Best way to export to DVD studio?

[Jeremy Garchow]

First, render all r/t effetcs in your timeline (even the ‘full’ ones), go to file>export quicktime movie and make sure that recompress all frames and make move self contained are NOT checked. Bring the resulting file into compressor or DVD studio and compress away.

Jeremy

[Jeff Carpenter]

For the best quality you should choose EXPORT > COMPRESSOR right from the Final Cut menu and let it compress your MPEG2 file and Dolby audio file right out of the Final Cut timeline. You can then import those into DVD Studio Pro.

This method will take longer than using Compressor in stand-alone mode or importing a .mov file into DVDSP, but you’ll get better results. (A LOT longer, in some cases, but if you have the time, go for it.) The main reason this is better is that Compressor knows where all of your edits and transitions are and will spend more processing time on those areas.

Secondly, I’ve been told the reason this takes longer is that Final Cut takes anything that needs rendering (like color corrected video or transitions) and renders them into an uncompressed format. It then takes THAT render and makes your DVD file from it. It’s not something that will increase the quality of the video from the original footage, but it is something that will help it to not lose so much quality during the whole down-conversion process.

As for which settings to use, I’d start with the pre-sets in Compressor. You can make duplicates and fiddle with them if you like. You might want to try one and then see how large the file comes out. If it’s 5 GB, go in and lower the quality. If it’s 3 GB, raise it and try again. A lot of this is trial and error work. Good luck and let us know if you hit any snags along the way.

[Daone2007]

Actually I heard, especially to get clean crisp text (if you used FCP for titling) …. to export to Quicktime and select uncompressed 10-bit. Even if you edit in a NTSC DV timeline. Supposedly it will export an uncompressed QT File… that you bring into compressor and let IT do all the compression. Also I like to export to QT as opposed to exporting straight to Compressor because then it ties up Final Cut while transferring each frame. I’ve tried this technique once and it did make my text elements crisper.

[Tom Matthies]

Hmmm…
It’s my understanding that both compressor and DVD SP use the same encoding engine and that, setting for setting, the quality is the same using either program. Is this not true?
I’ve had very good results just using reference movies encoded right within DVD SP using two-pass VBR for longer projects. Plus it’s not locking me out of FCP while Compressor is running.
Any comments from the herd on this one?
Tom

[Chris Poisson]

Sheesh,

I think this topic is more often discussed (argued) than flickering stills. Read this, it still applies to today’s versions.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/compressor_warmouth.html

This thread ignores some of the other issues though, like using any of the other compressors like Bitvice, Squeeze and Compression Master, all worth a good hard look. I find that if all things are made equal by using a decent FCP movie to start, each has it’s own strengths.

Have a wonderful day.

[Nelson May]

thank you all.

[Nickpalm]

If you have a dvd recorder, the best way to do it would be to print to the dvd recorder, finalize the dvd, then use mpeg streamclip to re-import the mpeg-2 onto your drive and then into dvd studio pro. mpeg streamclip is a free program. Faster than compressor and dvd studio pro altogether, even with the extra steps. Looks great too.

Hope this helps,
Nick P.