Choosing the right format depends on your goal. If you simply want to archive the film and be able to easily play it, then DVD (or Blu-Ray DVD) is the best format. Video on DVD will not degrade over time. We use professional DVDs that are scratch proof. These DVDs are 100 times less likely to scratch and will last a minimum of 50 years.

Example DVD Menu: 5 minute chapters Thumbnail picture per chapter Start on any chapter

Editing Formats

We offer the following formats for editing purposes:

Bronze, Silver & Gold Process:  AVI, MiniDV or DVD
Platinum HD Process:  1080 HDV, HD-AVI or HD 4:2:2 SDI Uncompressed Files

Bronze, Silver & Gold Process:

Traditionally, DVD has not been a format that you could edit from. There are some programs that do allow you to edit from the DVD. Pinnacle Studio 12 and iMovie are two of them. Studio 12 can be purchased at computer retail stores like Best Buy or can be downloaded from their site at http://www.pinnaclesys.com.

Editing footage from DVD is acceptable for most of our customers. It is true that DVD is more compressed than AVI files or MiniDV Tape. Most customers would never know the difference and you have to write it out to DVD at some point. If, however, you are looking for the very best quality master to edit from, then we offer the following formats: MiniDV Tape, (Requires you to have a MiniDV Camcorder) and AVI files on an external Hard Drive. You must ship us an external hard drive or purchase one on the order form if you choose AVI files. If you need help calculating the disk space you'll need for the transfer, click here.

You may want to consider getting a copy on a playable DVD in addition to the format you choose to edit from. This way you archive the film and have a format you can edit. If you want to do this, choose the format for editing as the master format and the DVD as the copy format on the order form. Our copies are master quality. We go back to the master file and completely render the video to the copy format. We never make one format using another (making the DVD from MiniDV tape) like many other companies do. So, we charge a little more but the quality will be better.

Platinum HD Process:

HD-AVI master files. HD-AVI files are a good compromise between quality and file size. AVI has been the industry standard for decades and HD-AVI follows in those footsteps. Even though HDV is an industry standard for HD camcorders, the video is highly compressed. We can provide HDV but HD-AVI is a better quality format (is compressed 4 times less than HDV) and is supported in more video editors. In fact, many standard definition editors can read our HD-AVI files and will allow you to write out standard definition DVDs. You can't do this with HDV. In addition, if you are editing on a Mac, HD-AVI files require no conversion like HDV will. If you need help calculating the disk space you'll need for the transfer, click here.

Uncompressed 4:2:2 SDI HD master files. Editing fully uncompressed HD files (1080 lines) requires a professional editing workstation which is why this is typically only ordered by broadcasters or professional post production facilities. The Disk space required for HD uncompressed is 550GB per hour of film. Editing HD uncompressed requires a RAID disk system with a data rate of 200MB/Sec (Start at $5000 - Stand alone internal disks have a data rate of about 50MB/sec). You'll also need an editing workstation with 2 physical Xeon processors (Start at $3000) and an editor that can handle uncompressed HD video (Adobe Preimere Pro - $850). You must ship us an external hard drive or purchase one on the order form if you choose uncompressed HD files. If you need help calculating the disk space you'll need for the transfer, click here.

Writing DVDs.  You will be able to write regular DVDs or Blu-Ray DVDs with either the HDV, HD-AVI or HD uncompressed master files.