Classic Gaming & Tech Commercial DVDs: Opinions, suggestions?

[Mindfield]

Over the years I've managed to amass a pretty big collection of commercials for classic game and computer systems from a wide variety of sources. Lately I've been pondering the idea of putting together a set of DVDs, split into volumes, and selling them to classic gaming fans here and on eBay. Now, nothing is set in stone but I've sketched out some rough ideas about it, but I'd like some opinions on what I've got and maybe some suggestions on what I should have. Here's some of the basics:

 

Volumes

Right now I'm considering releasing them in volumes, with each volume containing two DVDs featuring roughly 200 commercials, space permitting. I figure I've probably got enough material to spread this over four or five volumes. I'm also considering an all-in-one "box set" type deal, and possibly a DVD-ROM option, though the logistics of providing a DVD-ROM with video files covering half a dozen formats is problematic, even using a mostly-universal player like MPlayer. And that just covers Windows; I don't know the first thing about creating DVD-ROMs for Mac or even hydrid discs covering both platforms, so that part is up in the air. Each volume would come in a dual-disc case with a nicely printed sleeve. I'm still deciding whether it would be worth it to buy another printer with CD printing capabilities and some printable DVDs. I refuse to use adhesive labels, and I'm not spending $2k on a printing/duplication system, but I'd really not want to give just plain DVDs with Sharpie scribbling, either, so this is still to be decided.

 

 

Interactive Menu System

I don't want to do some budget production here, so I'll be creating a nice interactive menu system broken down into categories (see below). I am up in the air as to how to go about this. I can either provide flowing commercials for each category with chapter stops for each ad to allow you to skip through them, or I can do a full menu system where you get to choose each individual commercial to watch. The drawback with the latter method is that I am not sure yet whether or not I can provide that kind of pinpoint menu system as well as provide a "watch all" option. I think I can, but I haven't explored the software far enough to determine if this is reasonably feasable. Just the same, would a pinpoint menued ad system be too fussy to work with? It would allow you to pick and choose ads individually, which is cool, but I fear that some might find such a deeply multil-level navigation system a bit too much to deal with.

 

Categories

I'd like to spread the ads more or less evenly across volumes to provide a good mix of ads from all sorts of different companies, rather than creating company-centric discs. I'd have sections for all the majors -- Atari, Mattel, Coleco, Commodore, and so on, including an "others" section for companies who either didn't advertize much or where I've only been able to find one or two ads for them. I'd like to have specialty sections on each disc, too. Each one may not appear on every disc, but I think I'd like to spread them out that way if possible, just for some extra shits 'n giggles. Other categories would include:

 

Global Gaming - Ads from international sources; Germany, Japan, Turkey, UK, etc. It's interesting to see how our favourite systems were marketed abroad -- sometimes, even amusing, even if I can't understand a word they're saying.

The Stars of Tech - Ads featuring either current or before-they-were-stars, like Alan Alda, Gary Grubbs, Bill Cosby, Tobey Maguire, and so on. Probably two or three stars per volume.

Storyboards - This will probably be a one-shot, which features storyboarded ads (Atari only) laid over an earlier take of the soundtrack that would eventually accompany the final ad.

Promos - Promo reels (complete or clips) aimed at arcade operators, store owners, or featured in kiosks and such.

Speical Feature - This section would feature one longer segment, such as the Activision promo reel or the Jaguar "Cave" infomercial. I also have a very long instructional video for the C64 that I capped from VHS which may be included as the entire second disc of one volume. I'm not sure that it really fits with the whole advertizing theme, though.

 

There may be others but that's what I've thought of so far.

 

Another issue is permissions. The vast majority of the ads in my collection were capped and distributed by unknown sources and found on a wide variety of sites, so attribution would be impossible for everything. There are a few sources however that are known, such as Curt of the AHS for a few of the Atari spots, Cyberroach (mostly a few Jaguar bits), the Commodore Billboard, and so on. I'm thinking that common courtesy would suggest I gather permission from these good folk before putting them in any kind of compilation, so I'm going to have to see if I can get in touch with these people before committing them to any given volume. Full credit would be featured on the DVD to those whose contributions are known, of course.

