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Sharing to DVD: large file size
Back in the Legacy days, my process was simple: export self-contained movie, create dvd files in Compressor, import into DVD Studio Pro & make dvd.
X should be really simple: share to DVD. Except the file X makes is too big to burn. Like 5.5 gig. More than the 4.7 dvd limit. There does not appear to be any way to set the compression in the share dialogue. In the previous Compressor, I had the option to compress for 90 min, 120 min or 150 min. Even the 1 1/2 hour first act of the dreaded high school musical could fit on 1 dvd. Now, it won’t.
Questions:
1 – shouldn’t FCP X create a file small enough to burn to dvd (presumably by analyzing the length of the project & applying the correct compression) for the known dvd file size limit?
2 – since the new compressor seems to do away with the various dvd presets in favor of one generic dvd preset, am I missing some settings somewhere?
3 – exporting a master file to pro res (source is a mixture of avc files & hdv footage) takes a stunningly long time, even considering the 90 minute sequence.FCP 10.0.7, Compressor 4.whatever, MacbookPro Retina, 16 gig.
Thanks for any help.
Jeff M.
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2 Replies
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FCPX 10.0.7 was supposed to fix some issues with fitting a DVD to a single layer disc but I guess it may still be a bit hit or miss. I have a friend who couldn’t get a 70 minute video to fit using share to DVD while just yesterday I managed to fit 96 minutes with no issue.
For what it’s worth though, Compressor still has all the same controls over bitrate and encoding that previous versions did. It should only take a few minutes to recreate any presets you used in FCP7 as share targets in FCPX.
The Retina Macbook shouldn’t have too many issues in terms of hardware but render times can depend on the effects applied, whether you’re doing any resizing etc, the bandwidth available to your hard drives, and whether you’ve let FCPX background render or not.
In my experience you will get a faster output and a better downscale if your project is already the target resolution. I.e an SD project will tend to render to SD better and faster than a HD project exported to SD. If my final deliverable is DVD I usually set my project to SD from the start. The advantage of that is (I assume) that the results of your background renders are already SD to match the project so there’s not as much work for FCPX to do at export time.
Hope that helps a little.
Cheers
Jeff KJeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Well that explains it a little bit, I guess. FCP estimated a 3 gig file, but created a 5+ gig file. Hit or miss, indeed.
I get what you’re saying about the rendering. I don’t expect miracles from 8 cores, though the i7 is supposed to be faster than the Xeons in my old 2008 MacPro tower. Since the timeline – oops, project – had mixed sources, both long GOP, there’s no way in this case to avoid the messy transcode. And in this case, I followed the oft-repeated advice on this board NOT to render the project before sharing, since it has to be transcoded anyway.
I wonder if it being a 5 camera multicam project has anything to do with the long prep & render? BTW, the footage was on a combination of fiber channel raid and FW 800 via Thunderbolt adapter. So throughput wasn’t the problem. It also seemed the DVD transcoding was much faster than making a “master file” or a ProRes file. Don’t really understand that.
As fas as dvd goes, I’m a total lightweight on compression & dvd stuff. I just used the closest matching preset.
Thanks for the advice.
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