We just thought we'd keep everyone up to date on how things are progressing in the Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange Special Edition releases. They are Limited Edition, and still available for pre-release here, and we should still be on track to start shipping them in October.
For anyone who missed it, we uploaded a teaser video here.
Notes from Statik:
Taking on all of the responsibilities of the record company, as well as authoring these releases, and overseeing the whole thing (as with any release) can sometimes take a lot of attention to details, as well as unforeseen costs.
For those who are interested in the details, here is what was happening this past week. Originally I submitted a .iso disc image for the blu ray. The manufacturer said they would have to convert it to another format in order to actually produce it. The only other format the authoring software (that I have, and that’s still available for a Mac) could output is a BDMV file, so I had to make new files for each release…then re-upload each 20+ GB file, which took the better part of another day! THEN…they said that that format wasn’t correct either, and what was needed was a BDCMF file, not a BDMV file!! So there will still be extra costs for the conversion. (BTW, I asked them about this format question about 6 months ago, but I guess the guy who I talked to at the time didn’t know what he was talking about…typical!!) They also said that, in fact, they couldn’t have converted the original disc image file, so they needed the new format anyway. Also, they said that the second blu ray file got corrupted? during the transfer, so they needed me to re-upload it. So now that they have those, hopefully they can get on with the whole process of converting it to whatever they need, which will be another $189 for each release.
With all of the conversions, we are opting to get a check disc back before they make all of them—so we have to wait for that as well, as we figure it would be best to actually double check it after the conversion, and make sure that they produce the disc correctly, the way we envisioned, with no errors….so that’s another $150 per release.
The good news is that the printed artwork—booklets, and wallet, are in the middle of the printing process, or will be completed soon. Making a physical CD is easier, since we’ve done that before…and the DDP file that we gave them will hopefully be fine.
We should hopefully still be on time to start shipping everything out in October, but we just thought everyone would like to know a few of the behind the scene things that are happening.
-Statik