Video, Audio and CD Duplication Masters

Duplication 4 Less.com will duplicate or replicate your program with the finest equipment in the industry. We take every step to optimize the playback of your supplied masters.

Video Masters

Audio Masters

Tips on Mastering

CD Masters

Duplication 4 Less.com can work with all standard commercial video master formats:

1" Master
Digital BetaCam
Sony(TM) D2
BetaCam & BetaCam SP
3/4" U-matic
Super VHS
VHS (not recommended due to quality loss)
Mirror Mother mastering for use on our Sony Sprinters

Your audio cassettes can be duplicated from the following masters:

DAT (Digital Audio Tape)
Compact Disc; CD-R etc.
Reel-to-Reel
Standard Audio Cassette

All masters are filtered for maximum quality and performance.

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General Audio Submitance Requirements:

All supplied masters must be accompanied by a complete and accurate time log including date, artist, title of release, sampling rate of recorded audio, all necessary tones, silence between each individual song/track.
Audio masters supplied by the client must be replication read with all problems corrected, including noise between tracks, spacing between tracks, correct order of tracks against printed material, false starts, level inconsistencies, distortion, clicks or pops, equalization problems, etc..
A back-up copy or all source material should be made before submitance of your project, as we can not be responsible for any lost or damaged masters submitted for duplication/replication.

To Optimize Your Disc Reproduction
DAT production masters for transfers and mastering supplied by client must have the following:

DAT Masters must be recorded with ABSOLUTE TIME (A time)
1 MINUTE Pre-roll (Digital Black or Silence)
30 SECONDS of 1kHz Calibration Tone at - 12 db - This is not require, but helpful. (DO NOT record at 0db. This may cause damage to audio processing equipment.)
First Moment of Audio (sound) should start at 2:00 or after. If sound starts earlier than 2:00 than the quality and integrity of the audio may be degredated.
44.1 or 49 kHz Sampling Rate. The sampling rate must not change throughout the entire program. (Audio supplied at 48 kHz will require a Sample Rate Conversion for CD Replication and an extra fee.)
Audio Level should NOT peak over 0db.

There are a few steps that you can take to ensure the very best medium for supplying your masters. With the right steps your program will achieve maximum benefit from quality masters to quality reproduction. Please review this area for tips in your mastering techniques.

When submitting your masters, always send a "working master". That is a clone of your original. We highly recommend that you keep your original in a fire-safe location. It is your original and you don't want to risk losing it in shipping or the potential of damaging your only original!

1" masters or Digital BetaCams make the best masters to duplicate from. The best results post-production is from using Digital masters. Digital masters such as Digital BetaCams once used only for editing are showing up more and more in today's duplication environment and make great production masters. Not all facilities can duplication straight from a DBC, so ask if yours is. They may be converting it to something else before actual production - this is a loss in quality!

BetaCam SP is a very good medium for duplication, and its very affordable! If your masters are in BetaCam SP, we can duplicate quality videos for you.

Standard VHS tapes are not recommended for duplication. They should only be used as a last resort. The image generation loss produces unfavorable results.

Never re-use a DAT master! It is not worth the expense of a new fresh DAT. Chances are you will have "noise" bleeding over from one side to another, or remnants of the old program you thought you erased and are recording over.

Plan for a break in your program that is closest to 1/2 of the total length of your anticipated finished length. By providing near equal length on both sides of your tape, you will save cost and consumer frustration by avoiding excess "blank/dead" space on either side of your program.

For example; if you have a 40 minute program, by planning a break from Side A to Side B at say 21 minutes, you will end up with a finished cassette of 42 minutes in length. Result; 21 minutes of program on Side A and 19 minutes of program with 2 minutes of blank on Side B.

A 40 minute program with Side A at 26 minutes will yield a cassette that is 46 minutes long with only 14 minutes of program and 12 additional minutes of dead space on Side B of your tape! Wasted time and wasted money. Not to mention your customer who thinks that they were shorted on the program with all the dead space on their cassette!

As you can see, the closer you can break your program to exactly 1/2 your length, the better.