One of my clients has been asked by their DVD replication provider to ensure that all master disks are 'professionally authored'. They have been given no definition of this, but have been asked to check bitrates are low and titling is appropriate (ie all caps, no spaces).
Can anyone help me understand what might be considered 'professionally authored' or not? I generally use very conservative settings for encode (3.7mbps average), and slowest possible burn onto proven disks (Verbatim only) and do not get any problems. Software is DVD Studio Pro and my burner is a Lacie Blu-Ray, via firewire.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
Dominic
Interesting... don't know where the titling thing comes from. I assume they mean the disc title, not titles in the project, and I would say that the bitrate only has to be low enough to conform to DVD specs, which is something in the region of 9800kb/s for combined audio and video. For a replicated disc that wouldn't be a problem for any player. For a duplicated disc one would be wise to keep it a bit lower, but even 8000kb/s should be fine.
I would say professionally authored might include these things:
Authored using a "real" program like Scenarist, or DVDSP, not some cheap piece of shite program that doesn't properly adhere to the DVD specs. (though some would argue that DVDSP's use of an abstraction layer doesn't make it a "real" program).
Masters provided on DLT (though that's a bit old fashioned now) or as DDP images. This will certainly be the case if your client is wanting CSS copy protection.
Bitrate budgeted to fill the disk while not exceeding the maximum allowable bitrate according to DVD specs.
Dual layer discs with valid layer break point...
That's about all that comes to my mind right now...
I recall someone once (here?) had a report back from a DVD Duplication House about their authoring. It included many "errors" in the burned DVD offered for duplication, mainly around file structure, placing on disc, naming and rates. Many things that are often not even manageable on prosumer DVD authoring software - and had never even occurred to me before (like that means anything!) I guess there might also have been an element of the duplication house implying "you should have had us author your disc (at no doubt great expense)"...
Might be worth a search.
Hi
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