Should I encode to DVD through compressor or DVD Studio Pro?

Send to compressor or export self contained quicktime and let DVD Studio handle it? Which produces better results?

Any settings to note in order to get the best image?

Thank You

Export self contained quicktime and let Compressor handle it. Use the DVD preset that the running time of your movie fits into e.g. Best Quality DVD 16:9 90 mins. Bring the resulting MPEG 2 and ac3 files into DVD SP.

?You will have a full quality independent file in case something goes wrong.
?You can carry on working in FCP.
?Compressor offers far more options for fine tuning than the DVD SP encoder.

Just send it to compressor there is no advantage in going to a self contained qt and then dropping that into compressor. All your doing is wasting more time in going to qt first and then taking up/waisting HD space.

If you are using the latest version of FCP you can actually continue working once you have sent something to compressor now.

Just simply re-bring up FCP and there you go.

I don't understand this export to QT and then drop into compressor workflow. Why do people continue to teach this method. Its a total waist of time.

Send to Compressor is a single step which gives the impression that it is faster. However, in many cases sending to Compressor will be much slower because it needs to request every frame one at a time from Final Cut Pro. You also can't use a cluster to speed up processing. And if your timeline is fully or partially rendered already, you can save a huge amount of time by exporting to a reference QuickTime.

Not to mention the advantages of having a copy of the movie in your sequence codec for archival purposes and for transcoding to other codecs later on, in case you need an H.264 version for the web for instance.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

> Just send it to compressor there is no advantage in going to a self contained qt and
> then dropping that into compressor. All your doing is wasting more time in going to qt
> first and then taking up/waisting HD space.
> I don't understand this export to QT and then drop into compressor workflow. Why do
> people continue to teach this method. Its a total waist of time

Not true at all.

Aside from the reasons Jon outlined above, here are more advantages to exporting a movie file first:

1. You don't tie up FCP as Compressor is working.

2. Fewer chances of crashing, especially if you use a self-contained QuickTime movie instead of a reference file.

3. If you use a self-contained movie file, you can move that movie file to another station and just run Compressor there. You now have two machines doing this work at the same time.

4. If you encounter severe technical problems, you have the movie file as a safeguard to meet a deadline. A flattened, self-contained movie file rarely has anything wrong with it, because it's one piece of media, not 500 plus 1,000 render files and an FCP project file.

5. If something goes wrong with Compressor, you still have the option of using the full-quality movie file to import directly into DVD Studio Pro.

6. A movie file allows the use of software like MPEG Streamclip for H.264 encodes. MPEG Streamclip works faster than either Compressor or FCP Export Using QuickTime Conversion.

All those elements combine to save time in the long run, making it far faster than Send to Compressor (or "Export Using Compressor", as it used to be called).

Exporting a self-contained movie file is a step I never skip, whenever I have an important version done. Not to mention the final version. The only downside is you do take up more drive space. But if a project doesn't have enough storage to store at least a dozen self-contained movie files of its contents, I'd argue it doesn't have enough storage, period. On most projects I've edited, there's never been a need to keep more than five or six full-quality versions available. But those five or six files are a godsend when talking to clients, dealing with multiple versions and changes, language versions, and so on.


www.derekmok.com

In the timeline after the credits there's a logo that should come up. I exported a self contained quicktime and took it to compressor to encode for dvd.

When I watch the quicktime - the logo comes up after the credits. When I watch the dvd version the movie stops after the end credits. The logo doesn't come up.

I'm going to try and add a slug after the logo and maybe this will do something? Unfortunately, I have to go through the whole export and encode process again.

How did you tack on the logo? Onto the old QuickTime movie? Or as a separate track in Compressor?


www.derekmok.com

put the logo into final cut in the original sequence with movie, exported quicktime, encoded in compressor burned in DVD studio pro.

This is really frustrating, but I think I've isolated it to something in DVD Studio pro.

The quicktime has the logo at the end
The encode from compressor has the logo
The track in DVD Studio pro has it

but when i burn an image from studio pro, it stops after the credits

Did you remove the original movie file from the track and assets, and then re-import the new, extended file and re-insert it into the track? The track could still be using the old end point.


www.derekmok.com

I created a new track and linked it. It still gives the same result. Do I need to build the dvd if it's already encoded in compressor?

Still haven't answered all the questions. Did you make a new movie file (from the original FCP sequence) with a new name? Did you put that new file into Compressor? Did you import the new file into the DVD Studio Pro project? Did you make a new track (rather than duplicating the old one)? Did you put the new asset into the new track, rather than copying the old asset?


www.derekmok.com

Did you make a new movie file (from the original FCP sequence) with a new name? yes

Did you put that new file into Compressor? Yes

Did you import the new file into the DVD Studio Pro project? Did you make a new track (rather than duplicating the old one)? no, I just deleted the old file and inserted the new asset.

Did you put the new asset into the new track, rather than copying the old asset? See above

I'm going to try to to create a new DVD studio pro project - so do I need to "build" my encoded compressor file or can I just select format and burn an image?

Thanks for your help

i figured it out, the "choose source" option. My only question is if I encode in compressor do I need to "build" in DVD Studio pro or can i go to format? Because if I "build" it doesn't that re-encode my .m2v file that I made in compressor?

Choose SD DVD. The HD DVD option is for the now defunct HD DVD format.

Build will create DVD assets. Format will burn either a disc image or burn to disc. Build and Format does both. Burn does both, but only burns to disc. There is no re-encoding if you feed DVDSP properly formatted Mpeg 2 streams.

For early truncation on the DVD, you can try extending the logo by a few frames. Could be a GOP issue.



www.strypesinpost.com