[Matt Townley]

Hi Prashant – my company offers BD duplication and basic authoring. It sounds like you may be looking for more complex authoring than what we offer, but I’d be happy to work with you on the duplication/packaging side.

Thanks, and good luck with your project.

[Matt Townley]

Hi Kathie,

I agree with what Jon said that it can sometimes be beneficial to work with someone in your local market, but that’s not always the case.

Our company is located in CA about 45 minutes outside San Francisco and we provide duplication and replication to clients all over the world.

Feel free to check out our website for pricing and other information and feel free to give me a call or email me directly if I can be of any help.

https://www.mstproductions.com
matt (at) mstproductions dot come

Best,
Matt

[Matt Townley]

Agreed. Rimage charges a huge markup on their drives.

One thing that you have to be careful of if you go with your own drive is the extension of the tray. Drives made for use in autoloaders extend out a bit further than normal to work properly with the robotics. I think this is something that can be controlled via firmware, but I’m not positive.

You might try asking your Rimage VAR about this. There are a couple guys at the company I use for service and sales that know the in’s and out’s of this stuff and they have helped me with all of my upgrades.

[Matt Townley]

[Nick Griffin] “make sure it’s a client who is worthy of the back flip.”

I couldn’t agree more with this. I have a 3 of 4 clients that have been consistent clients for many years. Not only do they have regular projects, but because of that, I have gotten quite close with them. I can count on them for routine work, and with that they get certain privileges that other clients don’t necessarily get. They don’t get charged for every little thing I do for them (doing a quick re-encode, sending out a rush proof of something, making a minor change, etc) but it’s more than worth it in the big picture because they don’t grind me on their projects and they always come back.

One client in particular is an international humanitarian organization. They travel and often need things while they are in different time zones around the world, which means it’s not unheard of for my cell phone to ring at 2am in the morning….or while we’re on vacation. I do my very best to accommodate their needs whenever and wherever possible, and my wife is incredibly understanding that it’s worth this little sacrifice, but at the same time, this is the rare exception and the majority of clients don’t get this treatment.

It’s important to have boundaries. It’s hard to keep them up, but they are crucial to avoiding premature burnout.

[Matt Townley]

Check Rental Express. https://www.rentvideo.com

I have used them to rent various cameras and decks over the years and know them well. They’ll take good care of you and have a pretty wide/diverse selection.

They just moved their offices/warehouse this past weekend, so make sure you get their new address if you go with them.

[Matt Townley]

Are you doing your MPEG2 and audio encoding in something like Compressor or BitVice? Or are you just dragging QuickTime/etc files into DVDSP and letting it do the encoding?

If you are letting DVDSP do the encoding, I would suggest doing it manually in something like Compressor so you have more control over how your space is used.

[Matt Townley]

I have been using equipment from a company called ILY Enterprises for a few years now. I have several of their towers (CD/DVD, Blu-ray and USB) and have been really happy with them.

Ours are running more often than not, so we throw a lot at them and they have held up well. They even have decent technical support over the phone and once replaced a controller board for us on a product that was out of warranty. Might be worth taking a looksy.

[Matt Townley]

It’s not a cheap (or perfect) solution, but take a look at the Rimage Professional series or Producer series of products. (https://rimage.com/products/professional-series/5400n.html)

I’m not sure if jobs can actually be submitted through a browser, but I know that a software client can be installed on LAN workstations that all publish to the single machine for encoding, burning and printing.

We have a few of the Producer 7100s here and I have a love/hate relationship with them, but they do some things really well. Warning: if it’s made by Rimage, I hope you have deep pockets.

[Matt Townley]

Web-based as in LAN deployment for many local users or web-based as in the cloud for worldwide usage?

[Matt Townley]

Hi Mark,

We do a fair amount of Blu-ray Disc duplication and seldom hear about problems with compatibility. I think the biggest concerns are about the difference in the format of BD-R and BD-Rom/replicated Blu-ray Disc.

Keep in mind that right now, Blu-ray Disc is quite a bit different than DVD, in that the duplicated format is very different than the replicated format. Not only is the process of getting the content onto the disc different, but the features and options available when authoring them are different.

Currently, you cannot copy-protect a BD-R. With what I think are very few exceptions, you cannot use BD-Java on BD-R discs. There are some other limitations too, but those are typically the biggest things that I see as restraints when comparing the two.

If you are careful to encode your video assets well and in spec, and author the Blu-ray well, and in spec and do some testing up front with your master, a duplicated BD-R should have high compatibility across the majority of players on the market.

Even some replicated Blu-ray Discs still have problems. I am going back and forth with Netflix right now trying to trouble shoot why the Mad Men Season 1 Blu-ray Discs don’t load on my LG-BD390. They have sent multiple discs, and they all have the same problem. Sometimes it just happens.