CD and DVD duplication for home movies

Anyone who is interested in making their own home movies, whether they be videos of the kids and the family, or something with a little more imagination – such as a scripted piece that also involves making costumes and performing stunts – has a much easier time of it these days than they would have had ten years ago.

As some who used to make videos in the mid nineties, and even having the odd one shown on TV on programs such as ‘Takeover TV’, I know how difficult it used to be filming something with the VHS, VHSC and 8mm video cameras of the day. You were either left with the option of editing in camera, which meant you couldn’t do multiple takes and you always ran the risk of recording over the end of the previous scene, or you would have to edit afterwards via a VCR. This had its own pitfalls, as footage would degrade when you copied it to VHS, and the edits were rarely clean.

Of course, if you were lucky enough to have access to two and three machine edit suites (as I did later) you could make a much better job of it, but you still had the same problems of linear editing meaning you couldn’t revisit an edit and make changes. Once it was done, it was done – at least without some serious re-editing.

These days of course all that has changed, with software applications such as Adobe Premier, CD and DVD duplication systems and digital cameras, making home movies is a joy, and a simple one at that. Using DVD authoring software you can also redistribute your movies without any loss in quality too – another issue with using old video cameras.

If only I could convince my mates to dress up as Batman and Robin now!

Darren Jamieson

Darren has enjoyed an interest in film for many years, studying the subject at Newport Film School where he worked on the film ‘Cop on the Edge IX: Prelude to Justice‘ in a directing and acting capacity. The official site can be enjoyed here. Darren setup WhatDVD.Net in 2003 to further his love of films and to write passionately about the movies he enjoys, and about those that he doesn’t.

Although his day-to-day activities mean that he now has less time to review movies than he would ideally prefer, he still tries to review new releases, and DVDs from his extensive collection, whenever possible.
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