Duplicators see future in optical media

The popularity of alternative formats and the proliferation of playback devices for them has prompted the traditionally tape-based duplication industry to shift its focus towards cd and dvd technology. By Fiona Williams.

The comparatively rapid uptake of DVD technology by the wider community in Australia has caused other facilities to wax lyrical about the opportunities of the technology.

"Tape is dead, long live DVD," said managing director of DVDTECH, Jeff Sunderland, who is obviously excited by the prospect.

The company concentrates mainly on DVD authoring, but also does "low volume duplication for corporates who want a few copies," according to Sunderland. "But such is the DVD process that any more than 50 copies and it is not cost effective to do it at a low volume and it has to go to a high-volume duplication plant."

DVDTECH has a client base split between entertainment and corporate, with the company completing the video encoding, Dolby 5.1 sound, graphic work, motion menus, and stills for the client. Its efforts in menu creation were recently recognised with an award by the international industry professional body DVD Association (DVDA) for excellence in menu quality and presentation, on the 20th Century Fox The Wogboy DVD. The purpose of the DVD Excellence Award is to recognise skill, creativity and craftsmanship in various aspects of DVD creation, authoring and publication. Being the first Australian company to be recognised by DVDA was a major achievement, said Sunderland.

"We won against the LA competition, so all of those Hollywood guys who think Australians are down under and backward, we just proved to them that we can take things on the international scene and win."

On the corporate side, DVDTECH clients range from "advertising agencies through to blue chip corporate companies such as Toshiba, Pioneer and Telstra - high end people". DVDs are created predominantly for B2B communications, he said.

A recent project for Telstra included creating a DVD for the telecommunications company's major event in Hong Kong concerning a planned joint venture between Telstra and Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW). DVDTECH created DVDs to place in booths at the event, "so when anyone walked up to the booths, from a multimedia point of view, they could get a description of what Telstra's PCCW business is, from a practical B2B communication application". The DVD images were broadcast on six plasma screens that were designed to come in and out of sync at any given time. "In the old days, this type of thing used to be very difficult to do and to get it at very high quality, you used to have digital betacams all synced up, said Sunderland. "But nowadays with DVD players that's a relatively easy thing to do."

Other clients are opting for DVD out of appreciation for the versatility of the format, said Sunderland.

"We've just done a disc called Coast to Coast for a New Zealand tour company, which is in eight languages and the owner of the tour company who was in the VHS tape business said, 'I can now get out of the warehouse business back into my tourism business', because having eight languages on the one disc, interactively accessible, he doesn't have to stock eight flavours of the same VHS tape - has it all on the one disc and it's all interactive."

Getting people to adapt to new formats is always a challenge, said Sunderland, but it is happening. "The world is changing from a non-linear format to an interactive and it takes us a while to teach people to think interactively rather than in a linear fashion, but it happens. I think people are coming out of the old MPEG 1 space into MPEG 2 and DVD. People are getting accustomed to the movie phenomenon and seeing how that's forging ahead with DVD and then thinking outside the square and saying 'well, how can I use this for my business?"