Quote:

---

I know for a fact that Red Light District duplicates their own DVDs. They showed me the set-up. If I remember correctly, I think they run right off Final Cut output.

The whole set up didn't look like it cost more than a few thousand dollars especially since a Primera 400 disc capacity duplicator runs about $8000 - which isn't much for a guy driving an SL.

---

Every Red Light DVD I've seen is pressed, not burned. You can get burners like the one Smartt shows for a few thousands of dollars. Setting up a plant that can take the output of Final Cut and produce pressed DVD costs millions of dollars and requires somewhat skilled operators.

The problem isn't so much literally pressing the blanks but rather inscribing the glass master and producing quality father and then mother metal masters off of that, and finally the stampers. This has to be done in a clean-room environment. A subtle problem on the glass master might mean that every disc would work in some players but not others; a problem with the metal masters or stampers would mean some day's production would work and some would not. No studio wants that hassle, or an investment of that size that will be written off once Blu-Ray or HD-DVD appears.

(porn studios probably skip the metal masters and just make stampers off of the glass master directly)

There's no substantial cost for setup to make burned DVDs but there is a setup fee (NRE) – still over $1,000? - for pressed DVDs. But, pressed DVDs cost tens of cents to make in quantity whereas burned DVDs may cost as much as a dollar. If you're going to sell less than 100 of a disc then burning may make sense but if you're selling 1,000+ copies then pressing wins.

I'm sure Red Light and other studios do burn some copies to test/check the final edit before committing to a production run and perhaps to get early screeners before the production run comes back. But no way does anyone use burned discs for the customer run.

Last year Extreme was shipping burned DVDs. Either nobody was willing to take an order from Rob Black to do a production run of pressed discs or he got high and thought burning made sense. Or maybe he was shipping only 100 units of each product. Whatever the case it wasn't a mark of genius.