• Compression Techniques

  From MPEG-2 to DVD, as quickly as possible

  Posted by Veranda Rare on September 28, 2007 at 4:57 pm

  Hi all,

  I’m not sure of the best way to describe this question of mine, but I’ll give it a shot…

  Ok, let’s say I need to drop an hour of mpeg-2 into Final Cut Pro (or Premiere, or Avid Xpress Pro HD, if either would make more sense), chop it down to (hopefully no more than) half an hour (with hopefully minimal effects), export, and burn a DVD… all within an 8 hour period… do you think this is possible? I’m familiar with all of those editing programs enough to cut in a hurry but I’m less familiar with compressions and file formats in regards to how long exports and renders will take.

  What should I research or test before hand to be certain of timing? Do you know if mpeg-2’s can work well with Final Cut, without gigantic render times?

  I have a Macbook with the 2 GHz Intel Core Duo processor and 2 gigs of ram, OSX, Windows XP, FCP 5, DVD Studio Pro, Premiere Pro 1.5 and Encore.

  Any suggestions, advice or resources would be greatly appreciated.

  Thanks all,
  -V

  Craig Seeman replied 18 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Rich Rubasch

  September 29, 2007 at 8:53 pm

  For me the first thing I would do is convert the MPEG-2 to DVCPro50. Cut it down and run the final thru Compressor and author the DVD. the things that will speed up workflow is to have your presets in compressor so they are ready to go….have a DVDStudioPro template set up just the way you will need to author it etc.

  If possible do the conversion from MPEG-2 to DVCPro50 the day before the edit.

  Otherwise, get a PC and Vegas and cut your MPEG-2 there.

  Rich Rubasch
  Tilt Media
• 

  Veranda Rare

  October 2, 2007 at 8:12 pm

  Rich,

  Thanks for your ideas. I will test the MPEG-2 to DVCPro50 option, and see how that works.

  -v
• 

  Craig Seeman

  October 3, 2007 at 11:26 pm

  You might want to use MPEGStreamclip to convert to DVCPro50. I don’t think Rich mentioned a process for that.

  You could even create a Compressor Droplet to use on the desktop just to streamline a bit more.

  Another thought is importing the MPEG2 right into FCP directly although you’ll have to render to whatever your timeline codec is. The viability may depend on whether these are muxed files or not.

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