theMediaman.com

The Blog just doesn’t get updated sometimes because of work. Just to reiterate, I only update my blog during lunchhours. When there’s a 10-day span with no updates, you can safely assume I’ve had no lunches - and this rantless gap is no exception.

Despite an Impossibly Shortened Deadline (hereafter referred to as “The ISD”), we somehow figured out a schedule to get the DVD finished AND REPLICATED in ten business days. My most conservative estimates pegged the work at 20 days minimum. We managed to find a place (Duplium) that could stamp and silkscreen 500 dual-layer DVDs in five business days. Honourable Mention goes a guy at Asset Digital, who busted his hump to find some way of doing the 5-day thing.

The ISD was given to the client with the disclaimer that “any changes or delays seriously risk adjusting the schedule” since we had to remove all buffer time. The client came back with changes on “Day 0″ - the day when I have to have all materials to Duplium. Schedule got pushed back one business day to the following Monday… *sigh* Not something I was emotionally ready for, since it would lead to a full weekend in the office, and sleeping on the sofa here Sunday night. I surprised myself in how well I handled the disappointment… possibly because I somewhat anticipated the change in my “Perfeckt Plaaaann” (in Evil Genius voice).

So, now the DVDs are being produced… unbelievably on schedule with the ISD.

BUT NO REST FOR STEPHEN YET!

Despite taking a lunch break now (something I’ve rarely treated myself to in the last month), I’m still not in the clear. There’s about six more hours of breakout sessions that I need to work on. Final day for those to be finished is Monday… which means I’ll be working on the weekend, and burning discs on my birthday.

Just so everyone knows, you can fit about three hours of broadcast resolution video on a single-sided DVD at decent quality if it’s nothing but talking heads and PowerPoint slides! Unfortunately, the “Maximum Quality 2-pass Variable Bitrate MPEG2″ encoding takes about 2.5 minutes for every minute of content… so I’ll be doing just that for fifteen full hours. *sigh x 2.5*

Well, no rest for the wicked… I’ve enjoyed my chicken terayaki and written for about 20 minutes now. Back to the grindstone.

The truly geeky thing is that I’m really enjoying this! DVD Authoring for Fun and Profit!