 

Then there's the issue of quality. Some of the spots I have are excellent quality. Some are mediocre. Some are nearly unwatchable. In the interest of preserving even partly mangled ads though, I have excluded only the absolute worst ones -- which amount to less than a handful (I'm very generous in my definition of "watchable"). They'll all be upscaled to 720x480, those that I didn't personally cap at that resolution in the first place, but would you rather see even a badly recorded ad than not have it there at all? I would, but I'm easily amused and a bit of a packrat when it comes to such things, so I'm biased.

 

Finally, of course, is the ultimate question: Would anyone be interested in a project like this? If so, what would you likely expect to pay for one volume such as the above? Any preferences or suggestions to make? As I said, this is still in the information gathering and general sketching stages, and likely wouldn't be ready for a month or two at least. I don't know if I'd want to release the volumes separately or all at once, so everyone can get just one volume or the whole set at once if they prefer.

 

Any ideas, suggestions and so on are welcome. If you also happen to have some original tapes of commercials or promos or whatever and would be willing to lend them to the project in exchange for a free box set and DVD-ROM, please feel free to contact me.

[Mindfield]

No responses? Bad idea? Or wrong forum for this sort of thing? Anyone? Bueller?

[misspent_youth]

A couple things:

 

Firstly, although it's more creative to spread the ads the ways you've indicated, I'd think a larger proportion of people interested in this would like the discs divided by company/system. That way they could only buy the discs that interest them and not feel roped into buying them all (even if that's what they end up doing, it will feel more like their own decision).

 

Either of the access systems (menu vs. chapter) present difficulties, given that you're talking about roughly 100 commercials per disc. The menu system seems more friendly toward viewing the discs over multiple sittings.

 

Permissions are tricky, because it's more than likely that the places where you got most of the ads had no permission to post them either. Even if they did, they would not have the sort of license that would allow them to give you permission to use the ads. Contacting those people, while courteous, is not really necessary (maybe in Curt's case). If you contacted the manufacturers, or their current IP owners, it's likely they'd ask you for money. I guess your course of action should be decided by how successful you think these things would be.

[Mindfield]

A couple things:

 

Firstly, although it's more creative to spread the ads the ways you've indicated, I'd think a larger proportion of people interested in this would like the discs divided by company/system. That way they could only buy the discs that interest them and not feel roped into buying them all (even if that's what they end up doing, it will feel more like their own decision).

That's mainly what I was considering. The main problem with it is that it would make for some uneven distribution, where one largish collection might take up one and a half discs, while another smaller one might only take up three quarters or less, and yet another very large one might take three or more. The logistics would probably necessitate making at least portions of each volume given over to clips that are not necessarily related to the overall theme, which is a bit awkward.

 

Either of the access systems (menu vs. chapter) present difficulties, given that you're talking about roughly 100 commercials per disc. The menu system seems more friendly toward viewing the discs over multiple sittings.

I've been leaning towards the menued system, too. Hopefully I'll be able to make a "watch all" option for each sub-menu though, which would offer the best of woth worlds.

 

Permissions are tricky, because it's more than likely that the places where you got most of the ads had no permission to post them either. Even if they did, they would not have the sort of license that would allow them to give you permission to use the ads. Contacting those people, while courteous, is not really necessary (maybe in Curt's case). If you contacted the manufacturers, or their current IP owners, it's likely they'd ask you for money. I guess your course of action should be decided by how successful you think these things would be.

I don't expect them to be all that successful (especially given the lack of response here). Mainly it's just a labour of love for me that I thought might be of interest to others. I'm fine with my own collection the way it is, but offering a universal DVD collection to whomever wants them I figured would be a nice alternative.

[TheRedEye]

So...your only sources are commercials downloaded from the internet, right? Is there anything your DVDs will give me that I can't find at http://gameads.gamepressure.com/ ?

[Lord Helmet]

If the video quality is good/decent, I'd be interested in a set of them. The problem with the commercials on youtube is the really crappy quality.

[Mindfield]

So...your only sources are commercials downloaded from the internet, right? Is there anything your DVDs will give me that I can't find at http://gameads.gamepressure.com/ ?

As far as systems up to the mid-90s, yes -- and then some. (Admittedly I'm missing probably a bunch of the Japanese Sega ads, but they're not my main focus.) And yes, most of these have been sourced from all sorts of places on the 'net, though there are some I've gotten from personal sources as well.

