Can someone just spell it out for me? Going from FCP HD to DVD SD :-(

Question

Hey folks. I hate to come here and ask a gargantuan number of questions, but this has been driving me out of my mind. I've tried asking specific question in hopes of simply finding one little problem that will fix my woes, but now it has come to this:
Can someone just spell it out for me?
How do I get my DVD going? I'll fill you in with all the knowlege I think you need.
I shot with Sony's HDR-FX1 and edited in Final Cut. That means I'm working with High defintion. The movie is set and solid, and runs One hour and twenty mintues. I'm trying to get it, the commentary track, the subtitle track, and a slew of video files (also shot in high def) onto one dvd. This goes beyond the 4.8 gig limit. Hence, i have a Dual layer burner, and have been burning onto DVD-R DL disks.
I've tried downgrading to SD format through steps from this website:
http://www3.telus.net/bonsai/Step-by-Step.html
I do all the steps to all of my files, and then start putting them into my DVD STUDIO PRO project. I have a recorded commentary which I add in, and I have written all the subtitles. The disk is in SD mode, and everything fits onto the dual layer disk. I've tried literally a dozen different ways, and something keeps going wrong. Either the menus won't come up, and just the film will play upon inserting, or the subtitle stream doesn't pick up- problem after problem. So, now I ask: Can someone simply spell out to me what steps I need to take to get my HD film onto a Dual Layer SD disk?
I apologize for how general this question is and how many directions it can go, but I'm at a breaking point after four months of failures. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Hi man.
I don't really know which ways you've taken to put
the video into dvd studio, but since you're asking
for a step by step process, then here's what i do:
- export the entire hour out of FCP to a qt file
- take that QT file to compressor. the only audio you
really need is dolby 2.0. this would also reduce the
file size of video to make things fit in a single
layer dvd
I have always found that the 'Dolby 2.0' and '5.1' AC3 settings in Compressor badly affect your audio mix...it collapses the soundstage, takes away a lot of depth and imaging, and smudges the frequency range, so I usually output a 16-bit 48kHz, which holds things together much more nicely when working with a stereo mix. Problem is, for a feature-length films, the resulting output from compressor makes it too big to fit on standard DVD-R's with the M2V picture file. My workaround was to actually take take the original exported FCP QT movie (which has a 48kHz aiff soundtrack to begin with), and only lay the audio part of it in the track timeline in DVD studio pro, then lay the compressed M2V video on top of it. They're both still in sync, unless you picked different in/out points in Compressor. When you 'build' your Video/Audio TS in 'advanced burn' it somehow makes it small enough to all fit onto a DVD, while still maintaining the audio quality of the AIFF, instead of the crappy-sounding 2.0 AC3. Then you just use Toast to burn your disc. The difference in sound quality is night and day. So basically I do the picture in Compressor, but let DVD Studio Pro prepare the audio in the Advanced Burn stage.
It will be very difficult to get a good-sounding AC3 (what they call 'dolby' 2.0 or the wierd 5.1 encoding they use) unless you mix/master/encode your soundtrack professionally like regular studio films do. Just encoding it in compressor straight out of FCP or ProTools isn't enough. You lose too much.