DESIGN
It might seem like it is a little early to be thinking about marketing materials when you're working in the timeline but the fact of the matter is that there is no better time. The key to professional presentation of your product is consistency across all of your marketing, including the graphics and menus for your DVD.

If you’re not experienced with design, you should definitely not do this part of the project yourself, as the project’s “look” is the first thing people see when deciding whether to even view your film. Disc Makers has an award-winning Design Studio who can do your job, or you can find a local designer to do the work for you. You can throw a stone in any urban area and hit a half dozen unemployed graphic artists. Finding someone good who will work for cheap is not as easy. Hanging out a shingle on classified ad boards like Craigslist will bring inquiries, but plan on spending time vetting out the good from the bad from the ugly.

One method that has proven fruitful is to seek out a professor in the graphic design department of the nearest university. He or she would undoubtedly be able to provide you with a talented student that is working on building up their portfolio. You might not be able to afford them after they graduate, but now is your chance to work with a rising star that hasn't been jaded by mountains of dull corporate work - someone that will create an identity for your film that is exciting and distinctive.

PACKAGING
After you've approved colors and images, you need to make a determination about what kind of packaging you want for your DVD. Will it be in a case, jacket, a jewel box or digi-pak? You might be unfamiliar with the terms but you've seen these types of packaging before. The decision-making process you go through to determine which kind you want is mainly a matter of personal preference and, of course, cost. More experienced designers might make their own suggestions as far as how to handle packaging and will guide you through the process, but you might be best off just looking at different examples and determining what is going to work for your project.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to templates, a good replication house will provide you with templates they would prefer that you use. Disc Makers has a library of templates for packaging and labels that you can download and use at www.discmakers.com/templates/film/amaray.asp. Templates are available in many formats including programs by Quark and Adobe. If you are familiar with the programs, it is very easy to import objects and create your own design. If you aren't, any designer will be able to work with the files.

Once you have the design templates complete, have the designer provide you with high resolution bitmapped (JPEG, TIFF) images for your DVD authoring. A background image for your DVD menu screen should be the same size as an NTSC frame, 768x480 pixels. The higher-end programs can usually work with Photoshop layered files or other formats for menus and buttons. Some designers have a hard time grasping what it is that you want if they haven't worked in video before, so you might have to run a few tests first.

AUTHORING
As the previous paragraph would suggest, once you have a design identity for your project, you're ready to author your DVD. One good route is to get a professional authoring house or DVD replicator to do the authoring for you. Although the quality of the film itself (and its packaging and cover art!) are generally more important than the quality of the menu in “selling” your film, a professional authoring house can help author your disc to maximize quality of the compression and compatibility with standalone players.

If you choose to DIY and are working with a PC-based system, authoring can often be done with software integrated into the editing system. Two popular options are the AvidXpress for DV and Sonic DVDit SE (included with Avid Xpress DV) or Pinnacle Studio. Authoring menus, titles and graphics can be done with both systems including motion menus. More sophisticated authoring is available through Ulead DVD Workshop, a prosumer authoring program. DVD Workshop can import a wide range of formats so as long as your editing system can produce MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, AVI, or QuickTime you can bring it into DVD workshop and author a DVD.

DVD Studio Pro stands by itself as the prosumer option for Macintosh. An export is required from the timeline in Final Cut Pro, usually a full frame, full resolution NTSC DV Quick Time standalone movie. This file is then imported into DVD Studio Pro, where menus and titles are created and options can be selected for audio and video encoding. DVD Studio Pro is not a difficult program to learn, but for down-and-dirty short films, iDVD offers a lot of bang for the buck (free) and can be customized beyond that canned themes included with the program.

Once you have completed your authoring, burn a test. As with all things in life, test it. Try the disc on as many DVD players and in as many scenarios as possible. DVD authoring software is a reasonably mature technology so you shouldn't expect to find problems but you do want to check. It's best to feel comfortable with your newly minted product before you print a thousand and encounter a nasty surprise down the line.

After testing your master, put a test of your DVD packaging together with a test disc and see how it feels in your hand, how it looks. It's not too late to make a change. Asking your designer to re-arrange a layout from one template to another is not a monumental task. Be sure that this is what you want. You're paying for it and it should be as high of quality as you can possibly obtain.