<p>Do most professional recording studios make DVD recordings too? How much do they cost (I heard usually more than CD recordings...)?</p>
<p>What kind of DVD's are you looking for - DVD Videos, the almost defunct DVD Audio format, or MP3's stored as DVD-R or DVD+R data files?</p>
<p>DVD Videos</p>
<p>A lot of the smaller studios in my area are audio-only. They are usually quite happy to put you in contact with an independent contractor who will provide the equipment and knowledge for the video portion of the job. The production costs are usually substantially higher once video is involved, but the charges vary greatly depending on the job and who is doing it. That makes it impossible to give you an idea of the cost involved without knowing anything about your project or where you are located. Some studios do handle both audio and video in-house, but they tend to be the more expensive ones.</p>
<p>Here's an idea if you have access to a digital video camera, a decent computer with a DVD burner and some basic video editing software. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Go to audio studio and while they're taping the session, have the camera running on a tripod in the recording room.</p></li>
<li><p>Capture the video from the session on your computer</p></li>
<li><p>Transfer the audio from the session CD to your computer as an MP3</p></li>
<li><p>Take the audio MP3 from the studio and use it to replace the audio from the video.</p></li>
<li><p>Burn a DVD of the session.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Not too much of a hassle, even for a newbie, if you have the right equipment. </p>
<p>If this is for an taped audition, you really don't have to worry much about the video quality. The judges are just looking to see if it's really you performing and there hasn't been any serious audio editing going on. Replacing a poor-quality video audio track with a high-quality track from the same take IS NOT "serious audio editing."</p>
<p>Imperial has the right idea. Even better is to get a digital audio feed into the video camera directly from the studio. This is very easy to do and will insure sync between the audio and video. If you transfer a CD recording onto the video you will probably lose sync after awhile becuase of inherent drifting. The audio quality will be as good as a CD since you staying in the digital domain. Make sure you have the audio of the camera set for the highest resolution. In most consumer video cameras this is 16-bit, but most cameras default to 14 bit, so make sure to change it. Also, if you are editing on a Mac and using iMovie, you will find yourself drifting out-of-sync when you play back your finished DVD if the camera was set to 14 bit audio. </p>
<p>A tip for editing. Obviously, you can't edit during takes when using video. However, you can record as many takes of each song as needed and just slug some black between selections with the name of each selection in the black. </p>
<p>By the way, this is exactly what I did for my son's recordings last year. We felt that a DVD is more personal than a CD and there is no doubt this way that he is the one performing and without any internal edits during each song. He introduced himself at the top of the recording and spoke a little about his musical tastes. We actually rented a semi-pro video camera for a weekend. I have a recording studio in my home so we saved money on that end (although I did have an engineer friend set up the mic and set the EQ and some compression).</p>
<p>Of course, this still doesn't beat a live audition. For us, it was just too difficult to travel to all the schools my son applied to. Also, a few wanted a pre-screening tape. My suggestion is to audition live at your top few choices and do regional auditiions at the others, or send DVDs if you don't live near a regional audition.</p>
<p>Hooking audio directly into digital camcorder is a great idea. </p>
<p>Drifting synch issues may be a "fruit computer" problem since I never had any synch problems when converting CD audio to MPG and overlaying that audio on a video track that was originally recorded digitally. If you're talking analog video then that's a whole can of worms that should be left to experts since synch issues there are real and difficult.</p>
<p>However, as Beethoven suggests, stopping the camera between takes with short "black" periods in-between is one of the best ways to prevent audio/video synchronization issues; the shorter the clip, the less likely it is to lose synch and is the way to avoid this potential problem if you're working with analog video.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help.</p>