Standard DVD for sure.
Blu-ray or HD-DVD? No thanks. You will definately get less sales if you choose this, because then not everyone can play it. Also if it’s a tutorial, who needs to see super duper hi-res, GET YOUR TRAINING JUICE ON!!!
Never mind :spin:, I guess it’s covered under the PC aspect. I’m just so used to seeing PC/Mac/Linux with respect to OS that it threw me for a second.
I think the DVD-ROM would provide the option for more content variety and would require less work to produce. Most people are probably at their computer when using the training materials.
DVD ROM is most flexible, IMO. And if possible with chapters as separate files so the material can be digested in bite size pieces. And with as little DRM or whatever as possible, so that people can edit or change formats as easily as possible to suit their needs/players/where they want to view it.
It certainly won’t be free, as each package will sport around 8 to 12 hours of training, with a lot of stuff in it.
When mentioned PC it is Windows / Linux.
And the idea behind HD is to have enough resolution for anyone to see even the smaller details.
For the first batch there will be no DRM on the content, doing a “I trust you won’t let me down by pirating this Package that took several months to create…”. If I find that the Community is failing to comply with the previous sentence I will be forced to impose some sort of DRM, but I will trust that everyone will make a good judgement on this.
And remember, pirated copies only live because there are individuals who download them, if there is a pirated copy online and no one downloads it, then it won’t really make a difference right?
Also, any media will contain alot of work to adapt the content to it.
On DVD / HD-DVD / Bluray, there is the need to create all the menu structures, proper animations and all that sort of things.
On DVD-ROM, I will need to load everything as either Flash animation or Web.
So, don’t think of it as one being easier then another .
I would rather just pay some site and download the content, then put it on the medium of my choice.
Soon they will be phaseing out DVD and CD… I want to buy media with the right to back it up with the medium of my choosing… if in 2 years from now all we have is blueray, I want to be able to put it on blueray…
If I want to take the content to work, I want to be able to copy it over to my 5 gig memory sitck and just take it with me…
Some people will want to view it on the portable video players like iphone.
anyway, If I where you I would make a download option (you will save a lot of money on shipping!! )
Download option gives you another deal of trouble:
first it will be around 16GB for download and not that many people can afford to download such amount.
second, I can save on packaging, make the content cheaper, but then I will have to pay for a huge monthly bandwidth for such downloads and mirrors of course.
And then you have the other thing, I plan to sell a full package, small printed inlet, cool package you can put next to your other DVDs and so on. Also take into account that most people like to have a physical package instead of a download.
So, the idea to use download instead is put on the shelf for now.
Let stick to the initial question please .
On, on the problem of using the content on iPods and wathever, I mentioned already that there wasn’t going to be any DRM on the content, meaning that if you buy it, you can re-encode for your iPod or any other device, as long as you keep it for your own usage and don’t distribute it.
I agree that a download is good option. No you don’t get to include the cool printed material, but its about the customer right? You could re-encode the video at lower resolution or quality for web downloading and put it on a content distribution network like S3 to solve the bandwidth issue. Some people gotta have it now and if they have to wait for the mail, its too slow.
And I think the post was definitely addressing the question of how to distribute - just not with one of your options. I thought he was being helpful by pointing out further possibilities.
Anyway, failing a download option, a plain old DVD is good - nothing fancy or weird.
To War:I didn’t mean that what was said wasn’t worthy, just that this is the decision, on physical packages. On the pricing, I can’t talk about this right now, but I promise you will know in a month from now.
Well, that is a tricky question, Bluray is with no doubt the one that can hold the biggest capacity in Gb, but you need a Bluray player to use it.
Still, you can make wonders with videos if they aren’t going to be used by DVD or HD-DVD or Bluray Players. Using Quicktime you can compress videos alot in size and still keep a really good quality.
So, in lenght, I would say probably the DVD-ROM, in Double-Layer mode, followed by Bluray, DVD and then HD-DVD (on a DVD).
DVD-ROM is the best format for me. This is better, because the content will be aimed not for entertainment, but for learning. The resolution proposed on DVD-ROM is higher than standard PAL and suits better for computer program training. The possibility to play the standard DVD on TV screen is not essential, I personally won’t use it (because I don’t TV and computer in the same room).
Soon they will be phaseing out DVD and CD… I want to buy media with the right to back it up with the medium of my choosing… if in 2 years from now all we have is blueray, I want to be able to put it on blueray…
I doubt the CD/DVD will be gone in future, I think they will be here for long time. And in few years the content on this disc will be obsolete, compared to newer material which will certainly be created.
i have a bunch of videos on compositing that i am close to self-publishing; I am going to actually publish them as avi files in 800x600 resolution, because they involve a lot of screen shots, using the xvid codec for cross-platform. so, dvd-ROM. a tv DVD loses all quality of computer screenshots.
and no HD’s needed!