DVD Duplication and Authoring Business - Assignment Example

DVD Duplication and Authoring Business: DVD duplication and Authoring is a technique by which compact disc and digital versatile disc movies are converted into DVD quality pictures and a user friendly interface is added to navigate between various files in the disc. The user interface is visually attractive with a back ground picture and music and contains small thumbnails of the various movies in the DVD. The MAC system is a well designed system that comes with a nice looking monitor and matching external peripherals. As in the Linux system MAC also has a number of pre- listed software to choose from. The hardware in a Mac system is as per company settings. For a PC one can easily assemble a new system and can increase the speed of productivity effectively. With the advent of 64 bit processors and operating system the processing speed is very high. There is more software developed forPC systems compared to that of MAC as the market of MS Windows based operating system is used on a very large scale throughout the world. For these various reasons I prefer PC over MAC. The specification for the computer would be An Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.4 GHz Processor An Asus P5 KPL-AM/PS mother board 2 no’s Zeon 2GB RAM A Hard disc space of 1TB A NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 graphics card 2nos Sony DVD Writers A wide screen monitor for viewing 16:9 formats (preferably Sony) Product - Price Table Product Price in £ Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.4 GHz Processor £ 383.352 Asus P5 KPL-AM/PS £ 42.83 Zeon 2GB RAM £ 30 1TB Seagate £79.85 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 graphics card £425.27 Sony DVD Writers (Sony DRU-700A) £155.42 Sony wide screen monitor £342.35 Software: A visually attractive menu always attracts viewer interest and a good navigation that helps in easy navigation of the system makes the DVD more acceptable to the end users. Using Adobe Photoshop for creating multiple layered menus for the disc is a good idea. Photoshop does a variety of work and gives stunning visual effects. The current version of Photoshop is Photoshop CS4 Extended, and it can help to materialize whatever one thinks of making. The Extended edition is specially made for those who are in the profession of Film, video and multimedia making and authoring. This edition helps in creating visual effects and motion graphics, and Photoshop has been used for a long time by field experts to this end. One of the main features of Photoshop is the online help as a search engine from the application itself. The price for this software is £684.02. If you have an older version of the software, you can easily upgrade it to the latest version for only £ 238.96. (Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, 07.08.2008 ) http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshopextended/ There are two competitors in the field of DVD authoring and copying.: NERO 9 and Cyberlink Power Producer. Cyberlink Power Producer has good user interface and is easy to use. It also provides good readymade templates to be used for DVD authoring. These templates are editable. The disadvantage of Cyberlink Power Producer is that it uses a lot of disc space to create a disc. It is available in two varieties: Standard and Ultra. The extra feature in the Ultra edition is that it can create and author Blue ray discs. The price for the Ultra edition is £ 54.74 whereas the standard edition costs £34.20. (Cyberlink, PowerProducer 5, 11 March, 2009) The drawback of Cyberlink power producer has been resolved in Nero 9. It is among the most popular authoring tools and burners other than the burner provided by an Operating System. Nero provides some basic templates for DVD authoring, and these templates can be easily altered to create a new look. It has provisions for adding or altering back ground images of the menu page and provides a lot of readymade button and frames. The price of this software is £49.29. (Nero Simply Enjoy, Nero 9, n.d,) Though NERO comes with the option of specifying audio output options, we will use a different audio authoring tool for better quality output. For this we will use open source software licensed under GNU General Public License. Dvda-author DVD-Audio authoring software is first of its kind which is freely available at the