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Duplication Issues
OK, so my client is freaking out since our duplicating house is having trouble making copies of each dvd in our 4-disc boxed set.
When I authored each DVD-5 disc, I was able to make the TOTAL file size of each disc 4.37 Gigs.
So, the problem is that the duplicator can’t get the discs to copy. After a day of headscratching, they asked another dupe house to try to copy one of the discs. They told me it wouldn’t work there either. So, now I’ve been told that to use professional duplicators, you need to set your disc size to 4.36 gigs MAXIMUM. Even then they won’t promise it will duplicate properly. Of course, I tried to make copies on several of our computer DVD burners (disc to disc copy) and it works without a hitch.
So, my question is: Has anyone heard of this? Should I have known? Do I need to re-author them to a lower size for free? It’s a small run-only 200 sets of 4 so we’re duplicating not replicating. Shouldn’t setting the max at 4.37 have been sufficient?
There’s about 2 1/2 hours of material on each disc so it already looks pretty bad. Going down a few dozen Megs won’t bother me too much. It’s just that everything works great making copies in-house. Does this sound like a problem with the duplicator? At least misinformation? At first they thought I had copy-protected the discs. Well, um, I didn’t.
Thanks for any and all insight. I’m not afraid that it may be my fault, it just doesn’t feel like it is at this point. At least as far as things go with my client.
Jon
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4 Replies
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I think you duplicator is right when he says 4.36GB, I even think it must be 4.35GB to be safe. You should always allow a 5-10% of free room to avoid this kind of problem. Maybe that is not the solution here, but you should try.
Pete
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Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. But, do you think 4.35 is safe enough or should I go down to 4.2 to be safe?
Jon
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Well, I heard some pros going 4.2 as it provides enough room for that kind of problems (often hardware issues and especially for replication). Sure you will be safe with 4.2, but for my experience 4.35 should be fine for duplication. Look at those software that shrink a DL DVD to fit on a DVD-R, they all go down to 4.35GB. I’m not so experienced yet, but that’s what I know for now. Hope it helps.
Pete
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Thanks for the suggestion there. You saved the day for me. Just bought DVD2One for around $60 bucks and it recompresses the disc down to whatever you tell it to. I’m compressing it to 4.30 and it works like a charm! Only takes around 15 minutes per disc on my G5. That’s totally cool. Can’t really tell what kind of quality issues it may have, since the video looks like crap to begin with (told the client to go for dual-layer replication on this one—his reply was to see if we could fit everything onto 3 DVD-5s not 4!)
I’m going to add this to my arsenal for those “grinder” clients.
Jon
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