[Visionstudios]

Well, First I am going to recommend that you go and check out lynda.com, they have tutorials on Final Cut , Compressor, and The Mac OS. You will learn lots.

I would export my timeline as a self contained .mov file just to be safe.
1 video channel and 2 audio channels.
I would import it into compressor and set my data rate around 3800 kbits/sec for the video.
I would use aac 192 for the audio.
This will fit your 2.25 hours of content on a 4.7 GB disk.
In compressor you can set it to encode an ID bug on your video for you. Go to inspector in the video settings. choose watermark and select a image that you are going to use for watermarking your video.

You will want to test this with a short peice of video first.

3800kbits per second is pretty low quality MPEG video.
Test a 1 min chunk of your video and time how long it takes to export from final cut. Also time how long it takes to encode. Then Check the quality.
If you are happy with it then export your full movie.
You will be able to estimate your export and encode times with the information you learned from your 1 min video tests.

Its going to take a while.

Now take your files that you have encoded and bring them into DVDSP. Check to make sure that they are going to fit on 1 disk. You may want to add some chapter markers on a long video like this so that your viewers have the ability to skip ahead or go back easily.

Take a look at this article if you are interested in speeding up your render times.

https://visionstudios.ca/RenderFarm/RenderFarmleft.html

[Visionstudios]

https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

This will help you calculate your bit rate.
You might want to try dual layer disks if you want to keep the bit rate higher if you have quality concerns.

Using AAC audio will save you lots of space.
Format: AC3
Sample Rate: 48.000kHz
Channels: 2
Bits Per Sample: 16
Target System: DVD Video
Data Rate: 192 kbps

[Visionstudios]

Name: Curtis Robinson
Date: Nov 17, 2007 at 1:19:42 am
Subject:Re: Encoding Tips

I post client preview movies every week.
What i like to do is export a refrence movie, then let compressor do the work. This allows me to keep working in Final Cut.
I create droplets of my favorite settings in compressor.
Then I drop my refrence movies on the droplets and let compressor work.
I usually use a 1min test file and time the results before I render longer movies.
My timeline in Final Cut is Avid DNX 36 codec 24FPS
I am using H.264 960×540 1000kbps as my setting in compressor.
I sometimes crank it up higher to 2500kbps for shorter movies better quality.

Here is another good setting and is much faster
H.264 480 x 270, 644.34 kbits/s

H.264 has slow render times but great looking quality.
For quicker renders I use sorenson squeeze set at 480×360.
More people are able to watch sorenson movies without playback problems on slower computers. Also the quality is pretty good if you get your settings right.

To really speed up your renders in compressor, cluster a few computers together with Qmaster. Now you can kick out your H.264 files super fast. The trick here is to have storrage that is central to all of the machines.
Qmaster can be a little bit tricky to set up too.
I am using 3 Mac Pro computers on Xsan.
My renders are almost 3 times faster.

I have tested 5 computers cluster on xsan and was able to encode 1 min of DVCPRO HD 1920×1080 29.97 footage to H.264 @ 800kbps in 45 seconds. (Better than realtime.)

I have also used compressor to batch transcode all of my HDV footage to DVCPRO HD before I start editing in Final Cut. I like DVCPRO CODEC WAY BETTER.
The inital transcode takes a long time, but i set it up to convert over night. Final Cut Pro is much faster working with DVCPRO over MPG2 codecs. Export times are much faster as well.
Mind you the files are a bit larger.

I Hope this helps you.

Curtis Robinson.

[Visionstudios]

I post client preview movies every week.
What i like to do is export a refrence movie, then let compressor do the work. This allows me to keep working in Final Cut.
I create droplets of my favorite settings in compressor.
Then I drop my refrence movies on the droplets and let compressor work.
I usually use a 1min test file and time the results before I render longer movies.
My timeline in Final Cut is Avid DNX 36 codec 24FPS
I am using H.264 960×540 1000kbps as my setting in compressor.
I sometimes crank it up higher to 2500kbps for shorter movies better quality.

Here is another good setting and is much faster
H.264 480 x 270, 644.34 kbits/s

H.264 has slow render times but great looking quality.
For quicker renders I use sorenson squeeze set at 480×360.
More people are able to watch sorenson movies without playback problems on slower computers. Also the quality is pretty good if you get your settings right.

To really speed up your renders in compressor, cluster a few computers together with Qmaster. Now you can kick out your H.264 files super fast. The trick here is to have storrage that is central to all of the machines.
Qmaster can be a little bit tricky to set up too.
I am using 3 Mac Pro computers on Xsan.
My renders are almost 3 times faster.

I have tested 5 computers cluster on xsan and was able to encode 1 min of DVCPRO HD 1920×1080 29.97 footage to H.264 @ 800kbps in 45 seconds. (Better than realtime.)

I have also used compressor to batch transcode all of my HDV footage to DVCPRO HD before I start editing in Final Cut. I like DVCPRO CODEC WAY BETTER.
The inital transcode takes a long time, but i set it up to convert over night. Final Cut Pro is much faster working with DVCPRO over MPG2 codecs. Export times are much faster as well.
Mind you the files are a bit larger.

I Hope this helps you.

Curtis Robinson.