We’ve always had good luck with Apple brand blanks. The charts below, from http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm, rate blank DVDs:

1ST CLASS MEDIA – EXCELLENT DISCS:
Almost flawless burns with 95-100% reliable results. These discs are suited for pretty much anything. They will usually serve as excellent archival quality media, as well as video masters. These discs are often the most expensive DVD media, so be sure to take advantage of sales, when available. (Trivia: The 5 best discs ever created are probably PVC001001, PVC001002, MXLRG02, MCC00RG20 and YUDEN000T02, with exceptional quality burns.)

2ND CLASS MEDIA – OKAY DISCS: 
Mixed quality media, average 75-90% of discs tend to be good. These discs are not suggested for archival data or video masters. These are best suited for data that can be replaced easily, such as secondary backups or data/video distribution. In bulk, these tend to be less expensive than 1ST CLASS media.

Have you ever found yourself changing the file names of a whole folder of clips, graphic or other files on your hard drive one by one? Here is a Warp Speed Workflow showing how to change hundred of files names in one click.

Click here to ask a question about Final Cut Pro workflows.

For more info, check out:

Final Cut Pro Foundations

Final Cut Express Foundations

Notable points:

• Final Cut Studio 2 will be available in May for $1,299, or $499 for the upgrade
• Final Cut Pro 6 has an Open Format Timeline that lets editors mix and match virtually any video format and frame-rate in a single Timeline without transcoding. Hope this works with nesting and media management!
• ProRes 422 format for uncompressed HD quality at SD file sizes and support for mixed video formats and frame rates in a single Timeline- nice feature. ProRes 422 will run at about 18-20 MB/sec (normal quality) or 27-30 MB/sec  (high quality) for HD, or 5 MB/sec (normal) to 8 MB/sec (high quality) for SD. So, 6 – 10 times more hard drive space than HDV, but faster rendering and editing (because it’s all I-frame, no B-frame)
• Livetype is still included
• The ability to edit Motion templates with video drop zones and editable text fields directly in Final Cut Pro- this could be a real timesaver.
• Motion 3 has a "multiplane" 3D environment, meaning not true 3D, but flat layers in 3D space, lit by 3D lights and "shot" by cameras that can move through 3D space, like After Effects, which is cool. Individual (flat) letters can move in 3D, and even cooler, 3D particle systems, which could be rotated in tandem with the camera moves of the underlying footage, leading to more realistic composited particle effects.
• Motion 3 has vector based paint tools to allow editors to create brushes with color, particles, video or pictures.
• A motion tracking feature, if it works well, will be very useful.
• You can now use audio volume and frequency to affect any affectable parameter
• Optical Flow retiming means generating inbetween frames that could produce very smooth slow motion.
• From Apple’s Final Touch acquisition comes Color, a separate program with more advanced color grading than Final Cut Pro’s 3 way Color Corrector. The primaries in Color include advanced color correction tools such as gamma, lift and gain adjustments, as well as custom R, G, B and luma curves, and the secondaries provide the ability to isolate specific areas of an image with soft- edged mattes and custom-shaped vignettes. This was a $25,000 program, then $5,000 that is included at no charge in the Studio bundle.

  Professional scopes provide precise monitoring of chrominance and luminance values via waveforms, histograms and new 3D scopes. Color offers a seamless roundtrip workflow where projects can be sent from Final Cut Pro 6 directly to Color for grading, finishing and final rendering with 32-bit float 4:4:4 image processing.

• Soundtrack Pro 2 adds an interface upgrade and surround mixing tools enable users to create 5.1 and stereo mixes in the same project.

  There’s also a royalty- free library of over 5,000 professionally produced foley and sound effects, including over 1,000 surround sound effects and evocative multi-channel music tracks. A powerful new Conform tool enables users to synchronize and track changes between
  picture and sound editorial.

• Apple today also introduced Final Cut(R) Server, a powerful new server application that works seamlessly with Final Cut Studio 2 to provide
  media asset management and workflow automation for post production and broadcast professionals.

Final Cut Studio 2 – Upgrade from Final Cut Studio

Availability: Ships in May
Price: $499.00

Final Cut Studio 2 – Upgrade from Final Cut Pro 1,2,3,4 or FCP HD

Availability: Ships in May
Price: $699.00

Final Cut Studio 2 

Availability: Ships in May
Price: $1299.00

Bare Feats is at it again, with speed tests of the new Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros:

There have been a lot of questions from people who are unhappy with how their DVD video discs are working when played on computers and/or DVD players.

