[Shvr]

Well, once the cops called me, I just passed the matter off to the producer because I was working for him. The production did have permission to shoot in town because much of the shooting took place in this very same park and at the beach – whether this was a blanket shooting permit or not I can’t say.

[Shvr]

Thanks for the links and feedback. I learned a good lesson with this one: Avoid getting kids in your shot and don’t give out information to kids (especially with your business card) because they are likely to get the story wrong. And sure enough, this 12 year old kid appearently went home and told his mom that I was “stalking” them and taking their pictures, at least that is what the police told me today after they called and inquired about the whole thing (the mom had called the police first, and it took them a couple days to follow up with me.)

I put the cops in touch with the docs producers and they have sorted the whole thing out with the mother this evening. The mom gets a free DVD of the doc and the shot stays in!

For my part, I was accused by the mom for being defensive and not sensitive to her concerns when she talked to me initially. I may have been. But I feel like I was caught in the middle here. I should have just referred her to the producers to begin with.

[Shvr]

Try Ritek or TDK discs. I’ve never used memorex DVDs before, although I have used their audio tape products with no problems in the past.

[Shvr]

Don’t dismiss DVDit Pro from Sonic… it’s not the same Program as the old DVDit. This is what DVD Producer has evolved to and it comes bundled with eDVD, which quite a nice package for 400.00.

Check it out here:
https://www.sonic.com/products/Professional/dvdit/dvditPro/quicklook.aspx

I just upgraded from DVD producer and I find this program extremely easy to use and powerful.

Hope that helps

[Shvr]

Can’t you just create a 16:9 comp in AE, scale the image in AE and until left and right edges are max and then you’ll have a slight letter box at the top and bottom – something like 720 x 464 (1.20 pix ar) would seem to be the right size. The letterboxing will happen naturally.

[Shvr]

Can’t you just create a 16:9 comp in AE, scale the image in AE and until left and right edges are max and then you’ll have a slight letter box at the top and bottom – something like 720 x 464 (1.20 pix ar) would seem to be the right size.

[Shvr]

Older set top players will have problems with burned DVDs. In my experience, players that are older than 4 or 5 years generally are a crapshoot – maybe only 70% (wild guess) will play a burned DVD. Newer players – different story. I burn mostly DVD+Rs, and I can honestly say that I get about a 95% or better compatibility. THe trick is to keep your bitrate in check and burn on high quality media – Ritek, HP and TDK etc.

[Shvr]

I the meantime – use a disclaimer: This DVD is optimized for Television Viewing using a 16:9 (or 4:3) display. CYA!

[Shvr]

Hmm – I hear you, but I’m not sure interlaced video is your problem. As a test, I’ve played several of my DVDs I’ve authored with interlaced footage on various players: Cineplayer, Cyberlink PowerDVD and DVD Express (one of the worst and oldest players out there) and all of them displayed the video with no interlacing artifacts.

However, I did notice a diffrence in how the players handled stretched (or full screen) video – in my case stretched to 1280 x 1024. Sonic looked great, DVD express looked horrible, especially displaying fast motion – lots of artifacting – blockyness etc.

If this is happening to your clients DVD, providing a non-interlaced version may not be the solution. IT could simply be a matter of scaling the image too large.

Don’t mean to be a dog with a bone on this, but I’ve never had anyone complain about interlaced footage probs while watching one of my DVD on their computer – I have heard interlaced complaints on raw MPEG streams and AVIs (usually when sending a test clips to a client) but these always went away when watching the finished DVD with a SW player.

[Shvr]

I’ll defer to Noah, but my understanding is that most good software DVD players will automatically de-interlace the video. I use Sonics Cineplayer, and it looks great with NTSC video. It also interpolates the video for displaying larger than 720 x 480.