Let's say I've got my movie offline edited and color corrected and the audio is done in surround sound. Now I need to prepare Dolby AC3 encoding and DVD authoring in a final finished product. How much does it cost to do DVD authoring? To encode in Dolby AC3? Any other process I am missing here? Keep in mind this is an indie project.... not King Kong. I don't want to go to a $500 / hour place
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- Thread starter Blade_Jones
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Unfortunately, I have no idea what editing and DVD costs are like these days. Someone else will have to chime in and help you there!
About color correction though...
High end colorists can charge $500 per hour for a client supervised session. Of course, this is exactly what you want to avoid
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The other option would be to see if your editor can do it in his editing software when doing the final online edit process. Most software can do basic color correction and shot matching these days. It isn't as good as a professional colorists work (in part due to talent/experience, the software used - colorists have far, far more control - and the image processing math) but it could be plenty for what you need. Might be worth looking into as you would probably only have to pay the editors rate which I am sure is noticably less.
Aaron
About color correction though...
High end colorists can charge $500 per hour for a client supervised session. Of course, this is exactly what you want to avoid
. The other option would be to see if your editor can do it in his editing software when doing the final online edit process. Most software can do basic color correction and shot matching these days. It isn't as good as a professional colorists work (in part due to talent/experience, the software used - colorists have far, far more control - and the image processing math) but it could be plenty for what you need. Might be worth looking into as you would probably only have to pay the editors rate which I am sure is noticably less.
Aaron
are you authoring it yourself? if yes, what software are you using? As for dolby, most of the editing software will allow you to encode to dobly surround (noting that you already laied the 6 channels correctly and ready to export it into ac3). Premiere Pro allows you 3 uses free befores you have to PAY for the license, FCP I think it's already incorporated, so is Vegas 6.
Most authoring software shouldn't have problem using ac3 audio and let you be listening in 5.1 surround, except for Ulead DVD Workshop 2.0, you have to be VERY careful not to do anything within the authoring software or it would ruin your 5.1 encoding (Ulead tends to 're-encode' your audio within if you have trimmed, change, adjusted the audio level or whatever of the video clip that has the ac3 file), you must and ONLy bring it in and play it back as it is. I know casue I had a 4 days nightmare back then when encoding A Joker's Card until finally I learned what needed to be done to have Ulead DVD Workshop 2 keep my ac3 file intact.
Most authoring software shouldn't have problem using ac3 audio and let you be listening in 5.1 surround, except for Ulead DVD Workshop 2.0, you have to be VERY careful not to do anything within the authoring software or it would ruin your 5.1 encoding (Ulead tends to 're-encode' your audio within if you have trimmed, change, adjusted the audio level or whatever of the video clip that has the ac3 file), you must and ONLy bring it in and play it back as it is. I know casue I had a 4 days nightmare back then when encoding A Joker's Card until finally I learned what needed to be done to have Ulead DVD Workshop 2 keep my ac3 file intact.
Frankly, I'd recommend doing this yourself. After the editing, color correction, and sound editing/mixing are done, DVD authoring is the easy part.
I've been doing my authoring myself using Final Cut Studio. FCP handles the editing. Compressor prepares it for DVD authoring. And everything is assembled in DVD Studio Pro.
If you don't have FCP or a Mac, then your NLE should at least be able to output an mpeg2 version of your video. And since your audio software obviously supports 5.1, you should be able to output an ac3 file.
If you're on a PC, I highly recommend DVD Lab, an inexpensive ($80 last time I checked) but powerful program that lets you build and burn DVDs.
For screener copies, I wouldn't worry about menus or anything like that. Just a straight-up DVD of your movie should do it.
I've been doing my authoring myself using Final Cut Studio. FCP handles the editing. Compressor prepares it for DVD authoring. And everything is assembled in DVD Studio Pro.
If you don't have FCP or a Mac, then your NLE should at least be able to output an mpeg2 version of your video. And since your audio software obviously supports 5.1, you should be able to output an ac3 file.
If you're on a PC, I highly recommend DVD Lab, an inexpensive ($80 last time I checked) but powerful program that lets you build and burn DVDs.
For screener copies, I wouldn't worry about menus or anything like that. Just a straight-up DVD of your movie should do it.
In the UK you are looking at about $4 per minute -- additional costs for design work -- plus the cost of having your glass mastered -- about $800 (although a lot of DVD production houses make the glass for free if you're printing a large enough run -- 1000 copies+)
It's worth knowing that post-production costs are massive in the UK -- so I don't know how much use these figures will be. You can probably cut better deals in the states.
If you are going to do it yourself -- CustomFlix has a really good free guide to DVD authoring
http://www.customflix.com/Resources/TenNightmares.jsp
It's worth knowing that post-production costs are massive in the UK -- so I don't know how much use these figures will be. You can probably cut better deals in the states.
If you are going to do it yourself -- CustomFlix has a really good free guide to DVD authoring
http://www.customflix.com/Resources/TenNightmares.jsp
So there's not much of a learning curve for DVD authoring software? Does this software allow you to place images and what not?
I use Nuendo for audio, and FCP for video. I learned FCP in about 30 days.
I use Nuendo for audio, and FCP for video. I learned FCP in about 30 days.
Blade_Jones said:
If you can learn FCP, then you can learn DVD Studio Pro. Output your movie from FCP using Compressor using the appropriate DVD preset based on the length of your movie. Since your audio is coming from Nuendo, only output the video file.
I'm not familiar with Nuendo, but if it supports 5.1 mixing, then it should output an ac3 file.
You will need to do this regardless of what DVD authoring software you use. When it comes to picking authoring software, they all pretty much do the same thing on a basic level. I like DVD Studio Pro's built-in templates, but I could just as easily use DVD Lab for authoring screeners or any project with custom artwork.
