DVD Authoring
People love videos, and many people love them enough to want to watch videos about the videos they love.
Special features are any additional audio, visual or interactive media that exist beyond the original version of a film on a DVD. These features may be items such as extended versions, director's cuts of the film, audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, documentaries, production stills, cast and crew bios, alternate endings, animatics, interactive games... the list goes on and on. So, if you can dream it up as an added feature, someone somewhere is going to appreciate it. Let's take a closer look at a few common special features you can add to your own DVDs.
Audio Commentary
Audio commentary is an alternate audio track that plays over the film and discusses other aspects of the movie. The typical commentary is the director discussing specific scenes, motivations or challenges. Often you may find commentaries from the actors, special effects artists, editors or even a whole group of people. Audio commentaries have become standard on most DVD releases, partly because they are incredibly inexpensive to do and easy to add.
You can include an audio commentary on your own DVD discs by recording yourself talking about the film as you watch it and adding it as an alternative audio track to the disc.


Director's Cuts and Extended Versions
Many studio releases feature a director's cut of the film as a special feature. Often in the studio system, the director doesn't maintain 100% of the decision-making in the theatrically-released version of the film. Sometimes the director's wishes for the film differ greatly from what the studio releases, and other times it may just be a scene or two - maybe even the ending! DVD is a great place to exhibit this alternate version of the film. Extended versions function in the same way. Often they include footage that editors cut for time purposes or that they deemed unnecessary to the film.
If you're authoring your own DVD, chances are that a director's cut may not be necessary, as no one is probably telling you what you can and can't do. There's always a chance that you might have various cuts of the film that you'd like to share, though, or an extended version. Putting an alternate cut of the entire film on DVD requires another complete copy of your film to play back smoothly. So, if your movie is 90 minutes and the director's cut is 110 minutes, you'll need 200 minutes of discspace. 
Often, a decision like this will force you to make a compromise between compression quality, going from a 4.7GB to an 8.5GB disc or adding an additional disc to your DVD set. It is good to be mindful of these things when your disc is going to duplication or replication, as upgrading disc capacity or the number of discs in your release can be very costly.

A video is divided into three parts- pre-production, production and post production. Pre-production is the first of the three parts you need to consider when producing any type of professional video. Pre-production is a critical part of getting things off on the right foot so be sure to think about calling on the services of a professional video production company such as Greedy Media

Pre-production starts out with identifying the goals and objectives of your video. Your target audience needs to be identified. This is of key importance, as everything from here on in should be done with your specific audience in mind. Are they conservative business people, creative types, or footballer's wives? The tone, the pace, the actors, style, language, music, length, and other aspects of the video production must be geared to the temperament, attitudes and interests of your intended audience.

You also need to consider how much you are willing to spend on this film. If it’s important and you plan to use this production to generate money for yourself or your company, you should expect to spend some money to do it right. Look at it as an investment. For your first production, you may want to use a professional company to produce your video, if it’s really important to get it right.

After you’ve decided on the purpose and goals for your video, identified  your target audience, and considered your budget, the next phase of pre-production involves preparing an outline of the points you want to make. If you’re promoting your business, your outline may consist of identifying your mission, background, products or services you provide, how you can help solve your audience’s problems or meet their needs, testimonials from satisfied clients, costs, distinctions between you and your competition, and any other factors that will convince your target audience to go with your company.

After you prepare your outline, it’s time to go to script. The script is a detailed document that identifies what will be seen and what will be heard and in what order they’ll appear. Draw a real or imaginary line down the middle of a piece of paper. On one side of the page, identify the visuals that will be seen, and on the other side, identify the audio that will be heard for each shot. The more specific, the better.
The script should be as detailed as possible. It should include direction about the shot, whether it’s wide, medium, or a close up. Specify whether it’s a static shot or if dollies, pans, pull outs or other camera moves are involved. The point is that this is the time that decisions need to be made - certainly not on the set when you’re shooting your video. If you wait until you’re in production, people will get impatient and the time will slip away while you’re trying to brainstorm ideas and get agreement on them.
The pre-production stage is also when you hire your actors and crew. Do you want professional actors?  Are you going to have auditions? If so, who will conduct them? 

Have you identified the production crew? Have you seen examples of their work? Have they produced the type of production you want before?

Think about how you will feed everyone on the set as well. Who will get the food? Time is money and people work much better and happier if they’re fed in a timely fashion.

Will you need a make-up artist? What will people wear? Stripes, herring boned patterns and vivid colors are no-nos, as camera doesn’t like any of this and it will cause problems on the screen. 

What will the set look like? Are there multiple locations? Have you figured out the backgrounds for each and every shot? Have you decided who is in each shot? Do you need props or furniture? Who will bring them? Make sure that you visit every site where you plan to shoot to make sure that there aren’t any surprises.

