[Michael Sacci]

DVD is not (should not) be doing anything with your files. It only encodes what it needs to, if the movies are DVD complainant m2v it will just mux the audio and video together.

My recommendation for setting is for compressor, not DVDSP.

Things that can cause playback issue are well documented here, not using top quality disc, too high bitrates and using PCM audio. Seem like you have a lot of other things going on.

Without seeing every step of the workflow it is hard to know where the problem is.

One test you should do, open the video ts folder (in your build location) in DVD Player, what does that look like. If it is good, it is your burner or media, unless you are doing something a little out of the ordinary when authoring.

I would try the project on another side/burner and get different media

[Michael Sacci]

Your post is a little confusing, if you are using Compressor why did you give DVDSP settings. What are your settings in Compressor. Also telling us the total of what is on 5 DVDs is useless, what is on each DVD is important.

Are you using the Send To Compressor from the timeline?

You also have not said how you are proofing the files.

In DVDSP are you adding multiple videos to a single timeline?

As far as compressor is concerned, if you total time on a DVD never excedes 80 minutes. Don’t use VBR (BTW one pass is the worse thing you can use)
Use CBR set to 7 Mbps.

Your step on is not doing a thing.

[Michael Sacci]

IF using a VBR encoding method, I will not go over 7 Mbps for the max.

If using CBR I will not go over 7.5 Mbps.

Stereo is always compressed to ac3 @ .192 Mbps

NOTE: 2 titbits to always do when making the ac3. 1) Make sure the Dialog Normalization is set to -31 dB (this turns it off, which is what you what). 2) On the third tab set Compression to NONE. (it still gets compressed, this is more of a compression scheme). Doing both of those will eliminated surprises to the audio.

[Michael Sacci]

There is no such thing as compressed Aif or wav on a dvd, it will be uncompressed and it takes up 1.5 Mbps of bitrate. Other than high end music titles nobody uses anything but ac3.

All players have to be able to play PCM audio but because of the bitrate it can cause problems, especially on DVD-Rs.

In the end we all make our own decisions.

[Michael Sacci]

Not sure if you are planning to send the Stereo file as uncompressed. If you are DON’T, make sure it is encoded as ac3.

[Michael Sacci]

No each has to be in it’s own stream. I doubt many festivals are watching DVDs in a 5.1 setup.

You put but streams in, then simply have a menu that asked which audio and that sets the stream and starts the movie.

[Michael Sacci]

If you are getting “bitrate too high” errors you are always doing one thing wrong, setting your bitrate too high. It doesn’t matter if you have 1 minute or 60 minutes. Your bitrate is a per second thing.

First place to start is audio, audio should always be encoded as ac3, if you try to put 2 streams of PCM (uncompressed) on a track you are way over the bitrate limit. Even with a single stream you are right up against it, bitrates in video can spike and give you the error.

But with a short video like you have here never use VBR, use CBR instead and set it at 7Mbps. Use ac3 audio and you should be fine.

[Michael Sacci]

Thanks.

I guess if you needed to Color Correct you would do a cut and paste vs the nested sequence?

Not bashing Premiere but there are a lot of missing things I use in FCP. The project I’m cutting my first in PP is has a bunch of different codecs, H264, ProRes and even FLV. While I could transcode I wanted to through this at PP. Amazed at the playback of anything. Just finding a lot of missing things.

[Michael Sacci]

not an option. They set me up with a PC now.

Also find FCP X to Blog down very quickly. It doesn’t work in non broadcast resolutions.

[Michael Sacci]

Clips are either 28 minutes or 58 minutes give or take.

I’m never using the source panel. I drop the clip onto a timeline. Resize it to the correct aspect and size. 4:3 is centered in the 854×480 and 16:9 material is enlarged to fill. Remember everything that I’m working with right now was converted to 720×406 and going to 854×480. I have to deliver 16:9 for everything. So 4:3 is pillar boxed.

Clips are mxf (Broadcast Omineon wrapped files) that automatically go through an encoding server, These are files are encoded to H264 but they have to be trimmed and commercials edited out. Then reencoded and uploaded to the web.

So it is going through the delivery encode twice, not what I want but what I have to deal with.

Now if anyone knows how to unwrap Omneon files quickly and easily I would love to know.

BTW: I just got a new PC system to perform this task. HP Z600 same problem. Does anyone know if putting a CUDA graphic card would make the system more stable? I know it would speed things up and give me better playback but right now I need stability.

Thanks for any help.