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Compressor
Hello, everyone! I’m an amateur wedding videographer and would like to know the best way to compress a video to DVD. I was advised to send my complete timeline to an external dvd burner from “the print to tape” option in Final Cut Studio Pro, instead of compressing it and dropping it in Apple’s Compressor to avoid loosing quality. Now here are some things that weren’t clear to me.
1. Would I get a better quality video this way??
2. What kind of DVD burner do I need? Would a simple DVD burner bought at my nearest electronics store do?I really appreciate the time you spend on answering this post. Thank you.
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1 Reply
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You won’t get better quality from a stand alone DVD recorder. You will get ease of use.
Compressor compresses the video according to your specifications. It is not real time, and you have control of the process. There is a learning curve, and plan for some frustration. Workflow is important to this process.
If you buy an external DVD recorder (different than a burner) the DVD recorder does the compressing in real time. This is fast and has a five minute learning curve.
The quality of these real time compressions is lower than what you can achieve with Compressor or other software compression packages. The discs from a DVD recorder are less universally compatible than discs created with Compressor and DVD Studio Pro. You will not be able to create a customized dvd menu with a stand alone DVD recorder.
For your application I recommend the DVD Recorder. However, if you find the lack of control over the quality to be bothersome, or your clients have trouble playing back the discs, you can always learn about the dark art of video compression. And if the generic menus that come with the DVD recorders aren’t cutting it you can learn iDVD or DVD Studio Pro.
Best regards,
Tom
Best,
Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC
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