I remember shooting a video at a beautiful location, where I was guaranteed that no one would be around to get in the way of our shooting. I dutifully conducted my site survey and everything looked and sounded fine. Unfortunately, we didn’t hear the airplanes flying overhead when we did our site survey. And we didn’t hear the train that came by every hour. Nor did we hear or see the flock of geese when we were scouting the location. But all of these distracting nuisances were present during our shoot. Fortunately, I had a contingency plan and we had indoor locations identified in advance. Having a plan B is not a bad idea. If you want to be really safe, shoot your production in a studio, so you can be assured of complete control over the location.

Lighting is another consideration. Is the location well lit? Or do you have to supply lighting? If you have windows in the background and the sun is shining in behind the subject that you are shooting, the external lighting will play havoc with your shot. If you encounter this type of shooting situation, you should use gels on the windows to adjust for the color temperature of the light.

What about audio? Audio quality is generally assumed or forgotten about until it goes bad. And when it’s bad, it will be the main focus of everyone’s attention. So you need to make sure people are mic'd properly.

The final matter we’ll discuss is the shooting script. The regular script that everyone is familiar with identifies the sequential or chronological order of your production. However, a shooting script groups the shots according to location. For instance, shots 5, 14, 35, and 95 may take place in the cafeteria. It would take forever and be cost prohibitive to shoot your video in a different location as it sequentially appears in the script. Therefore, all of the cafeteria shots need to be shot at the same time, unless there’s a good reason not to. Grouping your shots will save time, money and patience.

Don’t forget that even though these various shots are in the same location, if they require actors to have different clothes on because they occur later in the video or it’s supposed to be another day for instance, you need to prepare for that too.

These are the major considerations for your pre-production activities. So once everyone has been contacted, told when and where to appear, and everything else has been planned, you’re ready to enter the production phase.
OK. You’ve written your script, got everything approved, organized everything and everyone, and now you’re ready to shoot your video. If you have decided not to use a professional video production company, such as Greedy Media, then here are important tips for the video production stage.

Safety
The first step in the basics of video production is safety. Above all else, practice extreme safety measures in producing a video. Make sure that wires are taped down, that lights have sandbags on them to prevent them from tipping over and other potential accidents are avoided.

Set-up and breakdown
If you’re in an unsecured, public area, do what you have to do to secure your equipment when you bring it to the set and when you’re done shooting. If it requires two or more trips to your car so load or unload the equipment, get someone to help you or at least watch over the equipment until you are around to secure all of it.

Make sure you allocate time to set up, test and break down the equipment on the set. Unless you need the talent or actors on the set early for some reason, and especially if you’re paying them for their time, you can tell your actors to show up later, so they don’t get in the way or become impatient while everything is being readied for the shoot.

The set up period is when you are testing equipment, setting up your lights, doing audio checks, setting up props and signage, taping down cables so that no one trips over them, and performing other activities necessary for the production process to take place.

Conversely, allot plenty of time to break down the equipment and load it into the van, using the security precautions identified earlier.

Lighting
Obviously, you didn’t bring your lights to the set when you did your initial site inspection.  It’s time to light the set. If you want to create professional lighting, you’ll need to take time to light the foreground, background and of course the subject. It’s not as easy as you would think, as shadows seem to appear from nowhere. So bring more lights than you think you’ll need and allot plenty of extra time for this important task. Lights can be rented from video rental companies.

Director
As the name implies, the director directs the production. Generally, the technical people know what to do and won’t need hands-on direction, unless there’s a problem. But the director will direct the actors and orchestrate the production stage, as he or she is responsible for success or failure at this crucial phase of the project.

Remember, there should only be one director. It’s a bad scene (no pun intended) when the director gets into an argument with someone on the set who decides to challenge their authority. So unless it’s pre-arranged for this to be a collaborative effort, just give one person the final decision making power on the set. Otherwise, chaos will reign. The time for collaboration is during the pre-production phase. During this action phase, it’s time to execute the plan, not rethink it. Of course last minute ideas and other matters happen, but
Don’t let them get in the way of sticking to your basic plan and timetable.

Audio
Try to get redundant audio in case a microphone cuts out or otherwise malfunctions and prepare for a plan B if your initial audio equipment doesn’t work for some reason. For instance, if you’re shooting in an urban area with lots of tall buildings and you’re using a wireless microphone, you may get interference. When you’re trying to shoot an industrial video is no time to be picking up the baseball game on your wireless mic channel! So if you have your wired microphone, you can replace the wireless one and save the day.

Above all else, test the audio level of the presenter before the program begins and have someone monitor the audio with headphones and some sort of meter on the camera or a mixer. Ideally you want the audio to go through an audio mixer so the levels can be monitored and adjusted by a person whose sole task is to do this.

Make Up
If you have the budget to hire one, a make up person is indispensable. It is their sole job to see if the talent is ‘shining’ and requires make-up due to sweat, oily skin or the way the light is hitting them. They are also responsible for hair and the general appearance of the actors. When you’re on the set, it’s no time for a bad hair day! The make up artist can also be responsible for wardrobe and making sure all of the little details of the talent’s grooming are tended to. Just make sure he or she understands their responsibilities before the shoot. Of course that goes for everyone on the set.