documentation can be downloaded from for easy use. As the burning process needs a space to keep temporary files to be used as buffer, the 1TB memory space would be enough to run large projects like dual layer burning. Now once a project is over and copies of the DVD are made ready for business, it is required to keep the project intact for future demands or future releases. For single layer DVD movie the size of the project is about 4.7 GB and for dual layer it is 8.5 GB. Keeping a 1 TB external HDD would keep a back-up of 210 4.7 DVD and 105 of Dual layer Movies. Buying 3 external Hard Disk Drives for keeping the back-up will be sufficient initially for a start up business. Price of 1TB external HDD is £135.99, so price of 3 such HDD would be around £407.97. The specification of this HDD is Hard Drive Capacity - 1TB, Photo's Capacity - Up to 322,600, MP3's - Up to 250,000, Digital Videos - Up to 1,000 hours, DVD Quality - Up to 167 hours, it comes with 5 years manufacturer guarantee and is only 3.5” in size, and it connects to computer via universal serial bus. For DVD and CD duplication it is wise to choose dual layer DVDs burner or a blue ray disc burner to stay back in the long run. Blue ray disc is still under progression, so one can buy it later. For a startup a dual layer DVD writer would be enough; Sony DRU-700A is a well tested and has a good user ratings. The price is around £155.42. The specification of the drive is, Writing Speed: DVD+R DL: 2.4X DVD+R: 8X / -R: 8X, DVD+RW: 4X, DVD-RW: 4X, CD-R: 40X, CD-RW: 24X. The dimension of the device is 5.7” x 6.5” x 1.6”. The device can read DVDR and DVDRW at 8x speed, DVD ROM at 12x speed and CD-R/RW at 40x speed. It supports Disc-at-once, Incremental recording, Multi-border recording, restricted overwriting various writing types for DVD ±RW format and Variable Packet, TAO, SAO, DAO, Raw Mode Burning & Over-Burn writing types for CD-R/RW. The supported disc formats are, for DVD, DVD single / dual layer (PTP / OTP), DVD-R (3.9 GB / 4.7 GB), DVD-R multi-borders, DVD+R, DVD+R multi-sessions, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW, and for CD its CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-ROM / XA, Photo-CD, Multi-session, Karaoke-CD, Video-CD, CD-I FMV, CD Extra, CD Plus, CD-R, and CD-RW. HP is a renowned organization for making printers and scanners. So without any hesitation we will go for HP printers and scanners. The HP D7560 Color Inkjet Printer Q8441A, costs about £ 219.07. It has a stylish touch screen and is easy to use. It supports 5 individual inks for better quality picture, and prints directly from CD and DVDs. It connects to your PC through USB and has 3 memory slots for a better performance. The printer follows thermal inkjet technology to print from CD and DVD. VHS or Video Home System runs on magnetic tape. However it is obsolete now with the more spacious DVD and Blue Ray discs in the market. Discs are not only cheaper but also easier to maintain and to handle than VHS. But to stay in the market one still needs to produce VHS to serve those customers who still possess a VHS player. After making a DVD it is easy to convert the DVD to VHS using JVC DVD Player/ VHS Recorder (HRXVC11B). The price of this equipment is £91.29. It is a tuner-free DVD player / VHS recorder with progressive scan and timer-link recording. It converts a DVD directly to a VHS, but it is not possible for the device to copy a protected DVD. Price of a VHS cassette is £5.07. It is manufactured by Sony Corp and its brand name is SONY E180V VHS Premium 180. Price of SONY DVM60PR-BT Mini DV Cassette is £4.98. For recording in digital handycam the recording media is Hi8. Companies like Sony and Panasonic produce these tapes. They are available on various time- lengths dependent. Price of Fuji Film Hi8 MP Camcorder Tape 90min is £5.49. Price of Blank Sony DVD is $45.49, pack of 100 18x DVD-R. Top three brands for choosing video cameras are Sony, Panasonic and Canon. For shooting films a Sony camera would be a good choice as Sony cameras have great picture quality and crystal clear images. A Sony handycam DCR VX2100 Camcorder will be a good solution for this. The video resolution for this camera is 340 Kpix and has a sensor resolution of about 380 Kpix. The horizontal resolution is 530 lines and it has a 3CCD optical sensor. The price of this camcorder is £ 287.57. The next choice is Panasonic HDC-SD9 which