The Deathbed Vigil

DVD Recordable Issues

Currently, "The Deathbed Vigil" is sold on recordable DVD. This is, at the moment, more practical for small production runs than glass-mastered DVDs (the kind you buy in the store). Most DVD players and most DVD-enabled computers will play recordable DVDs, but it's not quite that simple. Is it ever?

First of all, there are two competing standards for DVD recordable. The DVD Forum , the industry body responsible for DVD trademarked products, has DVD-R. A second group, the DVD+RW Alliance , has defined an alternative format, DVD+R. The former was originally developed to allow DVD content authors a way to preview DVDs on actual players. The latter format was designed by a consortium of electronics and computer companies to support DVD recording decks, and some computer uses, better than DVD-R does.

What does this mean to you? Hopefully nothing, but in practice, maybe something. Most existing DVD set-top players support DVD+R and DVD-R. My old Pioneer DVD-525 player, made before either format existed, plays both just dandy. But DVD is, in fact, a computer format pretending to be a consumer media format, as most digital things are. Some companies weren't quite ready for software at this level, and the result is BUGS.

Simply put, some players are confused about recordable DVDs. Not many, but some. Your mileage may vary. Since DVD-R is older, some players work with it, but not (or less well) with DVD+R. Since DVD+R discs can present a "DVD-ROM" media code, rather than "DVD-R" or "DVD+R", some players work with them and not DVD-R. You need to know your player. Here's some help:

	Site	Details
	VCD Help	This is a premiere site for VideoCD, SuperVideoCD, and DVD home recording. They have been tracking compatibility for years, for VideoCD, SuperVideoCD, and Video Hacker formats, long before recordable DVDs came along. The reports are from the user community, not the result of professional testing, but they're fairly accurate, and almost certainly include your player(s). Go to VCDHelp...
	Apple Computer	This is Apple Computer's official DVD-R compatibility list. Apple was the first major computer company to ship the Pioneer consumer (general) DVD-R drives, so they have a bit of history here. The DVD Forum itself (the folks behind the DVD/DVD-R/RW/RAM spec) don't seem to enter into compatibility discussions, publically. Go to Apple...
	DVDRW Alliance	This is the official compatibiltiy list of the DVD+RW Alliance, the folks behind the DVD+RW standard. This is apparently the result of their own detailed testing. Go to DVDRW Alliance...
	DVDPlusRW.org	This is an independent SIG for DVD+R/RW use.They have their own tracking list for player compatibility, built from an mix of professional tests and end-user reports. Go to DVDPlusRW.org...

Label Issues

Recently, I've upgraded my printing capabilities, and now produce standard DVD-R discs via direct printing on printable discs, rather than using labels. The result is a more professional-looking DVD which is more compatible across the board than a labelled disc.

At present, I do not have printable DVD+R discs, though I will add them when I find them. It DVD+R is important to you, you can still get it, but it will have either a core label or a mylar full-disc label, depending on the kind of DVD blank I use. The same goes with "premium" DVD-Rs; if these are not available without manufacturer's printing, they get a full label, otherwise I use the core label.

NTSC vs. PAL Issues

The PAL version is now shipping. I think the quality of the PAL conversion is about as good as can be expected, but keep in mind, it's still a conversion. The original was in NTSC, and as such, there's some unavoidable loss of quality in the conversion process. If you're in a PAL country and are sure you can play NTSC discs (all Region 2 DVD players support NTSC playback, but not all PAL televisions will play NTSC, obviously), you may want to buy the NTSC anyway.

The conversion process was a long thing coming. For traditional PAL to NTSC conversion, there's a fairly well established process. First, you run the video at 23.97fps rather than 25fps, then run a 3:2 pulldown, also known as telecine... the same process used to convert standard film to NTSC (in fact, the DVD standard actually allows a 23.97fps rate, known as "NTSCfilm", and lets the DVD player do the pulldown, most videos from film are encoded this way). The pulldown process works by duplicating certain fields (eg, it's an interlaced process) to create 30fps from the 24fps.

However, going the other way, you're going to drop fields or frames that actually contain motion information, if you do something as simple. This doesn't look good -- I tried it. However, some commercial video conversion programs do nothing more sophisticated. I couldn't stand for something that poor, so I looked around. I wound up using a new version of my video NLE (Sonic Foundry's Vegas 4) which had a few new tricks. First, it could do a smooth interpolation between frames or fields, with some intelligence behind it. Second, it allows variable oversampling of the image, going to 2, 3, or 4 frames per physical frame. The intent was to allow a smoother conversion of computer video (often at weird frame rates) to normal video rates, but it wound up working very nicely, doing a much smoother NTSC to PAL conversion. The only real issue: over 8 days of processing time on a 1GHz Athlon system, just to convert the main video. Good thing I have a UPS.