compressor advice please

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’d just make one long timeline and compress that entire thing as one file which will become one track in DVD SP.

The only reason NOT to do that is if you have some movies with lots of motion and some with very little motion and you want to compress them at different compression levels. In that case you might want to split them up so you could compress the ones with less motion a lot more. But if they’re all music videos they’re probably all pretty similar, right?

If you do decide to split them up, you’d compress each one individually and then put each one on its own track in DVD SP. You can tell each track to “jump” to the next one when it’s finished playing.

But unless you really have the need to do that, I’d just stick with one big clip. It will be a lot easier to put together!

[Jcox75]

thanks jeff,
that’s what i was thinking about doing. it just seems simpler that way. about half of the 2 hours will be music videos (i’m going to use around 20 or so), and the other half will be the ads and promotions. most of the ads are fairly simple after effects animations and a few will be some live action spots. one of the main reasons i ask is that i’ve seen some posts where people have had problems with compressor crashing and what not, and i’m just looking to avoid as many problems as i can. also, based on your experience, how long do you think it will take to compress a 2 hour (approx) sequence like this?

thanks again,
j

[Jeff Carpenter]

how long do you think it will take to compress a 2 hour (approx) sequence like this?
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I’d need to know more about your computer. On my old G4 system it would have taken about 20 hours. On my new G5 it would take about 3 or 4 hours.

Tell us what you have an I can give a guess. That’s all it would be, though, just a guess. It really depends the video itself and the settings you compress at.

[Jcox75]

yeah, i guess that might be helpful huh? sorry. here’s what i have.

dual 2.5 G5
4 GB RAM
os 10.3.8

FCP 4.5
compressor 1.2.1
DVDSP 3.0.2

thanks,
j

[Jeff Carpenter]

You should be fine. It should probably take about 3 hours for you, I would think.

I’d suggest looking in Compressor at the settings. I think you’ll find one for 2 hours at good quality, or something like that.

Find the setting for that and duplicate it 2 or 3 times. Then, go into each duplicat version and alter the bit-rate slightly. Lower the target bit rate about 0.3 on one and then raise it the same amount on another.

Then, select ALL of those settings at once and let it run overnight. By the time you get back tomorrow it will have finished all 4 or 5 compressions. Then compress your audio to AC3 and start measuring file sizes! Combining the audio and one video file, try to get as close to 4.3 GB without going over. That will give you a little extra room in case you add some menus later or something.

That’s the nice thing about the faster computers now. It’s not that you can compress in 2 hours, but rather that you can do 4 or 5 compressions overnight. That lets you get a bunch of choices in the morning which allows you to pick the very smallest amount of compression possible while still fitting everything on the disc.

[Jcox75]

jeff,
i can’t thank you enough for your help and advice. as i said before, i’m new to a lot of this, and i really do appreciate your help.

thanks again,
j