DVD Case Inserts

If you are like me you create the case insert and disc label last. It was something I did while the full video was encoding and burning. But recently I needed to pop out a preview highlight before I actually delivered to full product, and so I had the label and insert completed before I edited the whole program. It dawned on me, and some of you will probably say ‘duh, I’ve been doing that forever’, but I realized that now I had this great, high-resolution graphic that I could use in content itself. Since I've put all this work into the cover I can get more mileage out it by using it in the video. This also ties it together into a coherent theme. The Photoshop document is 300 dpi, so you can literally fly over the document with the motion controls in Final Cut Pro and it won’t go to mush. The text and the background is also reusable for the DVD menu and the opening title sequence in the video. Had you created your title in your editing application first it would've been impractical to 'up-res' that for the dvd cover, and most likely would have not had the same look and feel. Why do those twice, right? This may not be a revelation to some, but for me its been very positive workflow change.

Hopefully most event videographers are not trying to completely reinvent the wheel for each insert and graphic. I applaud you if you can! I tend to stick with a certain design until I get an idea to change it, so each looks comparable to the last, though they evolve over time as tweaks build up.

For a typical wedding, which consists of 6-10 hours of footage, I usually spend a day doing what I call 'shot selection'. I take the usable stuff and separate if from the junk. Along the way I'm grabbing stills for the cover and disc label. I then batch export those stills from Final Cut Pro to a folder within their captured footage folder. Using Photoshop I design the first template, figuring out the design and the picture attributes for shadow, stroke, size etc. Knowing that standard definition video stills don't hold up to large printing well I opt for quantity rather than size. I then 'reverse-engineer' the template and created actions that make the components. For example, I take the folder with the frame grabs for the back cover and apply an action that resizes, de-interlaces, applies Auto Levels for contrast, brightness and color balance and adds the white border and shadow. I then just drag the pix to the template and disperse them on the back cover. (Someone more adept at creating actions could even make it possible to automatically place each individual image on the back cover, but only if the stills are numbered the same as the action stipulates. Renaming the images is easily done with an Automator action. You Photoshop gurus can have at it and let me know if it works.) I use another action for the spine pictures and another for the front. The other elements, like the logo and DVD emblems are already there. Change the text on the front cover and the spine and print it. If you're going to do it again make it as easy as possible to recreate. This graphic is then exported in two ways, one with the layers intact and one with the layers flattened. As you're creating the segues, introductions, menus and recap, you now have graphic elements that will keep a cohesive feel to the whole presentation.

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Wonderful full-bleed photo-quality case inserts are available at www.ProLabel.com