Compressor vs. DVD Studio Pro

[Bill Dewald]

Subjectively, I’ve found that compressor does a better job of encoding the video than DVDSP. The cost is a little added time to your workflow (which is very sound, btw).

If you want to try the compressor route, you should export a quicktime ‘reference’ movie from FCP, and send that to compressor. With the reference movie, your footage is not re-encoded until compressor does its work.

I’d recommend giving it a try, and deciding for yourself if the time/quality trade-off is worth it.

[David Roth weiss]

Samuel,

If you scour the Internet and the Cow you will be sure to find a helpful little guide I once wrote entitled something similar to, “David Weiss’ Down and Dirty DVD Creation on DVDSP, in which I tell people how to encode and burn DVDs in just a few easy steps using only DVDSP. A short time later I decided to run some tests to see exactly what the big difference was between that method and DVDs encoded in Compressor. I found that DVDs encoded from SD QTs were pretty good when encoded by DVDSP, but encode from an HD source and you could see lots of wavy artifacts. So, after many additional tests, I decided that as far as I was concerned, for my own purposes, encoding in DVDSP was fine for client approval copies and for any quickie DVDs, like timecode window dubs for the transcriber, but for anything that really matters, Compressor is simply better.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Colin Mcquillan]

[Bill Dewald] “I’ve found that compressor does a better job of encoding the video than DVDSP. The cost is a little added time to your workflow”

If you have a virtual cluster set up, compressor can actually be the faster method as well as better quality. Much faster. But you do need a multi-core machine to do this.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Colin Mcquillan]

In case you’re not familiar, here’s a little “how-to” on setting up a virtual cluster;

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

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Caroline Scott]

Hi David,

I understand this is an old thread but I am wondering if Compressor is still the best DVD burning software you are aware of? I need to burn a commercial DVD to sell and need complex menus in it.

Thank you!

Caroline

[David Roth weiss]

Hi Caroline,

Actually, Compressor is for encoding your video to MPEG 2 and audio to AC3, then you use those files in DVD Studio Pro to build your DVD with menus, etc. And yes, given virtually all manufacturers have given up on DVD creation, your best bets are indeed Compressor and DVD Studio Pro, used in tandem.

I hate making DVDs with menus, because it’s hard to get paid for the amount of time required to get them finished with the precision clients want. However, if you struggle to accomplish the mission and decide to farm out the DVD creation, let me know and I’ll give you a reasonable bid on the job.

Good luck…

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.