Making dvd from fcp on idvd

[Michael Sacci]

Best quality and iDVD, I think that is an oxymoron.

You would want to use Compressor to downconvert your sequence to SD, and to encode the video into m2v as well as the audio into ac3 files. Some people recommend do the downconversion before the encoding process in FCP. Ease and best normally don’t walk hand in hand.

[Shannon Bedford]

Hi Michael, I’ve just been exporting as quicktime, not changing any settings and dropping straight into idvd and it’s been working ok.
Will I see a better result if I use the compressor method you described? My settings are the same as Kelly’s.

S Bedford, Western Australia

[Brandon Smits]

Shannon,

It depends on your settings when you output, and the format of your media, but in general the process Michael described is the best way to output for DVD. If you use iDVD to encode you do give up control which is less than ideal. Dive into the minutia, learn what is going on behind the scenes of iDVD!

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[Kelly Laudien]

ok I’ll Bite so idvd is giving up control, if I was going to buy an authoring software and I’m using fcp what does everybody think is the best and not horrible complicated that it will take me 2 years to learn and appreciate all the features 🙂

[Shannon Bedford]

Michael can you tell me, is there any difference creating the compressor files directly from FCP versus exporting a quicktime first and then converting?
It seems to take a hell of a lot longer doing it direct from FCP and that’s edit time I can’t afford to lose.
If the difference is noticable I’ll do overnight conversions for the “special” projects.
Cheers

S Bedford, Western Australia

[Ted Scarlett]

This is what I’ve been doing also and it works just fine. However I can’t fit all of my data onto the DVD as I exceed the limit because of so much video. Do I need to compress the files again in compressor after exporting as QT mov? I’ve tried compressing them to MP2 format in compressor but…..then I’m unable to use them in iDVD? Help please!