 

If the video quality is good/decent, I'd be interested in a set of them. The problem with the commercials on youtube is the really crappy quality.

It varies -- widely. Some are quite good, some are average, some are pretty bad. I have tried to accumulate the highest quality video formats where possible, but some are bad simply because the source materials (VHS or Beta tapes, generally) were bad to begin with. None of them are DVD quality, as you might guess, but those that are good are as good as you're going to find. In any case, almost every commercial is subjected to a battery of filters and enhancements to try and improve the quality as much as can be expected given the source material and the tools I have to work with, and all have been upscaled to 720x480 where they were not capped at that resolution to begin with. (Actually, the only one that I have in 720x480 capped resolution is the Introduction to the Commodore 64 tape that I capped myself.)

[JimmydelaKopin]

Hey, I'd be willing to buy them perhaps, if only to show the noobs of today what I saw every Saturday morning and every morning and afternoon between parts of the various cartoons.

 

Go for it!

[Shannon]

I certainly would be interested in something like this, being that I've been too lazy to do it myself.

 

If you did a DVD-ROM option you should just convert them over to one format rather than being all helter skelter. Would make for less headaches.

 

As far as labels go, maybe you can burn em to light-scribe discs, and then just have someone with a light-scribe drive burn the label on it.

[Mindfield]

If you did a DVD-ROM option you should just convert them over to one format rather than being all helter skelter. Would make for less headaches.

True -- except that it would result in either larger files due to low compression to minimize further quality loss, or crappier video due to quality loss in the transcoding from the compression. DiVX/XviD are the obvious choices, but for some strange reason this has the unfortunate and nasty tendancy to desync the audio when done. There is also the problem of doing either separate discs for Mac and PC, or an HFS disc to handle both at once -- if that's even necessary with today's Macs. I know too little about Macs to understand how this might be accomplished. Straight DVD seems like the only truly universal choice. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do a DVD-ROM with a nice HTML menuing system, but the logistics of making it more or less universal present some significant obstacles.

 

As far as labels go, maybe you can burn em to light-scribe discs, and then just have someone with a light-scribe drive burn the label on it.

I have a Lightscribe 1.2-capable burner. I even have some LS discs sitting on my shelf. The two main problems with that are A) It takes 20 minutes to burn one image to a Lightscribe 1.2 disc (30 minutes to a 1.0 disc), and B) It's only good for purely black & white or high contrast greyscale labels. Despite claims to the contrary, photographic imagery looks like crap on Lightscribe discs, so the labels would have to be kept simple. Printable discs on a colour disc-capable inkjet printer make for much nicer labels all around, and it only takes a minute or so to print, which makes duplication far less time consuming. I'm actually reconsidering my stance on buying such a printer for this purpose. It would be good for printing nice labels in general, so it could be of some practical use to me even beyond this project.

Edited May 15, 2007 by Mindfield

[tyranthraxus]

I've got an Epson printer that prints to discs. It works fast and looks very professional. Because of some reason

or another Epson has a monopoly on the technology in NA but apparently you can buy HP printers and import an

adapter from Europe to do the same thing. Epson ink is very expensive but I've been getting by with Chinese

knock off ink cartridges.

 

The Lightscribe is a cool tool but as you mentioned its really too slow for practical use. I create a lot of DVDs of

home movies, slideshows and some of my own 'art' films. So the Epson has been a good purchase, if you're not

into making your own dvds then you might try an ad on craigslist to find a local who can print the discs for you.

[Mindfield]

I've got an Epson printer that prints to discs. It works fast and looks very professional. Because of some reason

or another Epson has a monopoly on the technology in NA but apparently you can buy HP printers and import an

adapter from Europe to do the same thing. Epson ink is very expensive but I've been getting by with Chinese

knock off ink cartridges.

From what I can tell, you can get a few HP models with CD/DVD printing, too. (Photosmart D5069 and D5160 from what I can see so far) I can't tell how it prints to discs, and that makes me nervous. I've used the Epson printers with disc printing though and I know they work well, so I'd probably stick with those, and buy some hub-printable discs for the purpose. I can get cakes of 100 name-brand, hub-printable discs for $35-40 or so.