90 min. project to big to burn,"HELP"

Hi, I've recently finished an 87 min feature and am trying to burn it on my idvd. I'm using a G5, and cutting on fcp 4. It says my project states its 18 gigs.
How can i burn this? thanks

What is your workflow for burning the dvd? 18 gigs is about right for an uncompressed hour and a half of video. iDvd should do the work of making it into a smaller file for the dvd.

iDVD doesn't care about the file size. Drop it into the production window and burn.

You do need to worry about the 60/90 thing. iDVD runs at full quality at any show length up until about 60 minutes show running time. After that, it shifts to a lower quality until about 90 minutes show time.

After that, depending on which version of iDVD you have, it gives up, stops working, and you lose.

Koz

Thanks, but when I tried that, idvd said that the file was to large to burn.

Back to the top. *What* is 18G? The project doesn't count.

Render and mix the sound down to plain stereo and the video down to one track. Export your Final Cut timeline as a Final Cut Movie (some call this "QuickTime Movie" Do NOT use QuickTime Conversion), Self-Contained is up to you--that's the one we use, but it takes extra drive space. Take that movie file and dump it into iDVD which should then process, compress, and burn the movie.

It is a DV quality show, right?

iDVD will not work with a "Project." You need an actual movie file. I don't think you said anything wrong yet. I expect this to work.

Koz

Your show might be under the size, but did you build a complex menu setting. Are you using video in your menus. This may be taking you over the limit.

<<<did you build a complex menu setting.>>>

What he said.

I forgot about that since we never do motion menus or buttons. Each of those subtracts from your allowable show time in addition to the programming overhead you need to make them work.

Three minutes of slop. Yes, if you had really complicated menus that might put you over the top.

Koz

90 minute movie on iDVD is too difficult. I ended up having to learn DVD Studio Pro and then set up the preferences to 1 VBR 1 pass. To burn the movie onto a 4.7 Gig DVD, you'll have to reduce the size of the movie down to about 3.5 Gig, because the sound track will eat up another 1 Gig also in Aiff format. I had a lot of trouble before I could burn my 99 minute movie to DVD. I had to use Compressor 2 also to make the MPEG 2 elements. I did not use buttons or menu -- just a straight play DVD as soon as the DVD was inserted into the player. And I was using FCP5 and dual processor G5 2.7 Ghz. Let me know if there are other ways to burn 90 minute movies onto DVD because I'd sure love to end up with better quality than the 1 Pass VBR. Thanks and good luck!

Use APACK to reduce the AIFF file to a much smaller size. APACK comes with DVDSP.

<<<Use APACK to reduce the AIFF file to a much smaller size. APACK comes with DVDSP.>>>

Lovely idea, but the original complaint was getting iDVD to work. I'm pretty sure iDVD will not accept a separate aiff or ac3 file.

Yes, I totally agree that DVDSP is the way to go...if you have it.

By the way, the two methods we found to greatly increase the quality of a DVD is not to start with DV quality video--use uncompressed only. You can fool with various other compressors, processes, and encoders, but the big step up is the first time you compress real video and not DV compression artifacts. That and use 2-pass compression. It takes longer, but the quality is better.

Koz