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Compressing LARGE 16×9 footage file onto DVD
Tell me what to do! I’ll be as detailed as possible. I shot 16×9 footage in standard DV on my camera, and after exporting the final product as a QT file from FCP it came to be a 13 gig file. I need to fit this on a single layer DVD to be watched on the clients giant LCD tv, preferably using iDVD because I do not have studio pro.
I’m not sure which settings to use to compress it, or if trying to make it that small will just make it look like garbage. I’m not very familiar with compressor, but do I have any other options? Should I export it from FCP as something else than compress it? I am so lost on this one and it takes so long for compressor or anything to export it, I don’t want to experiment over and over again.
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11 Replies
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[andrea sillick] “I shot 16×9 footage in standard DV on my camera, and after exporting the final product as a QT file from FCP it came to be a 13 gig file.”
That would mean it’s about an hour long if you did it correctly. Just exported as QuickTime self contained in the timeline’s DV codec.[andrea sillick] ” need to fit this on a single layer DVD to be watched on the clients giant LCD tv, preferably using iDVD because I do not have studio pro. “
DVD Studio Pro comes as part of the Final Cut Studio. They were sold separately before then. You must have a very old version of FCP (4.5 or earlier) because they’ve been sold as a set since FCP 5.If you’re using iDVD it’ll do the compressing for you. It will not accept MPEG-2 Elementary Stream from Compressor.
If you have iDVD 08 (or 09 now?) go to preferences and set it to NTSC or PAL as needed. Set DVD type to Single Layer. Set encoding type to Professional Quality. The rest depends on what you want the DVD to look and function like. Once you have background or theme selected (or auto play) drop your movie in and iDVD will encode. I usually burn to Disk Image and then burn to disk with Disk Utility and drop burn speed to 4X. You can adjust burn speed in iDVD 08 in the Preferences Advanced tab. My recommendation is slower is better for compatibility reasons.
Use Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden DVD-r disks for best compatibility and disk quality. Do NOT EVER put sticky label on disk. Use inkjet printable disks and printer if you have. Epson 200 series is good for this (Epson R280 is less than $100).
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Thank you for the suggestions, but it still isn’t working. The file is too big to fit on a standard DVD. It is an hour of 16×9 footage, 13 GB. So, it is much larger than the 4.7 that a single layer DVD can hold and iDVD will not compress it for me. When I run it through, it gets through processing the menus etc. but cannot process the large .mov video.
I need to know if there is some way I can compress it to fit under 4.7 GB, in order to put it on a DVD? -
Like Craig said, iDVD will compress the 13GB file to fit easily onto the 4.7GB disc. What error message does iDVD give you?
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free! -
The error that comes up is just a box with no error code. It simply says “Error with video rendering/encoding” and that is it. It gets through the whole menu/slideshow process and when it goes to do the video after a few minutes that box pops up. The video file is just a .mov file that plays just fine in QT. The only thing making it different than any other FCP-QT file I have burned is that I did the apple solution for the 16×9 playback, changing the settings to 853×480.
Why do I keep getting the error box? -
[andrea sillick] “Thank you for the suggestions, but it still isn’t working. The file is too big to fit on a standard DVD. It is an hour of 16×9 footage, 13 GB.”
I don’t get what you’re doing. Use iDVD. You mentioned it. It’ll compress the file. It works with anything under 2 hours of any GB size.
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I am using iDVD. The footage is only an hour long, and when it gets to the point where it processes the movie, it stops and gives me the error “Error in video rendering/encoding” and does not go any further. I do not think there is an issue with the video file itself, it is a 853×480 QT file that plays just fine.
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[andrea sillick] ” I did the apple solution for the 16×9 playback, changing the settings to 853×480. “
Apple solution for iDVD?
In iDVD you set the disk for 16×9 in preferences and it’ll create a 16:9 disk from your 16:9 DV file.
I’ve noticed an odd bug about this myself so I simply open the MOV in Quicktime and Save it (changing NOTHING) and the issue is fixed.Just read the iDVD instructions. It’s very simple and very easy, deliberately so. It’s meant for non computer, non technical folks. Drag and drop. Don’t mess with the file you’ve exported from NLE.
Do a test playback using the Play button in iDVD before encoding. If it looks good there it’s good. -
Hi. I saw your old posts regarding trying to compress a large file in iDVD to fit onto a standard size DVD. I did not see if you ever resolved the issue… but if you did, can you please tell me how you did it? My problem is similar to yours, in that I have a large quicktime movie (8.24gigs, 40 minutes long) which I need to fit onto a DVD. The file was actually 50 gigs originally (rendered in After Effects) but I compressed it, or “shared” it in iMovie to achieve its new smaller size of 8.24 gigs. I thought that might be sufficient enough to then export to iDVD and burn to a disc, but no luck. I read in your thread of posts from other people that iDVD should automatically compress any size quicktime to fit onto a DVD. But I have had the exact same experience as you… in that iDVD goes through the entire process of burning the project to disc, but at the very end I get a generic error window (no error code) and then the disc pops out of the drive, still blank. And this is after waiting for an hour while iDVD was going through the motions of burning the menu page and the quicktime movie, and everything looked like it was working perfectly. No matter what I try, I keep getting the same error at the very last second. If you solved your issue, please share how you did it. I appreciate it! THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
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Hi there, I actually figured out the problem on my own not long after I posted, the other responses were informational but did not seem to solve anything so I did what I normally do which is trouble shoot until I solve the problem. Hopefully, the problem I fixed is the same one causing you frustration… because it’s a pretty simple fix, (as a lot of these stupid errors are)
I remembered that I had put up to around 15g files on DVDs using imovie before, as long as they were under 2 hours of run time…so I knew that the problem of size didn’t seem to be the issue…my issue was I was using my old smaller external hard drive as opposed to my normal editing external…The file size I was working with at the time was 13g, and I only had about 20g of free space on the drive….in imovie you need to make sure you have at least double the size of free space as the file you are trying to burn. I moved some things off that drive and created about 28g of free space and boom, it worked perfectly, no errors of flaws….
just a stupid simple error that didn’t end up being a big problem, yet it can put such a stall in the burning process!
I hope this is the same issue you are dealing with and this helps you! -
Thank you for your prompt response. Your explanation makes perfect sense… unfortunately I am still receiving the same error at the end of the burning process, even though I followed your guidelines and made sure to have ample drive space (more than twice the file size). I am just about losing my mind here! I’ll keep messing with it… Thanks again for your input.
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