Dvd Video

[wattsnot]

Hello, great site. I am wondering if the dvd from Alan is split up into chapters. I bought his video on vhs and had it transferred to dvd. Just started to train and it is hard to fast forward all the time and to get back to the place I was yesterday. Alan, you are a first class guy and thanks alot. I am laid off now auto related. I have time on my hands.
From Michigan
Dennis

[Speedbag]

Hello, great site. I am wondering if the dvd from Alan is split up into chapters. I bought his video on vhs and had it transferred to dvd. Just started to train and it is hard to fast forward all the time and to get back to the place I was yesterday. Alan, you are a first class guy and thanks alot. I am laid off now auto related. I have time on my hands.
From Michigan
Dennis

The answer to your question about the DVD being split into chapters is: YES & NO.



YES, I did have a version split into chapters, unfortunately, it took up too much time/memory and all the chapter menu's wouldn't fit on a single DVD. So I had it split into a 2-DVD set, with each DVD having about 22 chapters. The first DVD goes from "the Equipment" and stops after the "Inward Elbows" and the second DVD starts with the Downward Elbows and goes through Advanced Fist Rolling. Each technique has at least one chapter, sometimes two. After the video was digitized I spent three days with the video technician marking every single "in" and "out" point.

NO. I never produced the 2-Disk chapter set in mass, for a couple of reasons. First, It would have doubled my cost to produce and package in dual DVD cases. I didn't think it would take two DVD's but it did. We tried to decrease the quality to use less memory, but it did not look good. Second, it was produced back in the "Old DVD" days when several of the DVD players I tried to play them on didn't not line the chapters up correctly. Somehow the chapters would get mixed up and you'd click on chapter 12 "Reverse Fist Rolling" and and get 13 or 14. It dropped chapters 22-24. The same thing would happen on the second disk. I tried to play them in numerous DVD players and there was no consistency, so I could not mass produce what appeared to be a damaged product. So, I never had a large enough quantity to sell.

Back then it would cost about $1500.00 to get a glass master made for DVD replication in runs of 1000 or more (1000 is the first big mass produced price break), so I would have to lay out $3000.00 just for the processing of the Master DVD's. By the time I got the cases, color printing, etc. finished for a decent inventory I would be looking at almost $10,000.00 for DVD inventory cost. I had already laid out that much for the initial Book Printing (..and some people think I make money at this...) and was looking at a major re-edit and printing cost for my second run, And I was still paying on the first run of the single non-chaptered DVD. ( about $5,000.00 for the initial burn) so.... The chapter DVD's never made it. I think The single DVD version has chapters every three minutes, which is set automatically.

Oddly, on newer DVD players ( last three or four years) the chapters seem to line up correctly. I'm not sure why. Over the years I have had many suggestions and outright complaints about the non-menu format, but from my end I could never see it paying for itself.

Sadly, very few people are buying DVD's anymore. Everyone goes to Youtube to learn for free. I have several friends with "how to" video's out there, and all their sales have plummeted also.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sorry about the job situation in Michigan. My brother lives in Grand Rapids and the economy is really hurting up there. My best wishes to you in regaining employment.