The term "print" in this context has its roots in the film business. It's always made sense to me.

John

The term "print" in this context has its roots in the film business. It's always made sense to me.

True, it makes sense if you grew up with it. However, as I learned when running a desktop publishing company, if you want to expand your market beyond the people that grew up in that industry (which is certainly the case with what I hope Sony wants to do with video editing), then it helps if you perhaps leave some of the old terms behind and use words that have a more obvious meaning for those that aren't familiar with the old context.

A good example in DTP is the word "leading," which is used to describe the space between lines. It makes perfect sense to someone that has actually set type using lead type slugs, and changed the spacing by adding additional lead slivers between the lines. However, since we eventually sold only about 5% of our software to the "old line" customers and about 95% to people that didn't know a "point from a pica" (a phrase I used to be fond of using), the word "spacing" made a lot more sense, and is what we adopted for our software (and is what Microsoft uses for Word, to this day).

I also think of "print" as outputting your creative work to a fixed medium that you can use/view/enjoy without needing the computer. Video on tape fits this description quite well, as does a paper printout.

But the point is, the original poster, someone relatively new to the business, didn't know what it meant.

I guess we all have to learn new terminology when we get into anything new, although often, even after people know what words to use, they still don't have a clue as to what they really mean. Case in point, how many people talk about "booting a computer," but don't really understand what it means, other than it has something to do with turning it on, or re-starting it?

"how many people talk about "booting a computer," but don't really understand what it means, other than it has something to do with turning it on, or re-starting it?"

I would call them ignorant, or perhaps "uneducated" might be a kinder term. If you want to get into something, I think you should learn the correct terminology and the historical reason for that terminology. But that's just me...

So one can "print to tape" (back to the camera) and then send that tape cartridge out to have dvds made?
All this time I thought it referred to DLT.
Thanks for clearing it up for me.

Dale

Dale, FWIW when editing on a PC was pretty young, many (most?) times you couldn't pre-view your video on your PC... They used chips on ISA cards to encode/decode mjpeg and cabled the output to monitor &/or tape. Preparing the project was a lot like printing a graphics intensive DTP layout -- it often took hours before the laser actually started printing as the blazingly fast 286 crunched the numbers. ;-)

At the time 3d render on a PC was a CLI novelty -- otherwise you'd probably see or read more render than print, but that's the term IMHO folks related to... And software/hardware design folks do occasionally get set in their ways -- I've been wondering, and laughing, at Adobe for years at their refusal to stick a save icon on the P/Shop menu bar like every other app since win3.0.

"Do many (on this board) print to tape to author dvds?"
Don't know about here, but I think that tape is still a valid means to get your content to the folks who'll press the discs. [another old term I probably really shouldn't use ;-) ] It's a different type of tape more suited to data.

My own 2 cents, FWIW... Lots of printing folks went broke ignoring the then growing non-pro market - a market forced to both learn and grow elsewhere. I remember arguing with folks using Aldus [if you don't know the name, that's part of the lesson ;-) ] ... The then new Ami Pro word processor could do a surprising amount of DTP easier & for less than a 6th of the price; the folks at Microsoft were definitely watching. So I personally can see a huge amount of biz sense in johnmeyer's post.

I can't see requiring any history lessons or delving into history unless you're a trivia buff [or an ol' fart like me] -- today we're all too busy & frankly there's just too many hats to wear, too much information to spend time learning what you don't actually need to know. I used to be a car nut -- started learning custom paint at 9 or 10, & have climbed in an out of many an engine over the decades. I could probably stump [or baffle] quite a few with terms & trivia, but that's not going to stop anyone reading this from driving home at the end of the day, & it's never stopped a pro driver from getting the most out of his/her machine.

"So one can "print to tape" (back to the camera) and then send that tape cartridge out to have dvds made? All this time I thought it referred to DLT."

First, DLT is a type of tape - that's the "T" portion of the TLA. However, the "print to tape" usage in Vegas is not designed for sending out for DVD replication (unless the replication house will author the DVD for you). Print to tape is primarily for sending a video/audio stream out to tape. DVD's contain much more info than just the video - there's menu structures, commands to the DVD player, etc. In the DVD areana, the process of creating a DLT for replication usage is usually refered to as "mastering."

--Scott

Thanks. I'm just getting used to the differences between the words "replication" and "duplication" when it comes to making dvds, so this has been an education.
By the way, an interesting thing about the word "leading." It's actually pronounced "ledding."

By the way, an interesting thing about the word "leading." It's actually pronounced "ledding."

Ahh, a publishing person. Yup, since the origins are from the metal lead (periodic table Pb), that is the correct pronunciation.