Argument over Compressor verus letting DVD SP Compress Self Contained Quicktime

[Bret Williams]

It seems to me you have 2 questions…

Which is better for compressing for DVD, DVD SP or Compressor?

and…

Is it better to export to Self Contained or Uncompressed?

The latter question is actually 2 questions in itself as well if you consider you can export directly to compressor from the timeline, or to a self contained movie and then drag into compressor. Either way it’s the same result, except you don’t have to tie up FCP if you use a separate file. Exporting ANY compressed clip to an uncompressed clip to use in Compressor is completely useless. In fact, although uncompressed, you are running it through yet one more step which could actually deteriorate, but very doubtful you’d ever notice. You can’t improve an image by uprezzing. There is no problem with self contained movies. I’d have to say they’re more reliable than QT reference movies, because the latter references render files and clips that could go away as you edit.

On the first question – I frequently let DVDSP render out the DVDs and haven’t had any problems with the quality. Usually corpoarate stuff. The biggest difference is in the audio. DVDSP can only create aiff audio which eats up lots of space AND requires a little umph to play back. Compressor lets you create the more standard dolby something or other. I forget.

The problem is that I’m frequently creating DVDs like a video. They aren’t just the final product. So they undergo many changes along with the video. If I keep exporting right over the old self contained files, I can simply open DVDSP and hit burn. Saves a couple steps. If I use compressor, I have to export a file, drag it to compressor, and then render over the old file, then open compressor and burn.

I’ve tried working with self contained QT until the final version of the DVD, but then you have to actually insert the audio tracks separately from the video tracks when making the switch from aiff to dolby.

[Willi Patton]

Hey thanks a ton Bret. There’s alot of good info in here. As far as workflow, I agree that using self contained QT’s is the best for DVD, but for a final master using compressor from reference QT is the way to go- more control over final product I feel. Plus, with my job Chapter markers are constantly an issue and adding them in DVD SP can be sort of a pain since it is most always an afterthought especially.

[Bret Williams]

Once again, 2 different issues in one statement. “DVDSP from self contained or Compressor from QT Reference.” Point being that with either, it makes no difference in quality which you use. Self contained or reference. So long as you don’t recompress the self contained. But that’s a no brainer.

I used to use reference movies quite a bit, but with drive space being inexpensive, they’re not worth the hassle. When backing up a DVD project, it’s nice to know that my QTs will work witout redigitizing my project.

[John Pale]

The only time you get superior quality letting DVD SP encode is when preparing material for motion menus.
If you pre-encode the video for the menus to MPEG2 using Compressor, it gets encoded a second time on the build of the DVD (this is because the buttons and text need to be composited with the video background). You should leave it a Quicktime movie and it will only be encoded once.

DVDSP, Quicktime, and Compressor all use the same encoding engine.

[Ed Dooley]

At least in FCP4 there was (and probably still is in v5) a good reason to go directly to
Compressor, higher quality, transitions were not rendered into whatever codec you’re using first, Compressor
deals with them directly. Check this out:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/compressor_warmouth.html
Ed