The DVD Paper Chain

by Common Knowledge

With the problems involving the MPAA and DeCSS, Digital Versatile Discs (DVD) are in our minds much of the time.

However, not many people know how DVDs are manufactured, so here it is, from the actual 35 mm film down to the (not for long) encrypted disc you hold in your hands.

The process starts off with the actual film - the 35 mm prints.  Usually there are two: the presentation and the trailers.  The 35 mm prints are then "Telecine'd," which means they are put onto a "DigiBeta" cassette.  To those of you who are unfamiliar with Beta, it looks like a chunky VHS cassette.

But unlike VHS, Beta's quality doesn't deteriorate over multiple viewing, making it ideal for the film industry's need for high quality footage.  Once Telecin'd if the film is foreign, it is given a dialogue list, which is a list of words for subtitles in whatever language is needed, and their appropriate places on the time code.

This is then given to a "Dialogue House," which places the wording onto the DigiBeta cassette.  At the same time as the subtitles are being made up, a "touch-up" house restores any blemishes or blank frames in the footage.

As soon as the subtitled version is made, you submit everything that has moving footage (trailers, selection screen footage, etc.) and that you wish to be on the actual publicly released DVD to the "Film Classification Board" where they decide an appropriate rating for the presentation, and will request any footage deemed unsuitable to be removed.

Once you receive the restored footage, the subtitles are dropped into the restored DigiBeta and then the trailers are re-done with the restored footage.  Now you have a high-quality version of your film and trailers.  The footage is then given to an "Authoring House," which lays out the footage and selection screens from a flow-chart submitted to them, in much the same way a series of web pages is designed with links and subsequent pages (chapters in a DVD).  They then "emulate" the DVDs footage, which is reviewed to check all the links and any mistakes in the footage itself.

Then Digital Linear Tapes (DLT) are made, which is the DVD in a linear form (the whole DVDs chapters played one after another).  The DLTs look like a 2-inch thick VHS cassette.

From the DLTs, "master" copies of the DVD are made, from which all the DVDs are stamped out - much in the same way as pirate copies are made in Asia, not through DeCSS.