Nutcracker CD/DVD Creation

Trinity School 2006-7 5th-Grade Nutcracker Performance, DVD/CDROM Creation Notes

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I volunteered to create the commerative media for the 2006-2007 5-th Grade Trinity School Nutcracker performance.

In a nutshell (pardon the pun), I did the following:

• Created a photo CDROM collection of all the pictures and then created and labeled duplicates for sale

• Mastered a DVD movie, and created/labeled duplicates for sale

• We sold the photo CDROMs for $5 and the DVDs for $12.

• We burned 46 DVDs and 27 CDs; included in this total are comps for the teachers and Trinity staff.

For the CDROMs, I did the following:

• Collected all digital photos, contributed by official and unofficial photographers

• Put all of them under a single directory on my home computer

• Burned a simple CDROM with these pictures on them. I also put a credits.txt file containing photo credits on the CDROM

• I burned these pictures to CDRs and then labeled them using a CD label I printed using a standard inkjet printer.

• For labels, I found a Nutcracker picture on the Internet and then used cd/dvd labeling software from NEATO. The software also came with a label applicator. I ran the software on a vanilla Windows/XP system.

For the DVDs, I did the following:

• Borrowed the Trinity Media Center's camcorder tape

• Digitized the tape by playing it through the digital camcorder and into a Mac computer running some variant of OSX. I borrowed the Mac after fighting with my Windows PC for a few days.

• Once the tape was digitized, I gave the tape back to the Media Center and also gave them a preliminary digital backup of that tape.

• I then used Apple's iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD to create and master the finished DVD

• • I used iPhoto to collect photos for a slide show that was included on the DVD

• • I used iMovie to create chapters, one for each Act, for the final DVD.

• • I used iDVD to create the DVD menu and glue in each separate "movie" to the menu itmes

• • I used a digitized copy of a Nutcracker musical performance (in MP3 format) to use as background music for the DVD menu and the DVD photo slideshow. Again, iDVD (or was it iMovie?) was used to put the music into the background.

• • I created the DVD menu

• • I burned the final DVDs using iDVD on the same Mac. The DVD iso image, which includes the menus, photo slide show (set to music), the chapters (one per Act), and credits came to a 3.8 GB. I then burned the DVDs using DVD-R blanks. Each blank took approximately 10 minutes or so each to burn. Burning as many DVDs as we sold took several days of burning several copies simultaneously on 4 or so computers in my home.

Total Spent

I spent a total of about $170 on supplies (labels, blanks, slimline jewel cases).

This approach was a lot cheaper than going to a CD/DVD duplicator as the costs per CDROM/DVD are pretty expensive when you duplicate fairly small numbers of discs. We had orders for a hundred or so discs total.

What to do differently?

For the actual recording of the performance, I would suggest that the Media Center get a wireless microphone and place it closer to the stage so that the dialog from the actors and actresses can be better picked up and recorded on tape. The dialog from our performance can be hard to hear and understand at time due to the acoustics in AWAC and the background noise from the audience.