Happy Dance of the Done DVD

Some of you may know about this from Facebook... I've been making a big push since early November to *finally* wrap up my DVD update to 'Positively Fetching: Teaching the Obedience Retrieves Using Food'. The update is called 'Totally Fetching: Teaching & Proofing a Reliable Retrieve'.

I did a premature happy dance last Weds morning, when I successfully burned a DVD and thought I had a good master. Since there were problems with the menu selection order, it wasn't good. Darn.

Sunday afternoon, I started wrestling with iDVD, trying to customize the menus as I wanted them. I'm reasonably confident that today's DVD burn produced the final master for duplication. I dropped it off at the shop that will be doing the final packaging late this afternoon.

The original was a 60-minute VHS tape. The update is a 73-minute DVD. Today I watched it all on my TV for the first time (as opposed to my laptop screen), and I'm just so darned happy with it. Also quite tired of looking at it :-).

When Judy Byron and I did the original video, we hired a local (to Ann Arbor) production company, and so I sat in on most of the editing sessions, to supervise how it was put together. When I first started contemplating this update (oh, sometime in early 2009, I think), I decided to invest in the latest iMovie software and do as much of it myself as I could - I could certainly learn how to use the software myself. As it turns out, I did pretty much all of it, with some excellent guidance for the final production process from Mike at World Class Tapes, the company that will be duplicating and packaging the DVDs. I also had to learn how to use iDVD. Having been a computer programmer in my Life Before Dogs, this is actually something I enjoy doing. I'm even looking forward to whatever the next video project will be, since it will be much easier since I know the software so much better.

I don't know what the ETA of the salable DVDs will be, but I'm pretty confident it will be by mid-January. I'll have ordering info available in several places when the time is right. Among others, I'll put in on my JABBY Productions Facebook fan page.