those that want the entire shebang would be willing to wait until you get home and edit/author a more comprehensive product. This is not unlike a number of setups for events that share simillarities to yours: horse riding competitions, pageants, depositions, drag races, that sort of thing.

This would be far easier to do with an assistant, who could take the money and orders, plus oversee the units and keep them fed and the proper buttons pushed at the proper times, but I think a single person with great concentration, organization, and bladder control could handle it single-handed.

Best of luck, let me know what you wind up doing.

“Oh, you wanted to RECORD that?”

[Kevdsn]

Thanks Mark, that was very helpful.

I do have an assistant that works with me on a sales desk, she would be the one operating the duplicator, in view of your advice I am now thinking perhaps I could do this with 2 DVD recorders, if I had one and sent her the un finalized DVD my thought is she would have plenty of time to finalize the DVD in her machine (same as my recorder)before doing the duplicates, I have never tried this so not sure if it would be efficient in practice, but I have to keep it as simple as possible.

Any recommendations on DVD writers with firewire, or does it not really matter.

Many thanks once again for your full comprehensive reply, it is much appreciated.

Best regards

Kev

[Mark Suszko]

Have never used them with firewire, just composite SD video.

[George Socka]

My Philips recorder finalizes +R in less than a minute after recording 30 minutes. If I use +RW, then there is no finalization, and the disks seem to play well in run of teh mill newish players.

[George Socka]

My Philips recorder finalizes +R in less than a minute after recording 30 minutes. If I use +RW, then there is no finalization, and the disks seem to play well in run of teh mill newish players.

[13]

[George Socka] “If I use +RW, then there is no finalization, and the disks seem to play well in run of teh mill newish players.”

I would never give a unfinalized disc to a client, especially a RW, You will run into all sorts of problems with them trying to play it.

[George Socka]

Are you sure about that? My recorder does not even provide a finalize option if it is loaded with a +RW disk ( whereas a +R and -R disks do provide the finalize option) – and it appears to me that the concept of finalize does not exist in the DVD+RW world. YMMV

[13]

The reason I say that is because many DVD players out there will not play a RW disk. And if you give a disk to a client that they can’t play then it doesn’t matter that they are using an older DVD player you are the one that looks bad. It just leaves you open to to many potential problems and additional work, and possibly loosing a client because the DVD didn’t work when they needed it to.