(Wedding) Film Delivery Discussion, (Future of DVD/BluRay?)

The bulk of our business is wedding films however we do just about everything from commercials, interviews, promo films, to where we have worked on a tv show as well. All of these we have mainly delivered either via Dropbox or other electronic delivery, (.mp4 on a DVD, thumb drive, etc.). Seeing now that Apple hasn't even included a disc drive in the new iMacs and of course the continuing increase in cloud, or electronic delivery for movie rentals, music, etc. It would only make sense for me to begin delivery of media on a thumb as well for our wedding clients. However... I don't think they are quite ready for that? Am I wrong? I suppose i could ask what the preferred delivery would be for them in the consultations we have. I would jus have to find a "cutsey" way to package as we have with DVD's. We have grown in the last couple of years and although we obviously film with HD cameras...I've been using DVD Studio Pro...which is only Standard output. Nobody has complained, quite the contrary, yet I just want full HD for them. Anyways...I ramble... Please discuss.

I don't do wedding videos myself, but I cannot wait for the day that I no longer have to burn and deliver a DVD SD quality. Unfortunately many of my clients still request them. I would by far prefer to deliver a high resolution media file which more suitably showcases the quality of ones work, but those pesky DVD requirements still exist for me.

I am also finding that with the price of video projectors dropping, some clients are choosing to use them being fed from a laptop to display their in-store video productions. As well, many are now using inexpensive large flat panel LCD's and LED TV's either fed from laptops or attached thumb drives for local signage, etc.

The bottom line here is that more display options with content being delivered via internet, flash drives, PC's and laptops are numbering the days for DVD production.

DVD data disks are still a big delivery method for me to get my clients their MP4 media file, but playback of that file is usually happening through a computer.

Having said that, since I do a lot of government work, many of my deliverables are mastered to DVD Video since they need to be shipped to local offices and departments nationally. But I have seen the recent move to these groups requesting media files for playback on their internal network servers....which makes my life easier.

From your wedding standpoint it seems you'll need to convince the happy couples that a higher quality master file that they can play on their mobile devices, laptops, post on websites, etc. is more functional and practical than popping in a low quality DVD and sitting in front of the TV.

PS.....VHS took forever to kill.

Thanks, Dan. I know it will be a slow process, however, I would be more than happy to take up the charge here in our lil area. I would love to deliver on a monogramed thumb drive in a nice custom case. However, and I've searched this topic many times, how does one get an electronic file to behave like a dvd? Menus and such? Then to be playable across Windows and Mac. Seems I've tried in the past and just couldn't get it to work. I'm sure it's simple and probably just missing a key step or something.

Otherwise Dropbox has been great for us. Most of the people we've worked with love an .mp4. Then when i tell them I can send it online in their own lil folder they love it more. That and it gets me a lil more storage as well!

Well you can add chapter markers now in FCPX and those should translate across in Quicktime. I did one project in legacy FCP that had 13 sections the client could jump to and it was a .mov file. What I haven't tried was changing that extension from .mov to .mp4 but I believe this would work as long as the file is opened in Quicktime. The lower right near the play bar would have sections you can label and then select to jump directly to that point in the video.

I've had about 100% success exporting H.264 full resolution for PC users and Mac users alike. I've not touched a DVD delivery in almost two years now. iDisk worked great for me, and now I'm on DropBox. DropBox doesn't have the security iDisk had, but it's very close.

I know local videographers who are offering to deliver Blu-Ray DVD (via Toast or Adobe) as well a iPhone and iPad/Apple TV versions. I know one guy up north who will convert to any mobile device you have, as well as TiVo.

I think you should start working on a model for selling these "alternative" deliverables, and let them catch on over time. But your clients will need education, write up a nice PDF about each format and how to get it onto your devices.