Help

I have an emergency stress question. Well at least I am stressed.

I just shot and edited my first wedding video. I am supposed to have it to the client by tomarrow, which is already a week later than I had told them.

I have all the video done and exported from Final Cut as Quicktime files. I have just learned the bare bones of DVD Studio Pro and I set all the video's in as tracks. The only problem is my disk meter is at 6.5 GB. I set my >prefrences>encoding> to a Two Pass VBR with the Bit Rate at 3.5 mbps and the Max Bit Rate at 8.2 (that is what the book told me to do). The total video is about 96 minutes. When I went to burn it said there was not enouph room (obviously because I am using a single layer disk and it only holds 4.7 gb). I cannot use a Double Layer disk right now because my double layer disk burner is not working. (my husband says that we need to have Apple replace it).

Anyway my question is, can I put an already compressed file into DVD Studio Pro. I tried, but since Compressor give you 2 files (1 Video and 1 Audio) I could only get in the Video file and it does not have sound. When I tried to put the sound with it, it set it as the DVD music.

I have 3 files from the wedding -

1. A Highlights Video - Quicktime File 1.17 GB-5.33 minutes
2. The Wedding - Quicktime File 9.54 GB-45 minutes
3. The Reception - Quicktime File 9.34 GB-44 minutes

Is there anything I can do?

One of two choices might work. Either use a dual layer disc (DVD-9) to get 8.5 GB of storage or include two (DVD-5) single layer discs to handle the complete wedding.

Taking the Quicktime files to encode to MPEG-2 can very the file sizes on the DVD by lowering the Encode Bitrate to the 4.5 Mbps range, if the material can deal with that.

>> Anyway my question is, can I put an already compressed file into DVD Studio Pro.

DVD Studio needs to have MPEG-2 compressed media. Any other format will not work.

90 minutes should not be an issue. I recommend using Compressor (not DVDSP) to do the encoding. You can use the standard 90 minute high-quality encode setting to get it all to fit comfortably on a DVD-5.

Just drop your QT files in Compressor and off you go.

bob rice
frameworx media

John Foley Wrote:
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> DVD Studio needs to have MPEG-2 compressed media.
> Any other format will not work.


It will take any format of QT based video as a source, but works best if you use MPEG2 - if you add anything else DVDSP will attempt to convert it to MPEG2 as it builds/formats the project. If the source is something like MPEG4 then things can get ugly pretty fast!

Compressor is a decent enough encoder, but there are other options available (for a price). I'd recommend that you look at BitVice or MegaPEG.X as alternatives on a Mac, or Canopus procoder on a PC if you have access to one at all. These will all produce decent files for use in DVDSP.

If you plan (or are able) to do MPEG-2 encoding on a PC (if you MUST!), I can also recommend the TPMGEnc from Pegasys. It does a great job of noise reduction (if that's an issue with your project) while minimizing blur effects.

If your source is clean, stick with Compressor. It seems to give slightly more consistent colors, while TPMGEnc is better at noise reduction than anything else I've tried.

bob rice
frameworx media

Yes - TMPGEnc is pretty good (and pretty cheap, too...), but the best is generally claimed to be Cinemacraft, which can get expensive!

Procoder offers a decent encoder which is very easy to operate and generates a nice sharp and clear file.

Compressor does OK, IMO, but is not without it's faults. Compressor 2 is a lot better than v1, for sure and has the distinct advantage of coming as part of the suite!