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Compression and DVD creation
I have recently finished a project that is roughly 2 hours and 20 minutes long and desperately would like to compress it and fit it on 1 dvd. I know with that length there will be quality loss but that is ok.
I have compressed it with compressor using the 150 minute DVD MPEG2 preset and the resulting file was about 3.5 gb which seemed perfect(The picture quality is even acceptable). However, when I imported the new file (extension- .m2v) into DVD Studio Pro 4, I added it to a track, set it to play that track first (no menu) and clicked burn. The resulting DVD played great except there was no audio! I then opened the file in MPEG StreamClip to demux the audio, but it told me the audio did not exist! Why did compressor output my final file without audio? I checked the settings and it was set to compress the audio. (Currently I am recompressing the sequence using the same preset but this time I previewed it before I started it and the video and audio play fine. It has about 2 hours left).Instead of waiting for it to recompress with the chance that it does the exact same thing again, I went back to final cut and exported the sequence as a Quicktime reference movie, then imported the resulting .mov file into DVD StudioPro and added it to a track. This time the file did have an audio track and when i clicked build and burn it began encoding the video portion (took about 45mins, better than compressor) but right as it got to 99%, it said “Error while encoding file” “Build was not sucessful.”
So my questions are:
1.) Why did compressor leave out my audio track and will it do it the file that is currently compressing now?
2.) Why didn’t DVD Studio Pro sucessfully encode the referenced QT movie from final cut?
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12 Replies
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Chad,
.m2v is video only. Audio is encoded and saved as a separate file. Look for the audio file. It might not have been saved to the same location as your video file, depending on where you instructed Compressor to save it. In DVD Studio Pro, you need to bring in both audio and video files individually, or, if you give both files the same name, when you bring in the video file, the audio file will automatically follow.
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Ok, what is the file extension of the separate audio file? I thought the final file was set to go to the desktop (the m2v file did) but I don’t know where it would have put the audio file.
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No I didn’t. What is the resulting file type for the audio? If the video is an .m2v, I have found it, but not the audio file.
Chad Mayeux
Metter, GA
Pineland Technology Solutions
Videographer/ Digital Artist -
If you used one of the presets, it is probably .ac3.
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It should be an .ac3 file. If not you may have only taken the video settings from the settings folder. You need to compress the audio settings as well to the same destination.
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Ok this is really helping a lot! When I export from Final cut to compressor and drag the destination onto the sequence and the preset encoder, you are saying I also have to drag the audio preset and drop it as well. So there will be 3 things dragged to the sequence (video encoder, audio encoder and destination)? Or do you drag destination and video encoder onto the sequence and then duplicate the sequence but only drag the destination and audio encoder? Put differently, my second option would include 2 files to submit, both would have a destination, but 1 would have the video encoder and the other the audio encoder. Is that correct, or the first option, if either?
Chad Mayeux
Metter, GA
Pineland Technology Solutions
Videographer/ Digital Artist -
Ok, got it! It worked thank you very much for your help so far. One last thing about it though. We are selling copies of this DVD and I noticed in DVDSP you can add copyright protection that prevents any copying. I was wondering if there was a fast and efficient way to burn 50 protected copies? Obviously if I copyright the master copy then I can not duplicate it to get my 50 because it will be protected. On the other hand if I don’t protect the master copy and then make 50 copies from it, the copies will not be protected. The only other thing I could think to do would be to burn one after the other in DVDSP as copyright protected discs but that would take an extraordinarily long time to do because when I click burn, it begans “muxing” (is this the same as encoding?) which takes about 45mins to an hour. Any ideas?
Chad Mayeux
Metter, GA
Pineland Technology Solutions
Videographer/ Digital Artist -
I will do that. Dave thank you very much for your help so far!
Chad Mayeux
Metter, GA
Pineland Technology Solutions
Videographer/ Digital Artist -
I’ve made multiple copies this way. It’s only the first one that requires muxing. After that you use the same files and it goes much faster.
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Do you have to tell DVDSP that you want to make multiple copies because after my master copy finishes burning, it goes back to the project and if I click burn again, it starts the whole process over again starting with muxing. What am I missing?
Chad Mayeux
Metter, GA
Pineland Technology Solutions
Videographer/ Digital Artist
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