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Making Quicktime Movies in FCP 4.5 that don’t hangup
I have had trouble with playback of DVDs I have made. I export a quicktime movie using the settings the appear on the screen – make movie self contained, current settings – to a hard drive. I then bring the quicktime movie into iDVD and burn it. Of course, this locks me into one of the corny menu pages in iDVD which I have learned to live with until I upgrade and can use DVD Studio Pro and FCP 5.*** on my new G5. I am now running on a G4 – stable but left in the dust by faster, newer models.
The problem I am having has only occurred on two projects that I finished in this way. Both of them were well over 60 minutes long – one was 80 minutes and the other was 90 minutes plus. At first I thought it was the fault of old playback machines since the DVD plays fine on my G4. Now I am beginning to wonder – might the hangup that occurs in playback (it sticks at a point and will not go further) be partially caused by the length of the program itself? And, if it is, are there settings that I can change to improve or eliminate this hangup problem? -
2 Replies
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[Frank Cervarich] “- might the hangup that occurs in playback (it sticks at a point and will not go further) be partially caused by the length of the program itself?”
Probably not the cause of the pauses you’re experiencing. I’ve put over 3 hours of content on a DVD5 disc and have not seen the problems you’ve described. If you’re using iDVD then the hangups may be caused by the high bitrates of the .aif or PCM audio that is being used by this program. Consumer DVD players have a difficult time with high bitrates because of the players’ relatively small buffer capacities. Your computer will be better suited to playing high bitrate DVDs because of the machine’s better buffer underrun capability.
You need to get a program like Apple’s Compressor and DVD Studio Pro so you can compress the audio from the .aif/PCM audio formats to the industry standard .ac3 format, which is what the majority of commercially bought DVDs use. The advantages are: .ac3 audio uses far less space on your DVD, leaving more room for video and the lower audio bit rates will be much more compatible with consumer DVD players.
iDVD will not compress the audio for use on a DVD-R, but leaves it in its native format.
Another thing to consider when creating a DVD: Use the best blank media you can find, such as Taiyo Yuden DVD-R discs. They’re considered the best of the best. But usually any blank DVD media that’s made in Japan is considered a safe bet. Cheap DVD media means cheap playback performance, especially down the road if not right away.
Hope this has made sense.
– Don
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Don is correct,
but also, I have had commercially made DVDs from Blockbuster exhibit this behavior, usually caused by dirt and fingerprints on the disc. We now keep a bottle of lens cleaner and a micro cloth on the table by that machine.
But he is ablolutely correct about the bitrates. DVDSP is the way to go.
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