Sans Digital RAID Video array

It’s an interesting process to put together a video for DVD recordable.  First you have to have a camcorder that records Digital Video or “DV”.  MiniDV is the most popular and what I use.  Recording can proceed in any order you like.  This can all be edited later into clips and rearranged  so it a matter of convenience.   After you have recorded enough material for your DVD movie then you are ready to load it up into your hard drive for editing.   It’s important to have editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro and a scratch drive like the Sans Digital MOBILESTOR 2UT which works great for editing.  It has two SATA hard drives running in RAID 1 (mirrored drives).  This gives great performance and with the FireWire connection high speed with video.  The MOBILSTOR 2UT provides a USB 2.0 connection (very useful for formatting the drives) and a FireWire 800 connection that can be used with the 1394A standard  FireWire400.   FireWire is faster in video applications then USB 2.o    USB 2.0 works fine in a lot of applications (slow in transfer but it works) so I’m not telling anyone to go run out and buy FireWire unless you are editing video. I transfer the MiniDV tape contents to the scratch drive and then import the file into Adobe Premiere pro.  Then I cut up my video and arrange it into some kind of sequence (a script would be nice)  Bring in my audio clips and then it can be encoded for DVD or various player formats.

Taiyo Yuden has been recognized as one of the leading manufacturers of DVD recordable blank discs.  Taiyo Yuden has many types of specialized surfaces including thermal printable, white thermal printable, white ink jet printable, silver inkjet printable and Everest printable surfaces.  It’s not suprising that Taiyo Yuden would introduce a new type of inkjet printable surface called “watershield”.

Taiyo Yuden’s Watershield DVD surface offers a glossy label finish, water-resistant, fade-resistant, hub printable and works in just about any inkjet DVD printer. Unlike some other “water-resistant” printable disc surfaces Watershield is spun applied during the manufacturing process and not applied later as a sticky label.  This creates better disc integrity as the surface is evenly applied.  Typically an applied label is not centered thus creating an unbalanced disc in the recording and playback mode.  There is also serious concern about the “glue” that holds the label to the disc and if it causes damage to the disc over time.  There have not been any tests on data longevity with sticker based labels (and worse the manufacturers like to deny that the surface can be peeled off). The only other glossy surface spun applied surface is Verbatim.  It does not have the same properties as Taiyo Yuden Watershield which includes fast drying.  All the other “water-resistant” surfaces are labels.  One surface has a matte appearance and the other has a shiny surface like TY but a badly centered label which has been applied over a finish coat that makes it look bumpy with light reflecting off it.

Taiyo Yuden Watershield DVD-R media looks almost like a thermal re-transfer print at a lower price point. At least as far as Rimage thermal re-transfer technology goes.  Teac’s P-55 thermal re-transfer printer/ dye-sublimation printer has greater yields on the consumables so the price is comparable. The difference is in the cost of the inkjet printer vs. a thermal re-transfer printer which typially costs 5 times the amount.

Many manufacturers recommend Taiyo Yuden and specifically Watershield with more advanced printer systems from Epson and HP.   As a matter of fact Epson’s Discproducer recommendations are Watershield only.  The Discproducer can print on other inkjet printable surfaces but the publisher really shines with Taiyo Yuden.

so if you are looking for a high quality ink jet printable surface then look no farther then Taiyo Yuden Watershield DVD and CD-R media.