[Joe Quinn]

Hi, I just thought I’d follow up on this. A friend of mine has an old DVD player that’s notorious for not playing home-burned disks, so we used that as our test. It turned out that if I burned the disks at 4x rather than 16x, it did the trick. So I did not bother replacing all the files with AAC sound versions.

The main thing to note about this is that DVDSP4 does not give you an option for burning at different speeds, and by default will burn at the max possible speed. So if you instead use DVDSP4 to create a disk image, and then use Disk Utility to burn, you can choose the speed. Apparently, burning them slow makes them more compatible and better behaved.

[Joe Quinn]

(Sorry for the delay in responding, I was traveling.)

Yeah, that’s what I did, I put my Quicktime movies straight into DVDSP. I had changed the video settings but didn’t have the option of choosing an audio format, I was unaware that it defaults to PCM. I’ll try your suggestion, and run the files through compressor, specifying Dolby AC3 audio.

Thanks for your help!

[Joe Quinn]

1. The problematic disks were built and formatted by DVDSP. They were certainly recognized by the DVD players, they just froze sometimes during play. The new disk I burned using Disk Utility. It seemed the only way of having an option to choose a slower speed. Are you saying this disk is not going to work in DVD players even though it works on my computer? If so, how do I successfully burn an appropriate disk at a slower speed?

2. Yeah, it seemed older players gave more problems, but when I’m selling disks I want them to work on anything, like the disks people would get if they bought them at the store.

3. Would you say Sony is not a high quality brand for DVDs? I never heard of Verbatim until researching this topic, and they seem to be everyone’s choice. I’m surprised if Sony makes bad disks – just based on the fact that they make some good video cameras.

4. How do I tell if my video has PCM or AC3 audio? It was made in FCP6, using Export > Quickime movie, then I used some custom settings having to do mostly with aspect ratio. I saw no options for how the sound is encoded other than Rate, Depth, and Configuration, none of which giving a choice between PCM and AC3. I also see nothing on DVDSP about what type of sound is used.

Thanks for the response.

[Joe Quinn]

Just a little extra info…

This new disk I burned using Disk Utility, at 4x, I noticed that the bottom of it looks smoother. The 16x disks you can see circles in the burned portion, perhaps where different tracks are encoded? But with this one it’s homogeneous. Good sign?

It plays fine in my CPU, except that it does not autoplay like the other one .. weird. I will have to wait to test it in some DVD players (I don’t have any here at home).

[Joe Quinn]

Cool, I’m downloading that de-interlacer you recommended. But I think I’m just going to hang on to it for next time, unless one of us notices an obvious problem with the demo DVD I made (this is a sketch comedy project, doesn’t really require the image to be perfect).

As for the # horizontal pixels, there’s a problem there. Unless I’m really missing something, for something to be 16:9 aspect ratio in square pixels, it’s dimensions need to be proportional to the ratio 16:9. But 480 is not divisible by 9, so to do this with 480 vertical pixels is physically impossible. To put it another way, 480 divided by 9, times 16, is 853 and one third, and obviously you can’t have a third of a pixel. Would you recommend settling for this (probably imperceptible) distortion rather than altering the number of horizontal bars? Also, if so, the nearest whole number is 853. Is there a reason it would be preferable to use 854 or 856 instead?

I’ll probably try this on one of the videos just to see if there’s a significant difference, then think about replacing all the files on my project..

I also noticed that the files made in the way described above work with no squishing in DVDSP just as well as the others I had. But one other unrelated question. What do you think are the best settings to use if you want to prepare something for Youtube (or other internet streaming) in this format?

As always thank you for your help.

[Joe Quinn]

In the interest of not wasting your time, I want to report that I got this working properly, informed by some of your comments. So for any other readers on FCP6 with the same issue, this should work:

-First de-interlace the movie you want to export (for SD NTSC, it should be lower field dominance) – if you don’t do this you’ll get some ugly striations during motion.

-Then select the movie and hit File > Export > Quicktime movie.

-In that menu, hit the Settings pull down bar, and scroll all the way down to the bottom to choose Custom.

-In there, change the pixel ratio to 864 by 486. Select Square under pixel aspect ratio and check (or leave checked) the box there for Anamorphic 16:9. And the Field Dominance here should be set to None. The rest of the options should be correct assuming your settings already agreed with your video before, so hit Okay.

-Now when you hit Save back in the export menu, you should get a full res copy of your video that plays without squishing in Quicktime (or at the very least, Quicktime 6).

If there’s anything I got wrong or missed there I’d like to hear it, but my videos are lookin good on my computer.

[Joe Quinn]

I really do apologize if I came off like I was just complaining and ranting at you, I appreciate your trying to help me. I was just trying to explain the nature of my frustration with the problem. It seems natural to put in a little criticism of the program but I didn’t mean for that to take over.

So.. I’m running FCP version 6.0, QT version 7.6.9. My DVD is finished now and works just fine. Now I’d like to know how to export an NTSC SD video in widescreen format that will play properly in Quicktime. Hopefully it’s possible to make a single one that plays properly in all versions of Quicktime.

Thank you for your time. Sorry again for coming across as a jerk. Hopefully you can relate to becoming so frustrated by something that just doesn’t make sense to you…

[Joe Quinn]

I really appreciate your reading my post and trying to help but it might be a little early for the flattery. As I said, I had already found that I could get the files to behave as desired in DVDSP. I just don’t understand the part where they don’t play correctly in Quicktime.

It doesn’t help a whole lot to know which application’s fault this is, but in my opinion, if I click on an option to export a movie tailored for a particular program, e.g. export > Quicktime movie, and then the movie doesn’t play correctly in that program, then final cut has failed to account for something.

I’m resigned to the idea that I might have to export separate files for use in DVDSP and use in Quicktime. Now, what do I have to do to export an SD NTSC 48KHz 16:9 video so it will play correctly in Quicktime? For instance, what if I wanted to post such a video on youtube? Surely you don’t need an HD camera just to make a proper widescreen file (I hope).

[Joe Quinn]

I had a similar issue, and noticed that the squeezed files unsqueezed in DVDSP when I checked the option for rectangular pixels. So that’s all fine for making DVDs, but what if I want to make movie files to do other stuff with? Like, putting on the internet. What sort of settings should I use to get a 16:9 DV NTSC video to retain its dimensions when playing in Quicktime, for instance?

It seems crazy to me that the programs wouldn’t somehow default to doing whatever necessary to make the file look like it does in FCP when you hit export … it would have to be a pretty weird situation if you wanted all your finished movies to be squished when you export them.