The size of my exported FCP movie is too big for DVD studio pro

Question

Hey,
I have been editing for 4-5 years now and have never had a problem with size of a project to put into DVD Studio Pro to burn. However, I just finished a 2 hour project in which exported as a FCP movie it is 23.97 gb in size. When i put this into DVD Studio Pro it makes it 4.8gb in size which just makes it too big for it to burn. I have tried changing the compression to no avail and just now decided to clean up the timeline so everything is on one track with nothing overlapping. (The problem was it was a 2 camera shoot so the first camera i had on the bottom track constant with the second camera on the top track when i needed it but still with the first camera underneath.) Do you think this could be the solution to my problem? If you guys could help me out it would be most appreciated!

Answer 1

some things don't make sense here. please clarify.
Standard DV is roughly 5 minutes per gig, so that means that you have just about 2 hours of video, ok, got that. Now it's the two track thing that gets me.
Are you saying you have 4 hours of footage, the same thing from two cameras, and you're trying to set up a multi-angle DVD?
If it's just that you used two video tracks to edit, then NO, it is not your problem. It's still only 2 hours, the video will be mixed down to one track upon export from FCP to quicktime.
My suggestion is, instead of bringing a quicktime file directly into DVDSP, use compressor. I believe they have a preset in compressor 2 for a standard 120 minute DVD. IF you're project is truly less than 120 minutes, than that should be fine. If not, then you may have to manually make your own setting and lower the bitrate.
So the workflow is:
-open sequence in fcp
-file>export>quicktime movie... (you can uncheck "make movie self-contained" if you want it to export faster and you plan on keeping your original capture footage around)
-export your movie to a directory of your choice with a name of your choice.
-open compressor (in applications)
-drag the quicktime file you created into compressors main window, this will set it up. Now specify the export setting (120 minute HQ all files either 16x9 or 4x3 dep. on project) and specify a location for the files to be created. I strongly suggest that you use the HQ (High quality) settings in compressor. It's much slower to process, but much better quality.
-with a 2 hour movie it should take a really REALLY long time to compress, so I'de say do it over night.
-when compressor is done, you should have 2 or three files. a .m2v file a .aif file, and a .ac3 file. The .aif is your PCM audio, much better quality than the .ac3, which is dolby 2 channel. However, the .ac3 is a much smaller file with a lower bit rate, so if the .aif makes the DVD file size too big, you can switch it out for the .ac3
-Finally, open up your DVDSP project, drag the .m2v, .aif, and .ac3 into DVDSP and use the .m2v for the video track and either the .aif or .ac3 as the audio (as mentioned above)
-the good news is, your DVD media is already rendered, so when you go to build your DVD it will go much, much faster!
By the way, I recommend you go to file>advanced>build do not do a burn and build.
I find it best to build the VIDEO_TS folder on a hard drive and then use a program like toast to create a DVD (using toasts from VIDEO_TS option). This method also allows you to go back into DVDSP, make tweaks, and reuse your VIDEO_TS folder, not having to rebuild the whole thing each time.
Remember, 120 minutes on a single layer DVD is going to render fairly low quality no matter what.
If you have a newer mac and a dual layer drive, you may want to cough up a few bucks and get a dual layer DVD-R, then you have over 8 gigs of space to work with, perfect for HQ 2 hour footage.