Tuesday, October 25, 2005
So you want to be in movies?
It's been a hell of a night. OARBS recently released a promotional video which is essentially a 3 1/2 minute intro to our product. A principal we are working with wanted 20 copies on a CD to hand out to his colleagues, use at board meetings, et cetera.
Sure! we cried. No problem! we cried.
Sounds easy, right? Make video, put on CD, mail to guy.
For the uninitiated, let me list the things which can go wrong when you try to make a CD that is: easily distributable, looks pretty, starts automatically, and is embedded into a nice webpage.
LABELS on the CD face
a) Your label paper is not of heavy enough stock to cover up the underlying paint on the CD face. Printed colors look uneven -- some are darker than others due to the underlying paint.
b) Your labels do not cover up the innermost ring up the CD's face. You can see blue where all you should see is white.
c) You don't have a printer-quality version of the client's logo. The printed label looks fuzzy.
CD FILE FORMAT
a) ISO 9660, Joliet or HFS? Two of them are right, one of them isn't.
b) Multi-session? Finalized disc? You might be limiting which computers can play these CDs.
CD CASE
a) Spindle? Compact, cheap to mail. But then the recipients get naked CDs, which scratch easily.
b) Sleeves? Convenient for the distributor to carry around, but don't look professional.
c) Slim jewel cases? Expensive (80% of the total cost), and a pain to ship.
AUTORUN
a) Oops, did you forget to include the Autorun.inf file which causes the video to automatically launch? Abort, retry.
b) Are your clients' computers set up to enable Autorun? All drives, or just CD/DVD media? Doesn't really matter - you lose either way.
MOVIE CODEC
a) What codec are you using? Is it supported on a stock install of Windows XP? (Tip: DivX isn't.)
WEB BROWSER
a) How are you embedding the video? Is it Firefox compatible, or just IE compatible?
b) Are you compensating for the fact that the Media Player embedded control needs an extra 40 pixels of height? If not, your video will look squished.
As we are rapidly learning, nothing is as easy as it seems.
Sure! we cried. No problem! we cried.
Sounds easy, right? Make video, put on CD, mail to guy.
For the uninitiated, let me list the things which can go wrong when you try to make a CD that is: easily distributable, looks pretty, starts automatically, and is embedded into a nice webpage.
LABELS on the CD face
a) Your label paper is not of heavy enough stock to cover up the underlying paint on the CD face. Printed colors look uneven -- some are darker than others due to the underlying paint.
b) Your labels do not cover up the innermost ring up the CD's face. You can see blue where all you should see is white.
c) You don't have a printer-quality version of the client's logo. The printed label looks fuzzy.
CD FILE FORMAT
a) ISO 9660, Joliet or HFS? Two of them are right, one of them isn't.
b) Multi-session? Finalized disc? You might be limiting which computers can play these CDs.
CD CASE
a) Spindle? Compact, cheap to mail. But then the recipients get naked CDs, which scratch easily.
b) Sleeves? Convenient for the distributor to carry around, but don't look professional.
c) Slim jewel cases? Expensive (80% of the total cost), and a pain to ship.
AUTORUN
a) Oops, did you forget to include the Autorun.inf file which causes the video to automatically launch? Abort, retry.
b) Are your clients' computers set up to enable Autorun? All drives, or just CD/DVD media? Doesn't really matter - you lose either way.
MOVIE CODEC
a) What codec are you using? Is it supported on a stock install of Windows XP? (Tip: DivX isn't.)
WEB BROWSER
a) How are you embedding the video? Is it Firefox compatible, or just IE compatible?
b) Are you compensating for the fact that the Media Player embedded control needs an extra 40 pixels of height? If not, your video will look squished.
As we are rapidly learning, nothing is as easy as it seems.
Comments:
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Any reason why you guys didn't use Video CD? It would also play in DVD players and I think Windows Media Player has built in support for them (not sure). Although I don't know what the root file structure looks like, so that might be scary if they don't have Autorun. But if they know how to play a DVD...
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# posted by 
: 10:14 PM
: 10:14 PM << Home
