Post Magazine Article
Star
Video develops corporate DVD's
Phoenix- As any manufacturer of video production tools can
tell you, beyond the
high-profile fields of broadcast and cable TV production there is a huge volume
activity in "industrial" video for corporate and institutional applications.
With DVD now well established as a "set top" playback platform for
home video,
attention is turning to applications outside of consumer realms, and those
with
a stake in the success of DVD are hoping to see the new format take hold in
this
corporate video market. That means we should be seeing increasing DVD
production activity outside of entertainment industry centers such as Los
Angeles
and New York, wherever there are businesses with video-based presentation
and
training needs.
Star
Video Duplicating (602-437-0646) is one example of a company with
corporate video roots that is expanding into DVD production. In business for
15 years, Star offers video duplication in a variety of formats
The
company is also equipped to perform standards conversions involving NTSC,
Pal and Secam, and handles duplication of audio tapes and CD-R as well as
replication of CD formats, including VCD and CD-I.
The
latest addition to the company's lineup of services is DVD. "Our
DVD
department run by Dane Hammond and Russ Terpening, has been developing DVD
titles for the last six months." says company president Paul Brown. "We
do DVD
mastering to both DVD-R and DLT. We got into DVD to serve the corporate and
production market in the Phoenix area, and we feel that the outlook for DVD
in the
near future is great."
While
many home video releases follow a standard pattern built around the feature
presentation, Star is finding that every corporate DVD project seems to have
its
own distinct requirements. As an example, Brown points to two projects for
The Woodlands, a 27,000- acre development 20 miles from Houston.
The
Visitors Center includes a DVD based video display featuring three 54"
monitors placed next to each other to form a kind of videowall. Star was hired
to
develop content to play on the displays by Habitat Inc. a commercial design
group
that includes a marketing arm hired by The Woodlands to market the development.
One
of the Woodlands projects, currently in production is designed for delivery
on
the three separate Pioneer DV-7200 industrial DVD players, each feeding one
of
the three video monitors. The DVD's contain slide show-style still images
from
areas around the development, including model homes, custom homes and the
Woodlands Athletic Center. The images are accompanied by ambient sounds
appropriate to the setting depicted.
Instead
of a typical DVD navigational scheme based on menus and chapter
points, playback is controlled by an external computer running Windows 98
and
a custom C++ program developed by Rob Waters, an automation specialist for
Habitat. The program communicates timecode referenced commands to the
Pioneer decks via a RS-232 port. The computer is controlled in turn by buttons
on the topographical map of the development that will sit in front of the
video
display area. "When a visitor pushes a button on the part of the map
showing
the park," Brown explains, "it will key the computer to send the
RS-232
information to the players, which will search to a frame location in the section
of the park."
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