DVD Skip issues from FCP 7

[David Roth weiss]

[Bradley Stoloff] “I have to make these DVDs to very tight deadlines and having them come back faulty is really screwing everything up. Can anyone offer any advice?”

Everyone in this business is on a tight deadline Bradley, that goes without saying. So, rather than do your work for you, I’ll use the Socratic method of asking you questions to point you in the right direction.

1) Have you searched this forum for a the answer? It’s been here answered a thousand times before, and there is a nice built-in search feature.

2) Have you tried to read any of the FCP help manual in the “Help” menu?

3) Have you taken a look in the FAQ at the top of the main page of this forum?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Bret Williams]

Skipping and pixelating sounds like a data rate issue or bad discs.
The method you’re using causes large audio files, which increase the data rate. Compressor will di a better job by creating AC-3 audio instead of aiffs. I’ve found that DVDSPs encoding is fine and more convenient at times. Just make sure motion estimation us best, and encoding is 2 pass vbr.

You may also have a bad DVD player. We have one that stops and skips on discs intermittently.

[David Battistella]

A few things to consider.

1. check your bitrate on the DVD’s.
2. Warn people that burned DVD’s DO NOT playback on every DVD player on earth (esp. PC DVD drives)
3. Do nothing else when you are burning a disk, if you interupt the data flow while the disk is writing you can create a poor quality disk.
4. Try a different type of DVD media.
5. Watch and test the disks before you send them out.

David

______________________________
Believe me. Everything is a lie.

[Bradley Stoloff]

Aww man, I’m not asking you to do it for me. I just wanted pointing in the right direction.

I got this particular film today at 11:00am and it needed to be in the post for 15:00. I know that is an easy reachable target, but I had my own work to do too.

I’m not a video editor or cameraman or anything, I’m just the only one here who has the little knowledge needed to get the film from camera to DVD. I looked through the help folder and couldn’t find what I was looking for (probably because I don’t know the correct wording for what I’m looking for) and I went through a few forums, to no avail, until I found this one.

I just needed to know if there was anything obvious I was doing wrong, me being a complete novice and all.

[Bradley Stoloff]

Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure what the data rate is and I’m using Verbatim DVD – R’s.

I don’t think it’s the dvd player as they do the same thing through the mac laptops, Stand alone DVD player and pc laptops I put them through.

I’ll see if I can figure out compressor and try putting it through there. Although I think I read something on here about the ‘share’ function using compressor to do it’s work, or at least the same method as compressor. Have I missed something?

[Bradley Stoloff]

I’m not sure on what the bitrate is (in it’s entirety, not just this instance), but I’ll find out and have a go at changing it.
Would I be right in assuming lower is better?

I just found out about the ‘not doing anything else while it’s burning’ thing and I think that may be a big part of my problem as sometimes I’m photoshopping or typing when the dvd is burning. I was led to believe there was a ‘burn proof’ feature that allowed you to multitask.

I watch as many of them as I can before I send. I don’t ge chance though sometimes. I usually have someone stood over my shoulder snatching them from the drive while they are still hot!

I’ll try all you suggested though. Thanks for replying!

[David Roth weiss]

[Bradley Stoloff] “Aww man, I’m not asking you to do it for me. I just wanted pointing in the right direction. “

Okay, I apologize. I’m cranky this morning.

The others hit the main issues, if there are truly issues: i.e. bad media is often a culprit; as is cranking up the bitrate; trying to look at the DVD full-screen on a computer monitor; and finally, not using AC3 audio.

You should do the following:

1) export a self contained QT using Export>>Quicktime Movie

2) use that in Apple Compressor to encode – use the high quality preset, and make sure to also use the AC3 audio preset that in the same folder

3) use the two files in DVDSP to author and burn your DVDs

It’s not easy under pressure the first time out of the gate for sure.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Bill Celnick]

I have never tried your work-flow – that is encoding with DVD Studio Pro.

I have almost no problems by sending my FCP timeline to Compressor, selecting “Best Quality 90 Minutes” (or I make a custom setting if the project is of a different length) – creating my m2v and ac3 files, then importing into DVD Studio Pro.

(my one issue was working with a very long file – 2 hrs 20 min)

I’m assuming that you have a quality DVD burner, and are using quality media.

Finally, there is diagnostic software available – I use DVDinfo, to determine if I have a quality burn or not. There may be other tools on the market as well.

About 5 years ago I had a nightmare, where my discs played fine for me, but skipped for clients – I got DVDinfo, replaced my burner, selected different blank media, and all was good again.

[Bradley Stoloff]

[David Roth Weiss] “Okay, I apologize. I’m cranky this morning.”

It’s cool man. Monday mornings are terrible at the best of times.

Thanks for the advice.

What I’m understanding so far is that I should export as a QT .MOV file as one step, encode for DVD using compressor as the second step, then burn to dvd using DVDSP as the third step. All the while making sure the audio is .AC3 and the bitrate isn’t too high, and not try to do all these things at once or using the same program (as I have been doing).

I’ll make sure to keep a close eye on it now!

Thanks!

[Steve Eisen]

I have to ask. Did you buy your DVD’s at a retail store?

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group