General Overview on How to use Final Cut Studio to create a Blu-Ray DVD

Question

I am a new user of Final Cut Studio and need an experienced user to give my a progression guide on how to create a Blu-Ray DVD of my recent Alaska Trip. Last month I spend 8 days in Alaska visiting Denali and Juneau primarily. During that time I took about 100 short video clips (HD 1080p) and 570+ still photos with my Canon 7D. I have experimented with some pieces of the software and have created a Blu-Ray disk using Final Cut Pro and Compressor. However my goal is to create this DVD with menus that will play short clips (some narrated) and still photos(also some narration). I did a short one in DVD Studio Pro this morning but need some general guidance on what progression and programs to use to create this project. I was not able to take my video from the Studio Pro Sequence I created for my 1st DVD I had to take the original clips which were processed using Apple ProRes 422 and copy them in one at a time and then find the audio (on the voice overs) I created and also place them into DVD Studio Pro one at a time. I obviously need some guidance on the proper progression.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Here's the situation...
DVD Studio Pro will not do the trick for you - it doesn't do blu-ray discs. If you want to do Blu-ray you've got to use either Final Cut Pro's "Export" command or Compressor's "Burn Blu-ray disc" template. The downside to both of these approaches is that you can't burn more than one title (or movie, etc.) using Final Cut Studio.
To do what you want to do, you need Toast (at least). Toast will auto-generate menus but will let you put more than one title per slide (so you can put multiple slideshows on the same disc).
If you want to do full-on customizing of menus and multi-level menus, for that you need Adobe's Encore.
My suggestion - Get Toast. Encore is close to $800.
Here's your progression (at least the one I use).
Edit in Final Cut Pro (ProRes 422 is fine, ProRes 422 LT would do the trick as well)
Export as QuickTime movies (original settings)
In Compressor using the H.264 for Blu-ray setting and Dolby Digital setting and create elementary streams for video (.264 file) and audio (.ac3). Make sure these files have identical names except for the extension.
Using toast, add the video file to the Toast project and it'll find the audio file.
Burn away!