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-   -   The 4 Kinds of Hobby DVDs Projects (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-workflows/572-kinds-hobby-dvds.html)

lordsmurf 08-29-2005 09:39 PM

The 4 Kinds of Hobby DVDs Projects
 
I've had people asking me lately why some projects take longer than others. It's really simple, though most people do not seem to understand the difference in how sets can be made.

There are FOUR WAYS to make a set:

(1) OFF AIR WORK
This is the easy one, it should be idiot-proof. Directly record tv shows to DVD, or capture with a capture card. The quality does not get any more perfect than this, assuming you don't use garbage media or use stupid settings. People tend to make discs after enough episodes can fill a disc. All you need is a good capture card or DVD recorder (used to be VCR). This is fast work, and you only do a couple per week in most cases (a bit more for daily shows).

(2) PERSONAL TAPE WORK
This is not trade tapes, but rather original recordings you made yourself, or are borrowing from somebody else. These are so good, they typically do not need any filtering, or minimal filtering. You can usually scrape by fine on a good VCR, a good DVD recorder or capture card, and maybe a TBC sometimes. This is ONLY slowed due to the fact that tapes are being captured realtime.

(3) DEGRADED/IMPERFECT TAPE WORK
This is where you need a stack of hardware, a bunch of software, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of time and patience. If you don't have these things, your project will look like crap. This is usually when you make sets from old traded tapes or copies of master work. This is the glut of my work, as I specialize in restoring video from older tapes or imperfect tapes. One episode can take days to re-work, so this is super slow.

(4) RE-AUTHORING
This can be both useful and retarded. If you're re-creating a set from other sets, or repairing another set with your own better source, good job. Also good for getting rid of illegible menus or fixing authoring errors. However, if you're merely replacing menus so you can claim the set as your own, you're a moron. This is often a day project. Maybe more if the errors being corrected are really bad or numerous.

markatisu 08-29-2005 10:06 PM

Good definitions, I think you hit the nail on the head because this is what 95% of people just dont get:

"This is ONLY slowed due to the fact that tapes are being captured realtime."

MOST of my work is #2 and #3, I leave the off-air stuff for others unless I am really a fan of the show. Most times I have encountered that 2 & 3 are usually part of the same project which just extends the time even further

But in basic rundown this is not a simple thing, not to achieve the results we personally set for ourselves

Meaning you have to sit and record each 30min episode then edit each 30min episode. A run of 65-130 episodes of 30min a piece is going to take at the minimum = 1950-3900 minutes (32.5-65 hours to complete a series) and this is JUST basing it the issue of tapes that need NO 1)Audio and 2)Clean Edits (meaning all commercials are in tact), if not you have to hunt for the small 3-6 second commercial blips that people have because they attempted to cut out commercials

And since most of us have jobs fitting 32-65hrs of work is something that can take 2-4 months even at 1hr a day so it should not ever be questioned on why it has taken 4-6 months to finish a set from start to finish unless you have A)No Life because this is a hobby and I have never understood the rushing aspect of it, you want to churn out crap then go ahead and do it but dont expect others to follow suit if they care about the source material

Copying DVD's is one thing, making sets from either TV or previously recorded material is quite another

wigam 08-29-2005 11:09 PM

It shouldn't take more than 4 months to make a set :)

debwalsh 08-29-2005 11:17 PM

I'm surprised at how many people put shows on DVD and don't bother to edit out commercials at all. I have occasionally put material on disc for family with commercials at their request, but then I go back and edit the material to remove commercials before adding the series to my collection. And then there are the discs that are just tape dumps, where the person making the discs didn't use any of the DVD recorder's functions to separate episodes into even blank menu items.

Using the Panasonic hard drive for editing, I first record each episode individually in real-time to the hard drive, then edit out the commercials and clean up the teasers and tags. Once there are enough edited episodes, I record them to disc real-time. So even with simple conversion projects, a single disc is at least a day's work.

tobal2 08-29-2005 11:43 PM

I agree that there are many impatient people on the 'net when it comes to CREATING/AUTHORING sets... too many times they expect it to be as fast as copying a disc.

Another aspect that can easily double the amount of time spent on a project is in encoding the episodes. LS and I were just talking about this recently. With so many "quick and dirty" methods of compression to fit large amounts of data onto dvd-r's, if you're not familiar with your software (or just use cheap sw to begin with) you'll produce bad quality sets anyway (i.e. not properly encoding sets where there are 4 hours of video on each disc).

Too many people think it's OK to record everything in 4 hour mode on their VCR's and DVD recorders without giving any consideration to the finished product... then they don't even edit the commercials or bother to give them decent titles. If you're going to spend that much time recording it, why not just do it right to begin with??

markatisu 08-30-2005 12:13 AM

I agree Ron especially if you are using a capture method like my Matrox RTMac card which I use for harder projects that for one reason or another dont just fly into the DVD Recorder, it can take anywhere from 8-16hr per 22min of encoding to get a real quality result when doing that and then that does not count the time it takes to encode the PCM audio into AC3 after removing hiss, etc that usually accompanies those projects.

For instance that Droids disc I sent you took approx 21 hours of encoding time, 2 hours of sound restoration and 1hr of authoring spread over a 2 week time frame for just 3 episodes but I think the result of worth it and shows what care can do for a set

Understanding the methods you use and the limitations or benefits of your hardware is another aspect. Live action should not be done at 4hr mode where as cartoons are more lenient, especially as you go back to earlier toons. Using 4hr mode for live action is almost akin to using XP/1hr mode for a Justice League episode, its not going to provide a GOOD result, while the XP mode may look good its seriously bloating and overkill where as 3hrs would have produced almost the same result. On the flip side 4hr live action is most often going to look pixellated vs say top 352x480 or most DVD recorders SP modes which will keep the image looking nice

wigam 08-30-2005 12:25 AM

I've come across collectors who are more interested in getting the shows with commercials than the shows themselves. How many people like watching commercials during their favourite programs?

MOTUfan 08-30-2005 12:55 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by wigam

I've come across collectors who are more interested in getting the shows with commercials than the shows themselves. How many people like watching commercials during their favourite programs?
Personally I don't it interupts the flow of a show.

Brent

debwalsh 08-30-2005 06:43 AM

There are different kinds of collectors. I'm on a Salvage 1 list where there have been several projects to put together a set of episodes - each time, the "team leader" has been pretty much driven off the list by insane people. It's one of the nastiest fandoms I've ever encountered, for one of the most fun SF shows of all time, IMHO. Very strange. Anyway, there was a seriously acrimonious dispute over whether the set should have original commercials or not. A lot of folks who style themselves as "serious collectors" wanted the episodes as they'd originally been broadcast, and would accept nothing less than all the original commercials. Others wanted something more like a DVD release (I tend to be in that camp). The two groups were mutually exclusive, and at one point, people were demanding the group making the discs make two completely different sets of discs.

This has been going on for over a year. I have yet to see an actual set of episodes out of this group, although I did contribute material over a year ago.

battle7 08-30-2005 09:08 AM

Quote:

quote:I've come across collectors who are more interested in getting the shows with commercials than the shows themselves. How many people like watching commercials during their favourite programs?
not me, unless its a commercial pertaining to the show in which I am watching, ie; a toy commercial for the show or something of the sort, but these clips should be saved and put at the end of a set for extras to compliment the set.

And not to mention, most set creators usally tend to be working on more than one project at any given time.


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