Costs that Anju Need Not Pay
While there is no doubt that the creation of an informational DVD would allow Anju’s customers to have easy access to the resources Anju wants to present to them, the cost that Anju needs to incur upon her will be a continuous one, and is not necessarily sustainable. While the camcorder and the computer Anju bought can be used for her personal use, the DVDs she has to produce for her clients will cost her time and money. Assuming that Anju is conducting her diabetes workshop as a public service, and assuming that she will continue to host similar workshops (perhaps annually or semi-annually with updated information), it is not far-fetched to guess that she will need to produce a batch of brand new DVDs each time to give away. For a dietician working on her own computer, the time this would take would be enormous.
Many camcorders include softwares that would allow the camcorder to be connected to a PC/Mac through USB to easily upload videos into files that can be played on the computer. Once these files are uploaded, Anju can still burn the files into a DVD. My computer comes with Nero 7 Essentials, which is a fairly user-friendly software that would allow media files to be burned onto a DVD playable on DVD players and computers. The software also allows for the creation of a fairly simple, easy to navigate menu page. If Anju’s DVD requirements include the straight forwarding recording of her workshop and the creation of un-edited footages of her workshops, a DVD can be created within minutes of her return to home from such a workshop.
As I have said, however, the creation of such DVDs will cost Anju a lot of time, and to a lesser degree, a significant amount of money (a single DVD costs about a dollar, but if she has to mass produce these DVDs every time she presents a workshop, the cost would add up). I would suggest that, while she can still produce a small amount of such DVDs for some people (e.g. senior citizens who do not have a computer), the better approach would be to upload these videos onto a video sharing website such as YouTube.
While some may fear that people who are not fluent in written English may be afraid of using the computer, they often forget that a service such as YouTube is actually not language-specific. People of different ethnicity all use YouTube to post videos, and they can search for a specific type of videos in their own language as well. Once Anju creates an account, others just have to subscribe to Anju’s channel, and all of her videos can be watched whenever a person sits in front of a computer with internet access. Should the person chooses, he/she can even use a video-capturing program such as Video Piggy to download those YouTube videos. No more burning of DVDs by Anju.
If using YouTube is the method of transmission of choice for Anju, all she needs to do is to mention this information during her presentations. Or, if she chooses, she can prepare little business cards or brochures with instructions to subscribe to her YouTube channel. She could include screen shots to lead people into her channel. This, in my opinion, is a much cheaper way to do the same thing, not to mention that it leaves a smaller environmental footprint by taking the information to the digital world.