supports progressive recording and has the great feature of face recognition. It can produce 5.1 surround sounds. It uses Leica Dicomar lens for a great picture quality and connects to a PC through USB interface. It keeps the recorder media on SD/SDHC Memory Card. The price of this camcorder is £430.97. The next obvious choice of camcorder is Canon. Canon DC21 is priced at about £399.99. It has a 2.2 MP camera with 2.7” LCD screen. It provides 10x optical zoom. This camera can directly write on a DVD-R DL. (You Can Canon, n.d.) https://store.canon-europe.com/store/canoncon/en_GB/DisplayProductDetailsPage/DC21/productID.104587300 The Kodak digital camera tripod costs about £14.93. The tripod is light weight and can extend upto 1.29m when fully extended. When folded it shrinks to 52 cm. it comes with an easy carry bag. The legs of the tripod are hard anodized and are made of aluminium. The legs are 3-way adjustable and are available in two colours- Silver and Black. For lights we will opt for Chimera, which is one of the pioneers in this field. Chimera provides lights with various luminous intensities. For startup Chimera Shallow Video Pro Plus would be a perfect choice. It is very useful in small shooting areas. However Chimera does not sell its products through their web site; rather they have listed a number of dealer names and addresses on their website. The price of a single unit Chimera Shallow is near about £149.60. It produces broad lights upto 500W. Microphones that are to be used are HM-66 Head worn Microphone. This radio microphone is very hardy and can be handled roughly as it is prepared for sports and aerobics industry. This slim device is available in three colours, black, blue and yellow. This wireless microphone is ideal for wireless voice transmission with amplified voice. This microphone is water proof and comes with a condenser capsule that is highly efficient in noise cancellation, helping to avoid feedback noise and interference occurring due to crowd. This microphone costs about £437.00 in British markets. A shotgun and a boom pole will cost near about £66.29. A digital video mixer costs £4,409.10. The brand name is Data video SE-800 Digital Video Mixer. It takes multi format inputs and can produce DV or Analog output. This lets one to add a PC overlay card to take text and graphics as input. Intercom systems for cameras are used mainly for broadcast. It helps in quick communication between the camera man and the director. It uses communication channels based on IP protocol. The connection between all the camera men can be made simultaneously without any interference. Price for such intercom connection with headsets is £110.80. Now the total Cost is: Topic Quantity Rate Amount Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.4 GHz Processor 1 383.352 383.352 Asus P5 KPL-AM/PS 1 42.83 42.83 Zeon 2GB RAM 2 30 60 1TB Seagate 1 79.85 79.85 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 graphics card 1 425.27 425.27 Sony DVD Writers (Sony DRU-700A) 2 155.42 310.84 Sony wide screen monitor 1 342.35 342.35 Photoshop CS4 Extended 1 684.02 684.02 NERO 9 Ultra edition 1 49.29 49.29 Dvda-author DVD-Audio authoring software 1 0 0 1TB external HDD 3 135.99 407.97 HP D7560 Color Inkjet Printer Q8441A 1 219.07 219.07 JVC DVD Player/ VHS Recorder (HRXVC11B). 1 91.29 91.29 SONY E180V VHS Premium 180 100 5.07 507 Fuji Film Hi8 MP Camcorder Tape 90min 100 5.49 549 Blank Sony DVD, pack of 100 18x DVD-R 1 45.49 45.49 Sony Handy cam DCR VX2100 Camcorder 1 287.57 287.57 Panasonic HDC-SD9 1 430.97 430.97 Canon DC21 1 399.99 399.99 Kodak digital camera tripod 3 14.93 44.79 Chimera Shallow Video Pro Plus 3 149.6 448.8 HM-66 Head worn Microphone 3 437 1311 boom pole 3 66.29 198.87 digital video mixer 1 4,409.10 4409.1 Intercom systems for camera operators 3 110.8 332.4 Total: 12061.11 References: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, 2008, [Online] Available at: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshopextended/ Cyberlink, PowerProducer 5, March, 2009 [Online] Available at: http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerproducer/design-edit_en_US.html Nero Simply Enjoy, Nero 9, No Date, [Online] Available at: http://www.nero.com/ena/store-nero9.html You Can Canon, No Date [Online] Available at: https://store.canon-europe.com/store/canoncon/en_GB/DisplayProductDetailsPage/DC21/productID.104587300 Read More