A question about your dvd's???

I have enjoyed all your dvd's and have found them informative and funny.

My question is how long does it take you too make a coaster season dvd??? And how much do you film at the parks as im assuming you film alot more than what shows up on the dvd's??

PS It has been fun watching your kids grow up as the years have went by!!

We film a LOT...but probably not as much as you would think.

On average, I'd say we film about 30-40 minutes per park, which ends up being a 2-5 minute segment on the DVD. I used to film a lot more, but then you realize that the more you film, the more you have to import, and the more you have to edit.

So you kind of get better over time knowing what you will throw away, so you know not to film certain things.

The whole DVD takes pretty much the whole year to put together. This year's was a bit different, though, as we didn't start it until later in the year. I'd say we worked on it from August to December.

--Robb

What editing program do you use? Also do you have a seperate DVD authoring program or is it integrated in the edit software?

I used Pinnacle Studio 9 this year and it was pretty easy. I was able to add music to the menus but couldn't figure out custom backgrounds or easter eggs.

-The Juice

We use Premier to Edit, a different program to compress the files, and another program to author the DVD's! I really can't wait till it gets to the point where you can just drag and drop like with CD's!

Doing more advanced menus, easter eggs, etc...will cost you space on your DVD. We usually don't have that luxury as we cram our DVD's with all kinds of stuff!

Elissa "simplicity is sometimes good" Alvey

Yeah, as crazy as it might sound, I use "My DVD" for the authoring part.

I use this for a number of reasons:

1. It was VERY simple to learn.

2. It was what we started with, so changing over to a new authoring program will be a huge undertaking.

3. and most importantly, since it's so simple in it's authoring, it takes up VERY little room on the DVD. I have toyed around with other programs that allow me to do things like animated menu's, intro movies, etc, but all those things, like Elissa said, eat up disc space. So we chose to have more content on the DVDs than a flashy intro and sexy menus. I hope we made the right choice!

--Robb

I was wondering what program you guys use to compress the files? I find that my videos are getting bigger and bigger and I'm having a hard time e-mailing them (as I want to prepare for the upcoming video contest).

We actually don't use MyDVD to compress, just to burn. I use a program called TMPGE to compress the files. I use the highest settings possible and it takes a good few hours to compress my raw .avi files into what ends up on the DVD.

--Robb

What is the best way to save edited segments to put on a DVD at a later time?

I want to edit as I go this summer and then take all the segments at the end of the year and put them on a DVD. Rather than take 2-3 weeks and do it all at once like I did this year.

Should I save them as .avi files and compress them or are MPEGs better?

-Juicy

Can you put your DVD's in say a Region 4, in Pal for Aussie Purchases, or are they only avaliable in the American Region?

^^ Yeah, just save them off as .avi in the highest quality possible.

^ Our DVDs are not region encoded so they should work in any DVD player.

--Robb

Um Elissa you do realize that all the Apple iApps are completely drag and drop including iDVD... You just pick the video and drag it to the chapter selection portion you want it on and so on... It even has a new feature called one-step dvd that I believe you just drop in a whole movie and it just creates the DVD for you...

http://www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/

Take a look... Seriously if you want Drag and Drop you buy a Mac...

^ Please don't respond to us with the "ummm.....etc" like we're stupid. We know about the system...I've owned Mac's, we know what they can do, but we CHOOSE not to use them.

Now please drop this "mac is better than PC" argument.

--Robb

Ok fine but I am just pointing out that it does exist. The fact is that you can build a DVD with just a simple drag and drop and no one had hit on that at all. I'm not saying that macs are better in any way through this I am just pointing out that it does exactly what Elissa said she wanted. Whether or not you choose to use it the product is out there. That is all I was saying. Please don't interpret my statements as implying anyone is stupid. I am not a good writer nor do I pretend to be and unfortunately it is awful easy for people to take things the wrong way online.

Ok I have a question. Im currently considering making DVD showcasing individual parks. My plan is to do a walk around while doing commentary behind the camera about the park like the history and facts then when im talking about a particular attraction im in front of the camera talking about the coaster. After I finish I film myself walking towards the entrance then it fades away into shots of the coaster (complimented by music) then shows an on-ride segment. I want each video to be about between 45-60 minutes long but that may be hard to pull off at some parks. Any suggestions about how I should pull things off.

Im basically a one man crew and I do the parks primarily by myself...