15 years or so ago, one of my main sources of income was DVD Authoring (e.g. making menus, titles, subtitles, navigation of video files etc), a skill and trade that's now completely irrelevant.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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I don’t get all the upvotes. Isn’t this just UI/UX which is anything but irrelevant? What am I missing here?
In the early days it was a bit more than that. You had to deal with fiddly software and do things like mapping buttons to video tracks, create transition videos, create chapters etc.. It's been a couple of decades since I last dabbled with this stuff, but I remember that doing it well, and creating something that stood out and worked well, was a bit of an art.
Edit: All/most of those things became easy(ier) as authoring software improved, of course, but in late 90s and early 00s it took practice and skill to achieve a professional result.
It's pretty much covered by the other person's answer, but there was a really tight spec to meet "proper DVD standards", and loads of knowledge and stupid workarounds specific to the DVD Authoring software you were using, or CRT-era television standards, or to know the disc would play back properly on different brands of DVD players, but also work on computers (and extra messing around and lower bitrates for it to play back correctly on Mac computers).
Basically a tonne of weirdly specific technical knowledge that's just no use any more.
These days you can sort of just record a video on your telephone and play it back on a telly or the internet, but you used to have to "cap white level at 235" and "lower max red to 240", and export your audio file 1 frame shorter than the video file it accompanies and set fading in titles as an "in-between" video, which links to a looping video with the "real" menu over it and other stuff like that.
I was a protectionist at a cinema for a while. I get it.
In past life I worked for a while as assistant editor for an advertising production company and the producers always get fascinated because I would take care of that on the DVDs that would be send as previews to the clients. It was silly but was a part of the job I really enjoyed, I even take care to print some nice cover for the DVD and the DVD box.
Ice Man lol This entry is the reason that some of your Grandparents and Great-Grandparents called their freezers and "ice box".
Clicked on the link since the thumbnail showed a flowchart (I like them), and got to learn quite a bit. Sad that samurai is obsolete but glad that body snatcher and slave catcher are as well.
I got a nice chuckle out of match maker, never thought of it in this manner, and will never not think about it whenever someone says anything about matchmaking.
Also chuckle worthy, “Flowchart to determine if an occupation should be included in the list of obsolete occupations”, and the first decision box is “Is occupation obsolete?”.
Obsolete? Dammit!!!
I once made a craigslist ad for a hermit seeking hermitage. I'll have to see if I can find it. It was fucking hilarious. Got SO many emails off that thing
Edit: found it!
Don't leave us hanging, where did you end up on your hermitage?
Sadly I have yet to have found my hermitage :(
You and me both :(
You really sold yourself with that ad - given the means I would've hired you in a heartbeat.
I come cheap! A small shack, some leftovers, and a decent internet connection are all I require!
What happened to fish-benders, though?