[Chris Aikenhead]

Thanks for the great advice! The Sorenson 3 codec gave moderately good image quality with a relatively small file – 250 MB for the 10-minute piece – so it was a good choice for uploading to the FTP site. Worked like a charm. And your method of exporting to a self-contained movie before encoding in QuickTime solved the problem with the freezing. Maybe you’re right about it being a RAM issue. The post from mmfarms would seem to support that theory. Anyway, I appreciate the help.

[Chris Aikenhead]

Duh! Thanks so much. That’s what I get for using a manual from an older version!

[Chris Aikenhead]

Thanks for shedding so much “lite on” the DVD recorder discussion.

[Chris Aikenhead]

Thanks for sticking with me on this one, Kieran. Regrettably, my problem isn’t with M100 settings but rather with the engineering of my DVD recorder (and according to several retail sales people I’ve consulted, with most other consumer DVD recorders featuring a firewire input as well.) I’m not fussy about geting machine control through M100; I simply want to record a DV signal coming from my edit system into the set-top recorder. Even with “no machine control” selected and the DV box checked, it won’t work. (By the way, the method you suggest is exactly what I do when mastering to DV tape onto my DSR11 deck. No frame accurate insert edit function, but it gets the show onto tape in all its “digital loveliness”.) As soon as I set the DVD recorder’s input to “DV”, and connect the firewire from M100 to the recorder, a message appears on the TV screen from the DVD recorder saying “Uncontrollable device”. And that’s not referring to ‘machine control’, but rather to the recorder’s inability to handle the DV signal. The manual specifies that “this recorder is only compatible with DV-format camcorders.” What I don’t understand is Why?? Apparently my naive assumption that all firewire standards were created equal is wrong. There must be a few obscure geniuses out there who understand the difference between a DV signal from a deck, a P6000 card, and a camcorder, but I don’t expect to find one. (Actually, I thought Floh would know, but then I usually presume he knows everything…)

So, S-video it is, with BitVice and DVDSP as soon as I become smart enough to use them.

Kit

[Chris Aikenhead]

Thanks for the input, everyone. I’m going to investigate the difference between the firewire signal coming from M100 and the DV signal from a camcorder to see if there is some way around this incompatibility. Meanwhile, I’d be interested to know if anyone has a set-top DVD recorder that actually does accept the M100 firewire output. For discs that require snazzy menus and the best quality, I’ll take the long route of exporting and encoding. To confirm with you experts, the gospel on this seems to be to export as a self-contained movie, encode in BitVice, then burn to disc using DVD Studio Pro?