[Matt Stoddart]

If you go the hardware route, you will have to lay the PAL sequences off to tape, either HDV or DVCAM, and have it standards convertered to NTSC.
If your original sequence is in HD then rent a Sony HVR-M15AE recorder, you can lay the sequence off to tape via firewire, if your sequence is SD then rent a Sony DSR-11 recorder.
When you ask a post house to standands convert your tape ask for a Snell & Wilcox Alchemist Ph.C standards convertor, it is the daddy of all convertors.
Where abouts are you based in the UK, I was in Post Production in London’s Soho for @ 20 years so if you go the hardware route I could suggest the facilities houses I trust.

[Matt Stoddart]

Now there are two curious people out there wanting to know the answer to the best settings for 2 hours of material on a 4.7, the original poster (Lauren Petty) and myself, what would you suggest?
Thanks

[Matt Stoddart]

Sorry, I didn’t mean have your target rate at 9Mbps, you would never fit two hours onto a 4.7 disc. For two hours I would set my encoder to a 2 pass VBR encode with the setting as
Video
Mimimum Bitrate : 4.6 Mbps
Target Bitrate : 4.6 Mbps
Maximum Bitrate : 9 Mbps

audio : 192kbps

Have all the “quality” setting set to max/best, it might add time to the encode but it should give you a better end result.
With the video bitrate max allowed of 9.8Mbits/sec, 9mbps still has a reasonable amount of headroom (@9%) for any stray spikes.
I believe you will get more consumer complaints if you lower your maximum rate than from consumers suffering from spikes(I’ve never had a spike complaint in 14+ years) . If their player can’t keep up with the occasional spike then they should either retire their 10+ years old player or buy another one but spend more that $30 / £20 on their next one.

[Matt Stoddart]

You just need the one video track and 7 separate audio tracks, then from your language menu you use the “Specify Link” link along with the “Change audio” selection to the required track number.

[Matt Stoddart]

To DVD you can’t, for it to play in a standard DVD player it has to conform to the DVD standards which is SD by design. You might get some DVD players that will play certain H264 formats but they are not as common.
Either burn it as Data files onto a DVDROM or go to Bluray.

[Matt Stoddart]

Re: the build taking way to long and crashing 3/4 of the way through.
I’ve experienced that acouple of times and cured it by
1) Making sure I have more than enough space for the temp files on system drive (roughly 2x the size of your project).
2) Clean out the media database (I think in edit > preferences)

That cured it a couple of times, when it didn’t I just rebuilt the project from scratch.

Quick questions, Have you ever successfully built a 7Gb project on you system before? Are you 64bit or 32bit and how much RAM are you running?

[Matt Stoddart]

Sorry no experiance with Lightscribe technology.

[Matt Stoddart]

You can try loads of different encoders and some will be slightly better at the lower bitrate encodes but there is no escaping the fact that you have to encode at a lower rate to fit 2 hours on a 4.7.
Whack all “quality” setting to best , go for a 2 pass VBR encode with your minimum bitrate set to the same as your target and always keep you max at 9.

[Matt Stoddart]

For the DVD duplicator make sure that it has an internal harddrive to which it writes the project to first, stay away from the ones that write straight from DVD master to DVD clones, and write at 8 speed even it you have 16x media.
As for media stay away from the “suprising” cheap disc but on the flip side you don’t need the “TAIYO-YUDEN” side of discs for screeners, I’ve been using Ritek Traxdata x8 discs for years, we burnt @ 3000 a month.
For printers you can’t go wrong with the Espon R range (R220, R265,R270) I still use the old R265, but the current model P50 should be fine.

[Matt Stoddart]

The main core of our business is the creation of DVD screeners for Independent Films Distributors to main stream TV programmes, this question comes up constantly, to date there is NO workable copy-code protection for DVD-R (burnt) screeners. I did get presented with one burnt disc that had a “strong” protection on it, but the major problem with that system was it could only be played on a computer, it couldn’t be played on your standard DVD player. (it took me 2 hours to crack it, YES I did have permission from Distibution company).
If the Major Distributor (Warners, Disney) couldn’t devise a copy protection system for their retail DVD that some 12 year old couldn’t crack in a day or two there is no hope for DVD screeners.
With all our screeners we create we put a visible “Property of…” every 10 minutes thoughout the film, anyways if the pirate do upload your programme it means that there is some interest in your film and you should have no problems in finding a distributor.