If asked, most people say they would prefer to use DVD for their corporate presentations because the picture quality is so wonderfully bright and clear.

Regular DVD users don't really want to use anything else.

Uses of DVD without requiring a dedicated DVD player

• Playing your video from a PC or laptop at DVD quality to customers, staff, or at an exhibition or seminar. It looks superb.

• Projecting video from a PC or laptop onto a screen. Regular PC video files come out looking more blurred by comparison. DVD video files are at least twice as sharp as regular PC video files, so it will look twice as good when projected. Less fuzz.

How can I play DVD without a DVD player installed on my computer?

First your corporate video needs converting into an mpeg-2 file. Mpeg-2 is the DVD standard.

You also need your cd drive to be a dvd drive. Most modern PCs include this as standard.

An mpeg-2 video file is playable using Microsoft's Media Player on a reasonably powerful modern PC, with the correct codec installed.

You can then play it like any other video file. Click and go. No special hardware or special graphics card is needed.

What is a DVD file?

A DVD file is simply a high quality mpeg file, mpeg-2 to be precise. Regular mpegs you see on a pc are usually mpeg-1 or increasingly mpeg-4 for streaming from the web. While these are relatively small files, they are slightly blurred.

DVD mpeg-2 looks great by comparison.

DVD files are also bigger and need more disk space. At least two or three times as big. Every minute of DVD runtime uses 30mb of diskspace. So 10 minutes of video takes 300 mb, enough to easily fit onto a cd or hard disk.

DVD files will play from hard disk and can be kept on cd-rom.

What's the difference between mpeg-2 DVD and the DVD disks we buy in the shops?

A DVD disk is a versatile storage medium that can hold 4.7 gigabytes.

So a 90 minute movie requires around 3 gigabyte of storage space. And the disk has a front end interactive menu, which includes an intro sequence, interviews with stars, movie trailers, and a small file so that the DVD player can recognise the disk.

Corporate video however usually requires nowhere near the 3 gb that a full length movie requires.

This makes corporate DVD a much more flexible medium to use, as a dedicated player is not required.

All that's required is to install a codec on a PC that has Microsoft Media Player.

Is it expensive to have my corporate video on DVD?

No.

Normally between £200 and £500 depending on its length, and the extras you may require, such as a front end interactive menu badged to your corporate logo and image.

More information on interactive DVD

Ask for a quote mail@rossiterandco.com