Here is a short list of differences:

• Buttons rollovers do not work the same depending on what WinXP DVD player application is being used, or in Apple DVD Player
• TVs show cropped action safe area, computers show the whole picture
• MPEG2 encoding that looks fine on a TV often looks bad on a computer… or vice versa sometimes!
• DVD players play at way lower rez than a computer display (720 X 480 vs. 2560 X 1600 or whatever)
• On a computer, users expect to be able to click and access web pages, or additional content on the DVD

The DVD is a format that is designed to play from DVD players on TVs. The fact that computers have DVD compatible drives was originally a side-effect of saving on manufacturing costs, no one thought many people would be playing DVDs on a computer.

But, you essentially have two choices:

1. If you want a lot of control over how your DVDs play on a computer, you will probably be unhappy with the standard DVD disc format (with VIDEO_TS folder, MPEG2 encoding, etc.). So you will have to author your discs, just like in the multimedia CD era, with an authoring software program.

   You can present your program in a browser, (the advantage of which is that it’s easy once you’ve created the menus, etc., to deply your project on the web), or you can use Acrobat, Director, LiveStage Pro, iShell, Keynote, PowerPoint, Flash, Movieworks or many others. (Even Word and Excel will play movies.) (If you’re not sure which to choose, click here and tell me about your project.)

   In this way, you have total control over the experience of your viewers watching on a computer. You can use FLV or H.264 encoding, crop the picture correctly, and have your buttons pull up web pages, computer content, whatever. Your movies will be small compared to the overall size of today’s monitors. But they’ll look good! The downside of option #1 is that you have to author your project twice, once in a DVD authoring app and once in a multimedia app.

2. The other option is just to make a regular DVD video disc and live with it. Most recent computers will be able to play it, even though the experience will not be like a DVD player, but option #2 is a lot easier!

When moving footage is not available, don’t forget about still photos! You can animate still photos with motion and scale, crop them, apply filters (like sepia, B & W, color tint) and sometimes stills can fill empty spots in your timeline as well or even better than a video clip. Also, many stock photos are automatically HD res!

http://tutorialblog.org/25-places-to-find-awesome-stock-photos-%E2%80%94-free-and-cheap/

Here is a monster list of sites with free photos:

Wikipedia Commons
Stock Exchange
Morguefile
Image After
Free Photos Bank
OpenPhoto
BigFoto
USDA
NASA
NOAA
NPS
Earth from Space
FWS1
FWS2
Picture Station
Geek Philosopher
Free Images
Pixel Perfect Digital
FreeFoto
Image Base
Cepolina
Amazing Textures
Texture Warehouse
PDPhoto
Image Blowout
Piotrpix
Mandragora
Fotogenica
Mayang
Free Photo Station
Cromavista
Afflict
Creativity 103
The Photo Repository
Aarin Free Photo
Stockvault
Designpacks
Unprofound
Four Bees
Insect Images
Free media Goo
Burning Well
A digital Dreamer
Freestockphotos.com
Freewebpics
Lightmatter
Majestic Imagery
Triparalbum
Twice Pix
AboutPixel
Woophy
Pixelquelle
PIX
tOfz
Fontplay
Orangetrash
ArtFavor
ImageTemple
LogoDesignweb
Fotodatebank
Bajstock
PhotoCase
NPS Digital Image Index
Gimp-Savy
DeviantArt

Public_domain_image_resources @ wikipedia.org
Long page of links to websites hosting public domain images.

pixelquelle.de
Some 20,000 free images. You are not allowed to build (commercial) online databases or galleries.

Photoshop Tutorials Blog
An extensive list of over 50 free stock photos resources.

Yoto Photo
yotophoto is a search engine for finding free photos. The nice thing about it is that it searches multiple photo collection sites, so it may make a good starting point when you’re looking for something specific.

Finding Images Online
a Directory of Web Image Sites

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morgue file
This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.

Pixel Perfect
PixelPerfect? Digital is an image archive with over 4,000 images sorted in 146 categories free for commercial and non-commercial use. The newest files appear on the gallery home page and randomly selected images on the bottom of the page. You can stay on top of the newest files by subscribing to the RSS feed.

Open Photo
The Open Photo Project is a stock photo community and framework devised, implemented and supervised by Michael Jastremski. Its purpose is to allow photographers to share and protect their works through Creative Commons licensing where you can view photo thumbnails by license.

