BetaMax, VHS or VHS-C, 8mm, Hi-8 and Digital-8, MiniDV and DVCAM tapes transferred to DVD. Turn aroung time is 1-3 days for a two hour tape. You can also bring your camera if it has a hard drive or the memory stick from your digital camera and we'll download from that. The book that came with your camera, plus camera software and cables would be helpful. Multiple tapes can be combined onto a single DVD at no extra charge, up to a total of two hours.

Transfer of material from any video source to client supplied external hard drive: $15.00 per hour. Each hour of video requires approximately 14GB of memory.

DVD Mastering and Duplication Rate Source Length DVD Master Copies (ea) 30 minutes $10.00 $10.00 60 minutes $20.00 $10.00 90 minutes $30.00 $10.00 120 minutes $40.00 $10.00 Includes disc with printed artwork, menu with basic chapters if appropriate, protective box.

Menus Region Codes About DVD-R and DVD+R Mail Order Form

DVD Menus

Basic menu authoring is included in the price of your DVD. Our DVDs are usually created with a title page, consisting of a background and an appropriate picture from your tape or a text icon, although this may not be appropriate in some situations. Click on the picture or text and your DVD begins. If no title page is used your DVD will auto-start shortly after being inserted into the player.

We can also include 3-5 chapter stops on your menu, at no extra charge.

For example: you've brought in three thirty minute tapes to have transferred to DVD. You ask us to create a separate item in the menu -- a chapter stop -- for each of the three tapes.

In the example above you could click on the text description for each tape and jump to the beginning of that section of the DVD. This can also be done using pictures for the buttons. We do this without charge, for your convenience.

Complex menus can also be created.

You may wish to be able to move through the segments of the DVD internally, the same way that you can jump from one track to another on a music CD. In order to do this, we must locate each point that you identify and "author" (create) a second menu, linked to the buttons on the first.

In the example above, clicking on any of the phrases in the menu on the left plays an entire tape. Clicking on the yellow "Chapters" button calls up the sub-menu to the right. In the sub-menu, each tape is divided into three chapters, which can be accessed randomly. There is also a button enabling return to the Main Menu.

The ability to create linked sub-menus is virtually limitless, making the DVD an excellent medium for training materials as well as for family tapes and for archiving materials such as photos, slides and film transfers.

Since authoring complex menus is time-consuming we charge at the tape editing rate of $80 per hour for this service. To keep costs down it is essential that you plan your chapter breakdown and linking carefully before bringing your tapes in to VideOccasions for transfer to DVD.

Be sure to consult with us regarding the numerous possibilities available for creating your DVD, from a simple title picture to more elaborate menus.

Region Codes

"Each DVD-Video disc contains one or more region codes, denoting the area(s) of the world in which distribution and playback are intended" begins a Wikipedia article discussing region codes in detail. For the curious it's an excellent reference.

The region code for North America, Bermuda and the United States territories is 1. Although DVD players in Europe and parts of Asia can play multi-region discs, those in the United States are generally restricted to playing Region 1 encoding.

If you're planning on purchasing DVDs abroad, make sure they are encoded as Region 1 or Region 0 discs, the latter being a universal format that can be used in any DVD player.

VideOccasions is unable to make copies of DVDs other than those encoded for Region 1 or 0.

Important: Do not confuse the Region coding with the video format. NTSC and PAL refer to the video format, while "Region 1" refers to the DVD encoding. VideOccasions can translate PAL discs from abroad to NTSC discs, provided the PAL discs are encoded for Region 1.

Understanding this distinction can prevent a lot of grief when you bring back discs from abroad and attempt to play them here in North America, or have VideOccasions convert your disc from PAL to NTSC.

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DVD-R and DVD+R

What's the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R?

The following answer is quoted, in part, from the Answerbag web site:

"The truth is that the two competing technologies use different formats. No single company "owns" DVD and both technologies have their "champions". DVD-R/RW was developed by Pioneer [. . . and is ] supported by the DVD Forum, an industry-wide group of hardware and software developers, and computer peripheral manufacturers. . . DVD+R/RW is supported by Sony, Philips, HP, Dell, Ricoh, Yamaha, and others, and has recently been endorsed by Microsoft. . .

Technical Answer: DVD+R is a dvd disc that allows multiple layers for one disc where as DVD-R only allows one layer. . . Multi layer DVD+R can allow more capacity per disc than DVD-R . . . "

Because of the difficulty some DVD players have in playing DVD+R discs, VideOccasions burns all DVDs on DVD-R discs.

Order Form for DVD Duplication

When shipping DVDs to VideOccasions for duplication, please print and complete the Order Form, which contains shipping instructions and our mailing address. You can download the Order Form as a text file by clicking here, then selecting "PRINT" from the FILE MENU of your browser.

Last updated 12/22/15