Getting Started

if you’ve checked out our Web site, read over the customer information form
call us if you have any questions and to discuss your specific needs
Put together you own project plan (we’ll help you). For instance, if you have 100 photos and an hour of video, and you want to end up with a DVD that plays about 1 hour, decide which segments of the video you want to include, and how many of the photos you want to include. Use the following guidelines:

photos: about 4 seconds per photo, in this case the photos would use about 7 minutes. The range should be 3-5 seconds for photos normally. You need to send them in the order you want them to appear in your movie.
video: if you’re sending us video, review the tape and using the counter, write down which scenes you want included. We’ll start by capturing the whole tape, but we need to know which scenes to edit out. In this case you’d have room for about 53 minutes of video (the photos consume 7 minutes), but do you want all of that, or only specific scenes? You can either do this on your DV camera, or on a VCR if it’s a VHS tape. Start the counter at 0 and note the start and end points of each scene you want to include.
Music: if you’re doing a one hour production, then send us an hour of music if you want music for all or most of the production. If it spans several artists/CD’s, which it may, you should make copies of the CD’s or better yet convert them to MP3 files and burn them on to a CD. We can include this music in your production, since it’s for you use. It’s okay to send several CD’s, just indicate what order you want the songs to be played in.

Case: Indicate which photo you would like to appear on your DVD case and on the DVD itself. Indicate the title you would like on the DVD case.
Titles: We put a title on the opening sequence, at the end, and if appropriate, at the scene breaks. Please provide something short that you like for each title. We will include professional transitions between photos, but if you need titles on any of the photos (for instance “Aunt Martha”, etc.) for identification purposes, you’ll need to either use sticky notes on the back of photo prints, or name the digital files with the same name you want to use for the title and indicate that you want each photo titled..

Good things to know

We use a fade as a standard transition. A transition is what separates individual photos, or individual video clips. This is the same transition used in the samples on our Web site, and is a very common transition used in Hollywood films. If you prefer a different look or don’t want transitions used, let us know
Titling: we standardize on a black background with white lettering for scene titles, and for titles on top of photos, we’ll use a color that will be viewable over the photo. If you prefer a different look, let us know.
Content: all content we receive from you will be returned to you in the same format you submitted it in. Because it’s your content, we will delete it from our hard drives unless you want us to archive it, potentially for future use.
We do not accept material that is pornographic, hate oriented or inappropriate (as determined by us).

Feeling confused? Don’t be. That’s what we’re here for. Call us: 408-300-2340.

If you live locally we can scan photos/video on site for a reasonable extra charge.