DVDs?

How do you go about making DVDs these days? I haven't even had a DVD/CD burner for a couple of years and last I made a DVD was with iDVD, I think?

Now I want to make one for some friends. Which means buying a DVD burner and figuring out how to do it

If you still have iDVD use that.

I don't, that's the issue

we make our screener DVDs straight from FCPX. one doesn't get fancy menus or anything, but it works very well.

if that's all you need, just use FCPX.

My dream is that nobody ever asks me for a DVD ever again.

I agree, DVDs belong in the past.

But now I filmed something for some friends and thought it would be a nice suprise gift to give them a DVD with fancy menus and a cover and everything...)

Although it wouldn't include the fancy menus ... I find that family and friends appreciate it when I save a video or multi-media slide show to a USB thumb drive. They are very inexpensive these days ... you can even purchase custom folios adorned with your own images that looks very similar to a custom DVD case.

This is results in a higher resolution product with more fine detail ... DVD authoring options just crush a lot of detail ... and it saves them ripping or duping the DVD to share.

For DVDs I use either DVD Studio Pro that came with Final Cut 7 or Encore that comes with the Adobe suite.

If you know anyone with either of these packages it won't be hard to do.

I still get to make around 3 or 4 DVD productions a year and can't wait until I don't have to do it anymore!

And there is always Toast.

Good old Toast. Is that still around?
Since I got my retina MacBook Pro with no CD/DVD I've completely lost track of what's available. And since moving my DJing from CDs to iPad, I haven't had much need to burn things at all.

Regarding USB: I plan on giving them a file as well. It's more the thing of a DVD with cover that they can have in the shelf next to their other DVDs etc that would be appealing.

Make a limited edition cigar box, that comes with a flash drive with the movie on it! Make sure to include at least 3 cigars...
(the box could be something more inline with your movie though... you should probably choose)

DmitriZigany wrote: … It's more the thing of a DVD with cover that they can have in the shelf next to their other DVDs etc that would be appealing.

I'm old enough to remember when CDs started to supersede Vynil ...same argument: Cover-art will never be the same on that tiny boxes!! (in this context: Whom did I 'lend' my book about Roger Dean ...?!)

You can 'individualize' sticks by printing your logo, name, URL onto it … but, again, that is sooooo tiny :blink:

Yeah, 'boxing' for sticks would be a business model .... Like the idea of keeping the DVD-boxes shape&size, but with some 'cartonage' keeping a usb-stick into place ....