Hey everyone,
I have been doing Freelance video work for a little over a year now. I would really like to take my quality to the next level of professionalism with direct-to-disc printing.
I already have a printer capable of performing the task. My question is what is the best disc for the job? Thanks You!
Edit: I have an Epson Stylus RX595 Printer
If you buy your discs in bulk, match the surface to the printer. I hand-write on my videos, but I recommend a company like discmakers.com for supplies. Ink-jet printers require ink-jet surfaces, etc. And discmakers makes blanks that are much more reliable than off-brands like Memorex, Maxell and Sony, which are real crap.
I get most of my printable media from Supermediastore.com The best are Taiyo Yuden. The irritating thing is, it’s hard to find decent hub-printable dual-layer media. Single layer media is everywhere. I use an Epson R300.
Thanks everyone.
I did some looking around on discmakers.com and think i found what i’m looking for.
Inkjet compatable surface, full hub, and at a pretty decent price.
There’s also a way of burning directly on the top surface of specially prepared discs with a laser as part of the data burning process. This will be only one color, but it’s permanently etched, waterproof, and you can burn both sides of a disk in the same drive.
Of course, you’d have to get another drive, and use special media. Look for “Lightscribe”. Not for everyone, but it’s a neat idea.
I’ve burned several Lightscribe disc labels, and I like 'em a lot. The print-on kind seem so, I dunno, papery or something. Even though it’s not as colorful, I like the sensation of permanence of the Lightscribe labels.
The technology amazes me, too; if you want to make it darker, you can burn the label again and again, up to 5 times I believe. The Lightscribe system uses markers on the disc to align the label properly for each printing so that it burns over the exact same areas. That’s really cool, to me anyway.
I own a company that does CD and DVD Duplications. I tend to get most of my media from Supermedia store as well as Meritline. TY’s are commonly regarded as one of the best disc out there. I tend to use Ridata myself (hub printable), with the white faces. They do make silver printable discs as well, but it depends on the colors and images that you are going to be printing as to what type of disc will work best.
Also, different discs look different after being printed. Some will look flatter or kind of “crapier” then others. It becomes a trial by fire to find the best disc for your printer. You can also check out club.cdfreaks.com (forums dedicated to CD/DVD media and equipment/etc.
For anyone who has yet to try Lightscribe, don’t be surprised if it looks like crap and comes out too light, and you have to print over it again. And again. And again. Finally, two or three hours later, you have something that might not look completely awful.
Lightscribe is kind of neat in a gee-whiz sort of way, but beyond that, it’s just not very good, especially when I can print a full color label that looks a thousand times better than Lightscribe in just two or three minutes on my inkjet.
I did a small run of DVDs for a (very) amateur film production I worked on - I printed them on full-face white printable media, using an Epson RX Something-or-other.
After printing, I laid them on a big sheet of paper and gave them several thin coats of spray laquer (a product specifically sold for fixing printed CD and DVD media, although I suspect there wasn’t anything particularly special about it) - the results were quite outstanding - it makes a nice semi-gloss finish and helps saturate the colours and most importantly, protects the ink from smudging in less-than-dry hands.
You have to make sure you lay them on very flat paper on a very flat surface, to prevent oversprayed laquer creeping under onto the data side of the discs, take care not to move or nudge them between coats, exercise proper dust control and spray techniques - and use fresh paper for subsequent batches.
I agree with previous posters. Use quality Taiyo Yuden printable white media. Supermediastore is very good. Inkjets can produce great results but in my experience they have to dry individually, you can’t just stack them up warm as they print out. Mangetout’s suggestion of clear lacquer is a good one, I have used that technique with other printed material.