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View Full Version : Up Your DVD Presentation Game with Jewelboxing Cases and Inserts


Jason Dunn
02-15-2008, 04:30 PM
<img border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1203020577.usr1.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br /><strong>Product Category:</strong> DVD and CD jewel cases and inserts<br /><strong>Manufacturer:</strong> <a href="http://www.jewelboxing.com" target="_blank">Jewelboxing</a><br /><strong>Where to Buy:</strong> <a href="http://www.jewelboxing.com/purchase.php" target="_blank">Jewelboxing</a><br /><strong>Price:</strong> Varies (starts at $54 for 20 King cases, Access to Design Templates,24 Trayliners, Insert Books + Disc Labels).<br /><br /><strong>Pros:</strong><br /><ul> <li>High-quality plastic cases look fantastic;<br /> </li> <li>Matte paper allows for high-resolution, double-sided printing;</li> <li>Your DVD project will scream quality.<br /> </li></ul><strong>Cons:</strong><br /><ul> <li>A bit expensive ($2.70 USD each in the 20 pack) compared to traditional black plastic DVD cases and photo paper; </li> <li>The software templates are a bit hard to use if you're not a design professional.<br /> </li></ul><strong>Summary:</strong><br />If you're like most people, you'll spend hours working on a DVD project (wedding, vacation, etc.), burn the DVD, then put it in a 5 cent paper sleeve and give it out. Stop doing that right now - your memories deserve more than that, and Jewelboxing is an excellent way for you to present your DVD project in unmatched quality.<br /><br />Read on for the full review!<br /><div style="page-break-after: always;"><span style="display: none;"> </span></div><br /><font size="4"><strong>My Geeky Back-Story</strong></font><br />Going back a little over a decade, in-home desktop publishing (DTP) was all the rage: computing power was enough for fairly powerful layout software, greyscale hand-scanners were affordable for image capturing, and inkjet printers had almost-realistic 300 dpi photo output. I was a desktop publishing geek, volunteering my time to create newsletters and page layouts whenever possible &ndash; I had worked on my high school newspaper, back in the cut and paste days (we're talking glue here people) of the early '90s, so it came naturally to me. There was something immensely satisfying about creating something on my own time, with my own equipment, that was of remarkably higher quality than the dot-matrix, Print-Shop-era page layouts only a few years earlier. Your project only looked as good as the materials you used to create it, so back then full-colour, pre-printed paper was the secret weapon of any home desktop publisher. Forever on the quest for the coolest papers I could find, I even had a paper subscription where, monthly, I'd get sent paper samples. I kid you not &ndash; I was a hardcore teenage DTP geek (sounds like some sort of B-movie, doesn't it?). <br /><br />Fast-forward a decade, and things haven't changed much: I derive tremendous satisfaction creating professional-looking photo prints, photos layouts, DVDs, CDs, etc. Amongst my friends and family, I'm known as &quot;the wedding video guy&quot;, not so much for my camera-work (I use a Canon GL2, which is a great SD camera, but I don't shoot multi-camera), but for the quality of the final product. Always trying to up my game, to create better and better wedding DVDs, I came across the <a href="http://www.jewelboxing.com" target="_blank">Jewelboxing</a> Web site. They had design kits for graphic designers that included inkjet-compatible inserts, pre-scored for insertion into their high-quality plastic DVD cases, and software templates to make the process quick and easy. Since I had the wedding of a friend coming up, and I'd been asked to be the videographer, this seemed like a good opportunity to request product samples from the company. <br /><br /><font size="4"><strong>Using Jewelboxing Products</strong></font><br />When the product samples arrived, they didn't disappoint. The DVD jewel boxes were amazing: crystal clear, very hard plastic that felt sturdy in every way. They also featured a solid open/close mechanism that felt like it could be used hundreds of times. The matte inserts were thick, designed for double-sided printing, capable of supporting as high-quality an image as my Epson R1800 printer could output. The inserts were also impressively intricate &ndash; the jewel boxes were cut away on the front left side, exposing about half an inch of space that allowed you to see through to the inside back &ndash; and the inserts accommodated this nicely. <br /><br />The software templates, on the other hand, were less impressive. Designed for people that really know what they're doing with print layouts (which isn't me), it took me several tries before I was able to get the Photoshop template to print the way I wanted. The biggest problem wasn't the templates themselves, which are provided in a variety of formats (Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, InDesign, Pagemaker, and QuarkXPress), it was the lack of any instructions; a terse text file in the ZIP file doesn't really count. If the Jewelboxing designers spent a bit of time creating templates that had instructions with them, with easy to see layout guides, I think they could make them much easier to use. <br /><br />To be fair, they really only target design professionals, so I probably bit off more than I could chew and experienced users would probably find the templates easy to use. But hey, it's only ink right? I wasted about three templates before I got it right, and continued to tweak the layout slightly with each print, but the results were worth it. What I'd really love to see would be a template compatible with LumaPix's <a href="http://www.lumapix.com" target="_blank">FotoFusion</a>: there's some powerful synergy here because FotoFusion is an amazing tool for creating photo layouts, and with a great template the Jewelboxing people could reach out to a whole category of user.<div style="page-break-after: always;"><span style="display: none;"> </span></div><br /><font size="4"><strong>The Results Are What Matter</strong></font><br />So how did my project turn out? See for yourself: <br /><br /><img border="1" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1203019432.usr1.jpg" /><em><br />Figure 1: The front of the DVD, printed on my Epson R1800. I selected Ultra Premium Presentation Matte paper and best photo quality. It sure helped having great pictures to work with - oh, and a gorgeous bride as well. The purple on the far left is the back inside insert.</em><br /><br /><img border="1" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1203019437.usr1.jpg" /><br /><em>Figure 2: The front insert, on the left, is folded over and if I'd wanted to I could have added more photos inside. If I'd had a FotoFusioin template, I definitely would have. The DVD itself is a full-faced, white inkjet compatible Ritek DVD.</em><br /><br /><img border="1" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1203019346.usr1.jpg" /><br /><em>Figure 3: The back of the DVD - notice there's no purple bleed-through from the other side of the back insert. The paper is very high quality.</em> <br /><br />I put the DVDs in the mail, so I didn't get to see the expression on the face of the bride when she saw them for the first time, but the extremely enthusiastic email I received from her a couple of weeks later (which began with the line &quot;And the award for fantastic, amazing, stupendous, wonderful, incredible, wow wedding DVD goes to... Jason Dunn!!!&quot;) told me all I needed to know: she and her new husband loved the final product. The video content on the DVD is the most important part of course, but presenting precious memories in a professional way gave the project an added flair and set the expectation that if the outside of the DVD looked that good, the inside must be just as good. <br /><br />Here's another way of looking at it: if you were at a restaurant and were served the most delicious steak in the world, but it came on a cheap paper plate, your negative first impression of the presentation might colour your opinion of the steak. In the same way, if you put a lot of effort into the video editing of a DVD but give it to someone in a paper sleeve, you're doing a disservice to your work. Jewelboxing products are top-notch and will take your projects to the next level.<em><br /><br />Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com" target="_blank">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He likes doing wedding videos, but since they nearly kill him every time he does one, he hopes he has a few years off.</em>

Chris Gohlke
02-16-2008, 02:20 AM
VERY slick looking.

Jason Dunn
02-17-2008, 09:30 PM
VERY slick looking.

Yeah, the final product turned out really well - I don't think I can top it, so I'm retiring from the wedding DVD business. :D