iDVD Compressor Question

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Anne,
all you need to do is an quicktime-movie-export as selfcontained mov to your harddisk.

then you need to open iDVD and drag this film into iDVD, so you can create a DVD out of it. iDVD itself will transcode your video to SD-MPEG2, so you´ll get a full working DVD.

if you´ve got FCP 6.06 you´ll have DVD Studio Pro+Compressor as well. with these tools you´ll have a much better control over your encoding and the resulting DVD.

my 2 ct (euro)

danny

[Anne Haskin]

I have already exported as a self contained QT movie and as I stated in my original post it is too big for iDVD to put on a single layer 4.7 GB DVD. After export it comes to 4.96 GB. I have DVD Studio Pro + Compressor but don’t know how to use either, that’s why I was asking for a Compressor tutorial. I have searched youtube and Creative Cow for a Compressor tutorial to no avail.

Anne

[David Johnson]

I haven’t used iDVD for anything in a few years so i don’t recall details, but I figured I’d try to help since you seem pressured.

I don’t think this is any different for iDVD … the fact that your MOV export is 4.9Gb and a single-layer DVD only holds 4.7GB (actually less) shouldn’t matter to any DVD software since the 4.9Gb MOV is not really what’s going onto the DVD. I think that’s what Daniel was getting at when he said “iDVD itself will transcode your video to SD-MPEG2”. The process of transcoding (aka compressing) that MOV makes it smaller and puts it in the proper format for DVD.

If it’s not working out that way, are you saying that iDVD is giving you an error message? If so, what exactly does it say?

Yes, if you search the COW you will find tips and tutorials for Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, etc. However, I don’t think I’d recommend going that route for the first time while trying to get a job out the door under deadline since both programs are far more complex than iDVD and you may only get even more frustrated.

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Anne,
there was a misunderstanding on my side, I thought you´ve put a 4.9GB-mov-file on the DVD.

if you´ve allready created a self-contained movie, and iDVD transcoded it to MPEG2, and it wont match a single-layer-DVD, I think it´s a longer film, so you´ll get in trouble with the size of the DVD.

one reason why this could happen is, because iDVD is using PCM (wav) audio instead of dolby digital audio, that is much smaller.

PCM audio have 1.5Mbit/s where dolby digital stereo have 192kbit/s, that is appox. 7.8 times smaller.

if you would like to start with compressor and DVD SP, you should start with your bitbudgeting.

one of my german collegues have created a small app for that, you can get it here:

https://truevision-video.de/index.php?article_id=31&clang=1

all you need to know about bitbudgeting is, depending on the max. capacity of the physical media, as more film(-lenth) you´ll put on the disk, the smaller will get your data-rate.

and to author a disk within DVD SP could be simple as well if you start with a simple one.

cheers

danny

[Anne Haskin]

Thanks Guys for your replies. I was able to find a tutorial on Compressor and then DVD Studio Pro and have successfully finshed the project. Only thing is the first DVD burned just fine but the second one I got a Formatting media error/unknown device error. Don’t ask me why, I haven’t a clue. The Help feature recommends repairing disk permissions, so I’ll give that a try. The only thing I did differently from burning disk one and two was I saved the project and came back to burn the second disk around 45 mins later. I only need to burn 3 more disks so I hope that works.

Anne

[Consuelo Gonzalez]

Hey, would you kindly pass along links to the tutorials that helped you?

Many thanks,

Consuelo

THANK YOU,

Consuelo
Mohair Media