Hi Martin-
Just out of curiosity are DVDs an absolute must for the distribution format? 160-170 DVDs sounds a bit unwieldy, especially if it's all for one set. What about you simply deliver a kiosk style system with the entirety of the course on it? Say you include a Mac Mini with the videos tied together with a well-designed menu system- you could do this really easily as a Keynote presentation for example.
That is much easier to manage than a pile of discs and also means that they can hook it up to any monitor, projector, TV, etc ready to roll the entirety of the course at will. That vs. sorting through a massive number of discs looking for the next one in the series- minimizes chances for losing or damaging any one disc. Because you know if that happens, the client will come looking for that one disc otherwise the set becomes incomplete.
You could even output everything as Podcast episodes on an iPod as part of your bid and have them connect that directly to a monitor. And since you're shooting HD 720p, you'd be able to deliver in HD rather than down-converting to standard definition. (Not to mention you'd be saving a lot of time and wasted discs in getting it all put together.) Just burning that many discs and testing them would take several weeks for all but a dedicated authoring farm.
I can think of a lot of ways to make this happen and with that much content personally I'd deliver in a more flexible format than a pile of DVDs. It will also give you more control over the content and ability to update it without going back through the pile to figure out which disc went wrong etc. Just the quality control of going through that many DVDs individually gives me a headache. :) Also I can tell you that 1.5 hours per DVD is conservative, with a good encoder you can easily put double that or more per disc. I'd also recommend you shoot 24p rather than 30p- that will give you 20% smaller file sizes= more content per disc.
I also happen to run a company that could take that sorta thing on- so if you want to get some real numbers and maybe some suggestions of how to structure it DVD or otherwise- please drop me a line: noah at highroadproductions dot com or respond to this post with your contact info and I'll drop you a line.
Best,
Noah Kadner
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