Splitting long footage for saving to DVDs

[Steve Eisen]

I would suggest you capture your footage to FCP. Make one sequence for 1st half, 2nd sequence for second half. Make a self-contained movie and copy the files to a DVD. Make sure you are making a DATA DVD.

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[Mark Palmer]

I think I may not have articulated this well.

I already have the footage in 1 big 5+GB file on my HD, and I need to split it up into 2 parts to save it into the space of a 4.3GB DVD. I want to keep the footage as is and not re-capture in smaller chunks, so that I can reconstruct the original later on if need be.

When I split the file in FCP, using the razorblade, then creating 2 sequences, each sequence comes out way smaller than I would have expected. That’s the problem I’m trying to figure out. Why would a straight, uncompressed FCP movie file from NTSC miniDV footage come out about 4x smaller, when I am simply trying to make an exact copy of it, split in two, without any added compression whatsoever? Am I missing something?

[Steve Eisen]

You need to make a self-contained movie. In FCP go to File/Export/QuickTime Movie.

G5 Dual 2.5 160GB System 400GB Media Drive ATI 9800 256MB 6 GB RAM
Dual Gig Quicksilver 1GB RAM 80 GB System drive (3) 250 GB internal media storage
15″ Al Powerbook 1.25 1GB RAM
OS 10.4.2 FCP 5, DVDSP 4, QT 7.02, Boris Red 3GL 2.45 TB External Stor

[Mark Palmer]

Okay, thanks. I never understood the diff between checking the box marked self-contained and not, but you clarified it for me. Thanks again.

[Kevin Monahan]

I’d just recapture the original tapes from your project file if faced with recapturing the show, which is rare. Why go through all this trouble? Wondering…

Kevin Monahan
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[Mark Palmer]

Why? I already did a substantial bit of editing on the 5GB file on the HD, and I want to save the original footage to DVD as backup, but I can’t fit it on a 4.3GB disk. If I recaptured the original footage from scratch, I’d have to go in and realign it with the editing. Not impossible, certainly, but a bit more of a hassle than I’d like to deal with.

[Mark Fassett]

No, that’s not how it works.

Do an experiment. Move the 5 gig file to another drive, or somewhere else on the drive.

Then do a “recapture” on that clip, that is showing as “offline.”

All your edits are still there. The edits are contained in the PROJECT file, not the media files. Does that make sense?

When you do a backup, you just need to delete all of your files that were captured from tape, as long as timecode was captured… and delete the render files…

Most likely, you can now copy the remaining files to a CD.

[Mark Palmer]

There’s no timecode on the tape, that’s the problem, so I can’t just recapture, as I don’t have it set to know exactly where it all begins.

[Sean Oneil]

Use Stuffit or something similar and create 4.7GB files. I had to do something similar when I backed up my old Media 100 footage to DVDR’s. About 1 out of 20 files would be larger than 4.7GB. I used WinRAR on a PC, but Stuffit Pro can probably do the same thing.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

The advange obviously is that you can restore the original media and reconnect it. For reasons you mentioned, it’s better than creating new self-contained media and losing your edit handles.

Sean