final cut to dvd studio pro

[Rafael Amador]

Hi symonprod.
First I would recommend you to use Compressor, instead of DVDST, for the MPG2 encodding. In Compressor you got much more control over the process.
About the codecs, there are some knowns issues with third-part codecs (this is not your case cause your using DV), but also about sizes. This in Compressor. I guess in DVDST you can have much more of these incompatibilities.
But I think the problem here is in FC, that output an HDV file, instead of a DV.
How did you captured your footage, and with wich parameters? Which size is the file that you output from FC?
Salud,
rafael

[Chipper]

Since you already have your movie as a QuickTime movie, it would be easier just to drag it into iDVD and burn it from there. However, if you just want to do it in DVD Studio Pro, you will need to export from FCP using Compressor. Once that is done, you can import your video into DVD Studio Pro, but not your audio. Unless you are using the latest FCP Suite, you will need to re-render the audio using A-Pack. Once you have re-rendered your audio, then you can import it into DVD Studio Pro and finish your project. It’s a bit of extra work to go into DVDSP, especially if you haven’t done it before. There are a lot of special settings and numbers to use for A.Pack, so, if you can be happy using iDVD to burn your project, I would.

The Chipper
Texarkana, AR/TX

[Rafael Amador]

If your film is only 20 minutes, and your DVD its got only one audio, you don’t need to use ACC (A.Pack). Keep it AIFF. The difference of quality is huge.
rafael

[Chipper]

I didn’t think you could import aiff into DVD Studio Pro. I may be wrong, but whenever I try to import songs or audio that are aiff, it won’t work. I have to import them into FCP and then export them through Compressor and then APack them into AC3 files. I was taught in my DVD Studio Pro workshop that you had to always change aiff through APack and make them AC3 to work in DVDSP. But that was a year and a half ago, so I may be out of date. In fact, in the new Final Cut Suite, it automatically changes the audio to AC3 when you are using Compressor so you don’t have to go through APack anymore to change it. But if you do it that way and it works, great! It would save a lot of steps.

Chip
Chip McAfee Productions
Texarkana, AR/TX

[Andkin]

Rafael,
It’s not the movie’s length that determines whether or not you should use A-Pack.
You use A-Pack to reduce the overall bit rate that the DVD player has to deal with at any time. If you used the 60min Best setting for your video and left your audio as AIFF you are asking any DVD player it plays in to move a lot of data at once. Most cheaper and popular DVD players have an upper limit of bandwidth that you shouldn’t exceed.

AIFFs will sound better than AC3s but at the expense of universality, as far as it exists in the DVD sphere.

To the original poster,
If you are cutting a mixed source sequence or not you need to export the sequence at the resolution you are cutting at, assuming that resolution was a good choice in the first place.
Some people have had problems with “Export to Compressor” so you could “Export Quicktime” which gives you a movie at your sequence resolution. Drop that movie into Compressor and pick your settings, one for video and one for audio and bring the resulting two files into DVDSP.

ak

[Rafael Amador]

I don’t know Chip but in the Compressor presets, when you open the folders you (I) found the MPG2, the Aiff and AAC. I think in Compressor one, instead of Aiff they used to write PCM (Aiff, Waw).
Andkin is right. The problem of the Aiff is that rise a lot the data rate so in some player, if the image hasn be compressed enough, will play jumping. But as I said, I only use ACC if I must set to or more audios to the movie.
Salud,
rafael