Whats the most cost effective but professional way to label your DVD’s once they are finished?

[Mike Kujbida]

Printable DVDs, especially Taiyo-Yuden Watershield.
Labels look great on these discs!!

[Don Kimball]

Thanks very much Mike. So it appears that with this type of DVD there is no actual label to stick on by hand but its built right into the DVD surface correct? One more question do I need some sort of adapter for my HP inkjet printer or do I have to buy another printer or how does that work please?

Thanks again Mike!

Don

[Theo Van laar]

You will need a type of printer can handle DVDs. There are may available (and not expensive). Also HP has them.

Theo

[Mike Mihalik]

For small volumes there are several inexpensive choices:

– B/W images and labeling: use LightScribe media and LightScribe capable drives. Costs have come down considerably for drives and media. Takes awhile to burn the label; media can be gold background, and if you can find it, there are other colored backgrounds available. I’ve used this technology for one-off discs for friends and family.

– color images and labeling: many, many $150 or less inkjet printers from HP, Epson, and Canon. Note well: ink costs are noticeable. Look for the printers that are DVD/CD print capable. I have a few from HP, and they work quite well for small quantities. I picked up a few of the printers on sale for $70 – less than the cost of the actual ink cartridges! This is what I used for varsity commemorative videos for my son’s lacrosse team.

If you are steady with your hands and quite the artist, a selection of colored sharpie pens can do a wonderful personalized label

Mike
LaCie

[Jeremy Rasnic]

If you are dealing with larger quantities you may want to look at something like Primera Bravo II disc publisher. Some can burn and print in quantities up to 50 or 100 at a time. This works well for those big projects. I have a Bravo II and bought mine as a refurb off ebay from a reseller. I got it for about half off what Primera was selling it and I still got the 1 year warranty. The thing to watch out for is ink costs as they can get you!

j razz

https://www.jrazzcreations.com

[Terry Esslinger]

Concerning the Lightscribe technique:
I know that one of my computers has a lightscribe burner but I have never used it and cannot remember which one it is. Is there an easy way to tell which burner has lightscribe?

Second, I had problems with discs until I switched exclusively to Taiyo Yuden or Verbatum. How do the Lightsvribe discs compare?

[Theo Van laar]

‘Concerning the Lightscribe technique:
I know that one of my computers has a lightscribe burner but I have never used it and cannot remember which one it is. Is there an easy way to tell which burner has lightscribe?’

Hi Terry,

If your computer has a build-in lightscribe burner, there should be on the outside a logo like this (unless you build the PC yourself):

‘Second, I had problems with discs until I switched exclusively to Taiyo Yuden or Verbatum. How do the Lightsvribe discs compare?’

I have a lightscribe burner from Philips and I’m using lightscribe DVDs also from Philips. I never had any problems with it (in contrast to my first lightscribe burner from Samsung, which only gave problems with Philips DVDs).

Theo

[Mike Mihalik]

As HP licenses the technology to media manufacturers, there is an additional level of responsibility and accountability.

You won’t find sketchy media that is LightScribe compatible.

There is free software at https://www.lightscribe.com that will fix you up with compatible drivers as well as simple labeling applications. As the other poster notes, their typically is a LightScribe logo on compatible drives, but not always.

If you want to be sure without installing any of the software, go to Device Manager in Windows, and locate your drive model number. A quick Google search should reveal the specs and capabilities of the drive.

Mike
LaCie

[Don Kimball]

Thanks to the great material I found on this forum I discovered to my delight that Verbatim DVD-R’s very noticeably improved my finished burned footage. I had previously used Sony DVD-R for years but ran into problems with the image being muddy and with lots of noise on this last batch.

So here is my question: If I move now to Taikyo-Yuden Watershield WhiteFace disks I will be able to print some great labels on the DVD’s but what about quality? Will the Taikyo rival or at least equal the Verbatim’s ability to produce crisp, quality footage? As no one wants just a great label on the outside, they want to watch great footage!

Many thanks to Mike and others here that are kindly offering me a great education on how all of these things work.

Cheers!

Don

[Mike Kujbida]

Not to worry Don as Taiyo-Yuden is consistently rated even higher than Verbatim.