Image After
Image*After is a free online photo collection. Download and use any image or texture from the site to use in person or commercial work per the terms of use. At the top is a drop-down list for browsing images and textures by category or you can use the search box. This well-organized library can be sorted in different ways and the thumbnail pages include the image’s dimensions, number of hits and file size. Plus, you can select how many images to display on each page and even make the thumbnails larger by clicking on the magnifying glass.

PDPhoto.org
PDPhoto.org is a repository for free public domain photos. It contains about 2,000 photographs under a many categories. One person has taken most of the photos.

StockVault
Stockvault is a stock photo resource which offers medium-sized images for personal and non-commercial use. Stockvault has evolved from stock.b-man.dk and features images from various photographers, both professional and amateur.

Buzznet
Buzznet.com is an online photo-sharing community that allows its members (registration free) to upload images from mobile phones, and post, syndicate and republish digital photos in their blogs. For RSS feeds, look at the bottom of each user page, gallery, community gallery and friends listing.

Flickr.com
Flickr.com, bought by Yahoo, is one of the best ways to store, search, sort and share your photos. This online software application and image resource has super features and a community of world contributors, plus it’s s easy to use. Each person publishing images on Flickr can select and specify the type of licensing to be applied to those pictures — from fully reserved copyright to any of the Creative Commons licenses. So look carefully for the explicit author permissions specified on each individual photo page.

Ourmedia.org
Ourmedia is a (still in alpha) non-commercial free clearinghouse for all rich-media content for sharing, re-use and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

Jupiter Images

Frimages Royalty free images.

Multimedia @ all the web

Pro Corbis

galerie photos @ l’internaute

Freefotos
Self-proclaimed largest collection of free photographs for private non commercial use.

Creative Commons Search
The Creative Commons Search engine specializes in finding different content on the Web, which have been published with a Creative Commons license allowing re-use, and in some cases even modifying the work.

Gimp Savvy photo archive
The photo archive at Gimp-Savvy?.com contains over 27,000 free photos and images. The images come from three sources: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Though the photos are copyright free, be aware some restrictions apply.

DHD Multimedia Gallery
This isn’t a fancy site, but its photos are free for personal and commercial use. However, be sure to read its terms and conditions. You can browse collections by category, new entries and best photos. Each photo includes information on the date added to the collection, size, image type and rating. Also, the photo details page has the photo’s copyright information.

Free Photographs Network
Free Photographs Network is a resource for royalty-free stock photographs available for non-commercial use. If you use any of the photographs from the site, you’re agreeing to abide by international copyright law. Its terms of service outlines the rules for using the photos from the site. You can browse collections by category or use the search tool.

Free Stock Photos
FreeStockPhotos?.com is a resource for free photography for personal or commercial use. There are some restrictions in using photos from the site such as retaining the domain name when using the photo on the Internet, in a Web page, in printed publications or in any product, advertising or packaging. Categories include animals, Christian, Egypt, Israel, Near East, Rome, scenery, sky/weather and wildflower/plants.

Free Images UK
FreeImages?.co.uk has over 2500 stock photos. To ensure following the Web site’s rules for using its images, read the terms and conditions to ensure following the Web site’s rules for using its images. The home page lists the top three galleries, which is currently the home, financial, and flora.

Free Images.com
FreeImages?.com has over 2300 stock photos. Note this one is FreeImages?.com and it’s not the same site as the one from the UK. You can read the terms and conditions to verify the rules for using the site’s photos.

Big Foto
bigfoto.com is a repository of photos organized by categories and sub-categories. Each sub-category has a brief description about the category. The main categories are America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Pacific, Themes and Miscellaneous.

Geek Philosopher
Geek Philosopher has a collection of photos, backgrounds and wallpaper organized in nine main categories with subcategories. If you use an image, the site requires you to include a link to GeekPhilosopher?. According to the site, you are free to do whatever you want with these photos except redistribute them.

Barry’s free photos
Barry’s Free Photos has over 2300 free and royalty-free stock photos organized by many categories and subcategories.

Holyland photos
Holy Land Photos has over 2400 photos related to the holy lands. The photos represent a diversity of religions with photos sorted into three categories: daily life and artifacts, people and region. Regions cover Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, Israel, Turkey and Greece.

Aar In Free Photo
Aarin Free Photo and Digital Images offers over 950 free photos and images for personal and commercial use. You may download and use the images on your Web site, print ads, brochures or any other end products as long as you display the copyright information per the Web site.

