Hi all.
Jwhyland, I have a few suggestions that may help you.
Regardless of the sound file's size, you should always strive to compress your audio into *.AC3. Why? First, DVD players work less hard when they play DVDs with *.AC3 files. They work harder when they have to process uncompressed (*.AIFF) sound files. Also, the space that you free up when compressing your audio can be used in more valuable areas of your DVD project, such as raising the encoding bit rate of your video so that it is more clear, vivid, etc. This is especially important when your footage has a lot of motion. Use A.Pack to compress your sound.
If you have FCP, then you should have Compressor. You may want to use that to batch process several renditions of compressed video. Simply schedule several encoding renditions of your video into one batch, process that batch, and go to bed. The next evening, hopefully, all of your renditions will have been processed. Then, you can import all of them into DVD Studio Pro and choose which one looks the best to you.
By the way, from another thread on this forum, when you use Compressor, do not export movies from FCP into Compressor. Instead, use Compressor directly to open the FCP project and work on it. Why? Exporting from FCP to Compressor introduces a layer that slows down the encoding process and yields longer encoding times. By opening the project directly in Compressor, this layer is not created. Again, this information has come from another thread on this forum.
As far as encoding bit rates, I usually start at 4 Mbps and schedule multiple encoding jobs at 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, and 6 Mbps. For all of these, I set the maximum encoding rate at 7 Mbps. Also, if you set your encoding bit rate too high, you may get build errors when building/burning the DVD. Or, the DVD may not play very well. Some DVD players can not handle high encoding bit rates.
I hope this information helps you.
Take care.
-DH
Post Edited (05-30-06 12:44)
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