• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Help with HDV workflow in Final Cut Studio

  Posted by Jay Smith on July 10, 2006 at 6:04 pm

  I recently purchased a Sony HDR-HC1 and would like to know some workflow best practices in Final Cut Studio. I have no problem capturing and editing my footage in FCP but I don’t know where to go from there for DVD delivery. Using Compressor or Quicktime Pro, what is the best export option (codecs, etc.) if I want to put my video on a DVD using DVDSP? I want to maintian the absolute best quality for my HDV footage and allow regular DVD players to play the disc. I am also concerned with aspect ratios and want to ensure that a letterbox is present on SD, 4:3 television sets. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

  Jay Smith replied 20 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Zak Mussig

  July 10, 2006 at 9:14 pm

  Jay,
  If you just need to get an edited sequence to DVD you’re almost home… What I do is set my chapter markers (if you need any) in FCP on your original sequence so you can see your cuts to help guide you as to where to put them. Then duplicate your sequence in the browser (to retain your chapter markers), and change the name to something besides “original sequence name copy”. I just replace “copy” with “export ” to keep things nice and organized. Open your duplicate or export sequence, select all, and delete everything out the export sequence (we just want the chapter markers). Open sequence settings (Cmd-0) and change them from your HDV settings to whatever SD settings you want. I would suggest DV 720 x 480 for size, and pixel ratio, tick the anamorphic box, and set the compressor to animation. This will retain the absolute highest quality going out of FCP.
  Now that you have an SD output sequence, nest your original HDV sequence inside of it.
  Select your export sequence in the browser and export using Compressor. Your Compressor settings will depend on length of your project and such… so I’ll leave that to you.
  Once you get your MPEG2 into DVDSP, set the display mode on the track you put it in to be letterbox.

  Hope that helps,
  Zak
• 

  Jay Smith

  July 11, 2006 at 12:16 pm

  Thanks Zak this is a great tip, it should definitely help me with my issues.

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