Chicago Digital is expanding and will be moving to its new home in January of 2009. In September 2008, Chicago Digital purchased 2 Historic Buildings in Downtown Lockport, IL and are renovating them for their studios. Renovations include restoration of the original Maple hardwood floors originally installed when the buildings were built in 1895, the buildout of new offices, production areas and a remodeled customer entry area.

Renovations and remodeling is expected to be completed by December 31, 2008 and the business will relocate in January, 2009. The new address will be 111 East 9th St., Lockport, IL 60441. The business phone and fax numbers will remain unchanged.

“The focus of our exhibition this year will be the demostration of the Macrovision RipGuard and ACP Product now available to independent producers creating product on Recordable DVD.” states company President Tim Montague, “We are excited to provide an education to small and independant producers about the availability and value of protecting their content on Recordable DVD-R discs.”

Demonstrations of the viability of RipGuard and ACP will be conducted on both hardware and software for attendees. Special show pricing also avialable.

Chicago Digital Post & Great Lakes Digital Media joined forces in early 2007 to bring together a full service production, post production and multimedia service center under one roof. Headquartered in the Chicago market, Chicago Digital Post and Great Lakes Digital Media provides services to Studios, Networks, Corporations and Producers nationwide.

“Now that we have completed the consolidation of the two divisions,” says Tim Montague, CEO, “we are now an even greater resource than before. We have trimmed down to our core services, and have established a number of B2B relationships with non-competitive, regionally diverse service providers to expand the availability of our services through indirect channels across the country.”

Prior to the consolidation Chicago Digital Post’s core services centered around post-production including Audio Post, Authoring, On/Offline Editing, and light disc manufacturing, while Great Lakes Digital Media’s services focused upon Live Production, Multimedia, including Interactive & Flash Development, and Disc Manufacturing Services.

Chicago Digital’s service offerings now focus upon three core areas including ‘Live Production – SD & HD Event and Traveling ENG Crews’, ‘Post Production - Editorial & Authoring services for SD / HD / Blu-Ray’ and ‘Multimedia - Disc Manufacturing & Packaging, Macrovision RipGuard-MOD Recordable DVD Copy Protection Services and Interactive Disc Development’.

Finally, affordable copy protection for any video content, even if the per-job minimum is only three discs! In December 2006, Chicago Digital (CD) actively began pursuing, with Macrovision, a rollout of its RipGuard copy protection technology for the recordable market. RipGuard-MOD (Manufacturing on Demand) was officially launched nationwide this past June.  “We’ve been selected by Macrovision to lead the charge into protecting Recordable DVD,” says Tim Montague, president, CD. “Therefore we’re committed to making the technology available to even the smallest producers.”

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“How many people have Digital Video Cameras, but not the knowledge or experience to do anything practical with it?” asks Tim Montague, Creative Director. “There are plenty of people with stacks of video tapes building up, but no practical way to share them with friends or family. We hope to give the community an opportunity to learn how to take full advantage of the technology that is available to them.”

Chicago Digital will be offering hands-on, informal video editing training on either Adobe Premier Pro or Final Cut Pro HD. They will also offer DVD Authoring training on either DVD Studio Pro or Adobe Encore.

Over the last few years we as a group have moved to the DVD. Now however, the plain DVD in a plastic jewel case or even in a DVD case with a standard insert, "Your Wedding", "Our Special Day" or whatever it might say is more and more passé.

Chicago Digital, has launched a new line of fully customizable, ‘Retail-Ready’ Blank Recordable DVD Packages which now allow videographers and producers to deliver high-quality products to their clients without the hassle of trying to create professional packaging themselves.

I test-drove this service and I have to admit I was skeptical at first. But after paying a nominal $6.95 for a single package, I am more than impressed, especially with the quality. To start, the Disc itself is name brand, Grade-A media and the printing if full color edge-to-edge dye-sublimation printing. For those of you not familiar with this form of disc printing, it is a permanent, on-disc gloss printing that provides photographic quality.

The Package came fully assembled with Full Color Digital Printed DVD Case outerwrap on semi-gloss 80# text with the disc individually packaged inisde and ready to be removed and burned. Included with the package was an insert card providing the end-user with instructions on caring for their new disc. Very smart. Also included was a re-sealable clear poly-vinyl DVD bag which fit snuggly around the case and provides a polished finished look and feel. Overall I would give this a serious thumbs up and plan to start using these for my next wedding production.