Camera person
It goes without saying that the camera person needs to know what they’re doing. They need to know about white balancing, making sure the video is focused, knows the type of camera moves the director wants, has a good fluid head tripod for smooth camera moves,  can troubleshoot possible problems, and can otherwise help make the shot look good.

Unless you can re-shoot a scene or a day’s worth of production, you only get one chance to get it right. So having a great production team is crucial. This means that everyone is competent, helps out, leaves any personal problems at the door, and has a helpful approach to the day’s work.

Sometimes a client will hire Greedy Media to do the production phase after they have written the script and done much of the pre-production work. And if the production is done properly, the client may even try their hand at editing the production. There’s no problem with this because unless they somehow ruin the original footage, it’s impossible to permanently goof up the edit. But the production phase is another story. You generally only get one chance at it – especially if it’s a live event.

Often, when Greedy Media is hired for the production phase, we suggest that the client pay us for a few hours to review their script to make sure that the pre-production phase has been properly executed. If we have to scramble to cover up flaws that haven’t been considered earlier, it just makes things more difficult, and the results can suffer. So especially for the first time out, when it really counts, just make sure that you hire professionals to do the work that you aren’t trained to perform. Just take good notes and perhaps you can produce your next video yourself. Or at least handle some of the responsibilities.

After you’ve shot your ‘raw footage’, it’s time to bring everything together into a coherent, entertaining, and motivating program.. If you have decided not to use a professional video editing company, then here are some important tips and recommendations for software.

Since we’re living in the digital age, it’s very likely that you’ll be editing your program on your computer. There are different levels of editing software and since this is about post production editing of a professional corporate video, I focus on the professional program that we use at Greedy Media productions, called Final Cut Pro (FCP). It’s only available on the Mac.

I’ve used Media 100, Premier, Pinnacle, and FCP editing software, and they all operate along similar lines, but we prefer FCP because it gives us more bang for the buck and it has a relatively intuitive interface.

Though we use FCP, we use other software that specialize in particular tasks that are necessary for professional editing and post production. We use Photoshop and Illustrator to create graphics and manipulate still images that we want to import into FCP; Soundtrack Pro and Sound Loops to produce music and sound effects; Live Type for text effects; After Effects and Motion to apply special effects to the edited footage; and Studio Pro to author the DVD’s that contain the programs we edit.

The first task is to get the footage you shot into the computer by digitizing the footage into a useable file format. Typically, the material is transferred to your computer via a firewire cable which goes from your camcorder or ‘source’ deck to the computer. Try not to use your camcorder as your source deck, to feed the footage into the computer, as camcorders have small motors and are not designed to be used as tape players. Buying a player will add to your expense out front, but will save you money if you don’t have to replace your camera because you burned it out using it for something it wasn’t intended to be used for.

When you digitize the footage with FCP, it gets converted into a QuickTime file. This file can then be dragged into the timeline so that you can edit your piece. The timeline is where your video gets displayed and edited. It is the pallet of your video work of art so to speak.

There are a variety of tools you can use to move, cut, slow down, speed up or do other things to the footage. You also have text effects tools, video transitions and a host of special effects to enhance your video. 

Once you have acquired your footage, you can either digitize the footage yourself or have a company digitize it for you. If you go the latter route, the company should digitize it to an internal hard drive of theirs and then transfer it to your external hard drive. Then you can transfer the footage from your external hard drive to your internal drive. 

There are now external hard drives that you can capture and edit to. But unless you have an external hard drive with a firewire 800 interface, play it safe and edit from your internal drive. Not to get too technical, but your external drive needs a serial ATA connection and an IDE or Ultra ATA hard drive that goes at least 7200 RPM to edit video. If you have that combination, you can capture and edit video on that drive with no problems. Of course your computer must have the firewire 800 interface and be fast enough to handle video as well.

Don’t forget to max out on RAM. You never have enough RAM in your computer. And you’ll need it to edit video.

If you’re editing video to an internal drive on your computer, it is recommended that you use one internal drive for your applications, system, etc. and another internal drive for your video projects. 

No matter what drive you use, for optimal performance, and to prevent crashes, make sure you have at least 10% free space on the drive at all times. Internal hard drives are cheap these days, so get the largest one you can. You’ll be amazed at how fast you use up the space.

Let’s talk about the video program itself. People who are new to video editing often go overboard. Don’t go crazy with the special effects, use of wild transitions, or feel that the text you use has to fly in every time. 

Speaking of text, make sure it’s title safe, which is another phrase for making sure it fits within the boundaries of the television screen. Your editing program should have a guide somewhere in a menu that will show you how far the screen extends. When you’re creating text, the boundary can be superimposed over the screen. This tool shows you exactly where it’s ‘safe’ to place text. If the text goes beyond the safe area, it will be chopped off and won’t appear on the television screen.

The final thing I’ll mention is sound. You must make sure that the sound level is consistent throughout the video. The viewer will definitely turn it off if the audio is uneven. It must be consistently loud enough to hear, but low enough to be constant and not startling to the viewer. So no matter how long the program is, go through the entire program and tweak the audio, making it louder or softer where needed. Your program should have tools to do this.