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Imovie/IDVD vs DVD Studio Pro and other classroom questions
I’m teaching a video production course at a HS in LA. I have access to a FCP workstation with the 4.5 Production suite. However, the kids all have emacs and imacs with iMovie on them. Assuming their films will get edited in Imovie, would I see any significant difference in quality of a burned DVD if they simply did it from the imovie interface using IDVD vs. importing their project into the FCP suite as a QuickTime movie and burning it using studio Pro?
Also any advice on the burning of DVDs in terms of compatibility in consumer DVD players? I know to use the slowest burn possible. Any brands of DVDs to avoid or to look for? I need the cheapest possible. I want to reuse the dv tapes to cut costs. I
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5 Replies
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1) If the movies are under 60 minutes than just use iMovie. You could probably get SLIGHTLY better compression using DVD Studio Pro if you took the time to mess around with it but I doubt it would be that much different and you probably don’t want to spend the time doing that anyway. Only go to DVD SP if you need to put more than 60 minutes on one disc or you want to get really complicated with the menus. Perhaps use iDVD for their own projects but DVD SP for the end-of-year class disc. (For stuff like that, burn 2 discs. That’s a good safety measure for important things.)
2) I’ve always had good luck with Verbatim brand discs. Lots of others are good but that’s what I use. Look online for places that sell 100 on a spindle and buy disc-cases in 100 packs too. You’ll save money over buying discs that come in cases. I also suggest getting a printer that prints on DVDs and buying the printable-surface discs. No labels is a time saver but more importantly they prevent off-center labels from making discs wobble in players. That’s something that can mess up home-made discs.
I’m not suggesting this exact one, but I’m talking about something like this:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6355106&type=product&id=10766285785743) The computers won’t melt down. You should tell the students that if they’re serious about this they should get an firewire hard drive. An 80 GB is about $120 and I’m sure there will be one or two students serious enough to spend that kind of money so it’s worth it for you to point it out to them. For the rest who don’t care that much they should be fine, just tell them that they should be careful to always leave about 20% of their hard drive empty at ALL times.
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Hi Craig,
You might see some difference using FCP and DVDSP over iMovie (and iDVD) because FCP will generate compression markers at all transitions, which makes for nicer looking fades and cross dissolves, etc. I’m not really sure if the more recent versions of iMovie have the ability to export compression markers for DVDSP because I don’t have any of the iLife programs. I’m also not sure if you can even export a QT movie out of iMovie for encoding and burning in DVDSP, but I would suspect that you can. Someone else may be able to shed some light on that. The quality between the two different workpaths will also depend on the quality of your students’ video footage. They/you may not notice any difference at all. iMovie and iDVD are more of a “drag and drop” interface for people that have little or no experience, so it all depends on what you’re trying to teach your students. If you want them to know about what goes on behind the scenes of making movies then they’ll learn more by using FCP and DVDSP. If all they’re concerned about is creating somple DVDs from their footage then I’d stay with iMovie and iDVD.
DVDSP will work well for your concerns about consumer DVD player compatability. With FCP, Compressor, a.Pack and DVDSP you have the option of compressing your .aif audio files into the .ac3 file format, which is a considerably lower bitrate. With iMovie you’re stuck with using the huge file sizes of the .aif file format, which causes some consumer players to choke on the high bitrates, not to mention that .aif files take up a lot more room on a DVD than .ac3 files do. Smaller audio file sizes mean that you have more room on a DVD left for the video.
I wouldn’t go too cheap on your DVD-R media. Prices are at their lowest levels and with cheap media you’re increasing the chances of doing unusable burns, or worse yet, having a DVD that has playing problems just a few years down the road. I’d get the best DVD-R media that you can find. Ritek, Verbatim, Maxell, etc. All good.
It’s always recommended that one uses a separate hard drive for the media. If you have your operating system, project files and media all on the same drive you invite problems because the hard drive sometimes can’t keep up with all the reading and writing that’s being asked of it. Keep in mind though, that this is for processor-intensive programs like FCP that can display multiple video and audio files. With iMovie I don’t think you can have more than one video track, so keeping everything on the startup drive won’t be such an issue. Remember that computers like the iMac and the eMac come with the iLife programming and are designed to run those apps without issues such as bogging down or crashing. Partitioning the iMac and eMac drives will not serve any purpose other than to eat up valuable hard drive space, leaving less room for video files.
Hope this helps.
– Don
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THANKS JEFF, Most of my experience has been with FCP. When I try to capture footage using Imovie, I don’t see the option to save where i want (such as a connected firewire drive). How is this done using Imovie. My plan would be to buy a few external firewire drives to capture to and simply connect them to the best of the Emacs we have when we are ready for editing. Even with short form films you can end up with a lot recorded and i have six classes each with 5-6 “production teams.” I can see the hard drives getting very full very fast. Thanks.
OSX 10.3.8; Quicksilver Dual 1 gig; FCP 3.0.4; Sony camcorder vx2000; write professionally for a variety of media
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Thansk Don. This is what concerned me. But like i asked Jeff above, how to i choose where Imovie will save captured footage? Craig
OSX 10.3.8; Quicksilver Dual 1 gig; FCP 3.0.4; Sony camcorder vx2000; write professionally for a variety of media
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I’m not sure if you can access or even change where or the way iMovie saves its media. In FCP you can, of course, create a media folder on any disc and tell FCP to save everything in that location. Perhaps you can do the same thing in iMovie. I’d start by looking in iMovie’s program preferences.
Perhaps someone else will read your posts here and help out.
– Don
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