Photo Rogue
Photo Rogue has a unique concept — if you can’t find a picture you need, submit a request to Photo Rogue and you might see your request fulfilled. The site relies on volunteer photographers. Before submitting a request, review the Guidelines. While the service is free, there are no terms on the site regarding the use of photos.

Free Photos
FreePhotos?.com offers over 1000 royalty free photos with no usage restrictions for Web site or print work use. The site doesn’t ask for reciprocal links or credits.

Free Stock Photos
Free-StockPhotos?.com is a collection of (what else?) free stock photos available for use in personal and commercial design projects as long as the terms of use are followed.

tOfz.org
tOfz dot org is one photographer’s collection of everyday urban life. Jeremie Zimmerman, the person behind the site, sorts his photos by location and categories. He shares his favorites. The site uses the Attribution-ShareAlike? 2.0 Creative Commons license and free art license (Copyleft Attitude) from License Art Libre. This site is available in English and French. A small, but respectable collection.

Free Media goo
FreeMediaGOO? has a collection of royalty free images, audio, textures, and Flash available for commercial and private user free of charge except for propaganda, adult or suggestive materials. Credit for the images is not necessary.

AMG Media Works, Inc. Free Photos
AMG Media Works Inc. is a design and photography service company that offers free stock photos for your use as long as you give credit to the photographer, Ernest von Rosen.

US Agricultural Research Service
The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) image gallery is a complimentary collection of over 2,000 high quality digital photographs related to agriculture.

Creating Online
Creating Online Stock Photos Gallery is a free stock photo gallery of over 500 photos, most of which have been taken by Pamela Auer Roth. Photos are free for personal or commercial use as explained in the Terms of Use.

Woophy.com
Woophy has a collection of over 23,000 photos from around the world and over 4300 cities are represented. You can search by city, country, category keywords or member to find photos. The categories are animals, culture, landmarks & buildings, objects and people.

Image Base
ImageBase? is a collection of over a few hundred photos on nature, people, city, and objects taken by presumably one person, David Niblack. Though a small database in comparison to others, you can expect to find quality photos here. The site clearly states that “all images are 100% free to use.”

Free Stock Photos from Cepolina Photos
Free Stock Photos from Cepolina Photos contains over 1900 photos by three photographers covering mostly nature and geography.The photos are free (see FAQs for details) as long as the site is credited and that you don’t link directly to the images of the web site as that’s stealing bandwidth.

From Old Books
Pictures from Old Books is a unique collection of over 800 images scanned from old books that are public domain (copyright-free or out of copyright) unless otherwise noted. The site has many pictures of castles, abbeys and old houses.

Majestic Imagery
Majestic Imagery has a collection of over 400 royalty free photos organized by categories. The terms of use require that those who use photos give proper credit with a link back to the site.

Photocase
Photocase contains a repository of photos and a community that includes forums, polls, buddy lists and user profiles. Photos from this site may be used for commercial and noncommercial self-contained original work. You can download up to three photos per day.

Visipix
Visipix is an art museum, clip art, and photo gallery with around 100,000 exhibits. If you publish the photos, the site requires crediting the authors and Vispix.com somewhere near the pictures. Per the copyright page, all copyrights are free. However, they can’t be used in the sex industry or in the promotion of tobacco and alcohol.

BurningWell.org
BurningWell?.org is a repository of over 1400 public domain images for your use. You’re allowed to download, copy and use the photos for any purpose. Photos from from photographers around the world. The site has eight top-level albums (categories) and 27 in total ranging from activities to textures.

Art Favor.com
ArtFavor? has a collection of vector and flash clipart, sounds, fonts, photos, pictures and images that the site indicates, “All artwork and sounds are absolutely free and you can use them in commercial applications.” You can download files in their original or zipped format.

freedigitalphotos.net
Freedigitalphotos.net has over 2000 free images for use in commercial and non-commercial work so long as you don’t claim the works as your own, redistribute them or offer them for sale.

Ixuz.com
Travel the world in pajamas with Ixuz Travel, which is dedicated to collecting photos from around the world. The site has a Korean version of its pages. Currently, the collection has over 2700 pictures sorted in 85 albums and 18 categories.

High quality & free photos

Free photos gallore

Absolut Vision

Fotolia.com

Totally Photos

WebReviews.ca

Pixel Load

Media lytecube

Wikipedia:Public domain image resources

The above sources come to us courtesy of Revolution in Education

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Here is an interesting site with some low cost photos:
http://www.blish.com

A detailed answer can be found here.