Mac DVD authoring

[Dave Rawson]

and another question…

Now that I have a new system, I’d like to do some freelancing on the side.
At work, I run a finished spot onto tape (SX) and it goes in a server to be aired.
At home, I don’t have a deck, so I won’t be outputting stuff on to tape. So heres a stupid question….will dvd authoring software be sufficiant enough for professional/broadcast work? Do I just plop it on to a dvd and whatever station ends up airing the spot will be able to take it from there?

[Jon Zanone]

iDVD is pretty effective at creating DVD’s in the Mac. You have to dig to get some of the more advanced settings, but the video is pretty clean.

As far as delivering, you’ll need to check with the station. You probably won’t be able to deliver a set top DVD. In my experience, I’ve delivered an MPEG2 program stream (meaning the audio and video files are one) encoded at a pretty high bit rate (my outlet wants an 8000kb program stream). I’ve also delivered .AVI’s.

You’ll really need to check with your outlet for specific delivery formats.

I believe QT Pro ($29.99) handles MPEG2 encoding. https://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=D3381Z/A

“So you want to throw out the old you – but the old you is old enough to know it won’t make it better”
Del Amitri – “Make it Better”