Final Cut Pro HD

Post by **rick dangerous** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:43 pm

Hello,
I would be grateful if somebody could point out what I am doing wrong. I have finished the first edit of my short surf film and would like to put a copy on DVD so I can take a look at it on a big screen. This is where I need a little advice.

I am compressing the film to an mpeg2 file using the built in compressor software. This went fine, no problems, that was until I came to view the film which was sitting on my desktop. There is no sound! The sound file is also on my desktop but I can't seem to get the two working together. I'm sure there's an easy solution to the problem, I just don't know where to look.

I'd appreciate any suggestions anybody may have.

One final question would be, I compressed the file as mpeg2 on high quality encode 120 minutes. What is the difference with with selecting 120 mins/90 mins/60 mins options? Does it refer to the length you want to compress or is it refering to the time it will take to compress?
Even on the 120 high quality encode I have a slight distortion of the image on some scenes where the image has been sped up. Is there a reason for that?

Sorry for the long confusing post, hopefully someone can make sense of it and come to the rescue.

Many thanks

Gary

Post by **tlatosmd** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:55 pm

rick dangerous wrote:One final question would be, I compressed the file as mpeg2 on high quality encode 120 minutes. What is the difference with with selecting 120 mins/90 mins/60 mins options? Does it refer to the length you want to compress or is it refering to the time it will take to compress?
Even on the 120 high quality encode I have a slight distortion of the image on some scenes where the image has been sped up. Is there a reason for that?

That number refers to how much footage you wanna squeeze on your destination medium. The higher that number, the lower your resulting quality.

Post by **rick dangerous** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:03 pm

Thanks for the quick reply. So for best results for a short 10 minute short film I should select the lowest number at high quality encode. Great.
Thanks for the help.
Now just the problem of getting the compressed video and audio back as one.

Post by **tlatosmd** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:06 pm

I'm not sure but you might google the term multiplexing for that A/V problem.

Post by **steve hyde** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:37 pm

...I'm not an FCP expert, but I have been learning the software. In terms of audio, my best results have been with .aif audio files. Don't use .mp3 or anything hyper-compressed because it will sound awful.

not sure if this helps.

Steve

Post by **audadvnc** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:37 pm

Compression is almost always bad for photo and audio quality. When compressing, always perform the least amount of compression you can get away with.

Post by **mattias** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:46 pm

fcp doesn't author dvd's, neither does compressor. you need an authoring program. dvdsp, idvd, toast, sizzle and ffmpegx are the ones i use depending on source material and complexity of the disc.

m2v files play in quicktime if you have the mpeg-2 component. it's included with fcp. if there's an aif with the same file name in the same folder it will be used for sound.

/matt

Post by **rick dangerous** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:58 pm

Thanks for the suggestions.

I think what tlatosmd said about multiplexing seems to be where I need to look into. I've had a search on google which leads me to believe I need some more software like HEURIS MPEG Power Professional which can combine the audio track with the mpeg 2 file. Can this be right? I'd expect Final Cut/Quicktime to be able to do this without some thrid party software.

Am I better just choosing File - Export - Using Quicktime Compressor?
This is definetely easier but I have tried it and although the results don't seem to be of the same standard they do at least combine the video and audio.

I've never had such a problem with exporting a project with final cut pro, but then again I've never tried to finish a project at the highest standard possible.

Thanks again for all your suggestions.

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:13 pm

Why do you have to combine the audio file? The DVD authoring program generally wants separate m2v and audio files. What are you using to author the DVD?

Post by **rick dangerous** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:32 pm

I'm using iDVD for authoring. After using compressor my video is compressed to an mpeg2 m2v file and the audio to an aiff file. Both have the same name on my desktop but I still can't seem to combine the two.

I normally just drop the finished project (video and audio combined) into iDVD and thats it, but with the two files seperate I'm unsure as to how to do this.

Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:35 pm

The DVD authoring program (I used DVD Pro) should be able to put the two together for your final product.

Also, regarding quality, if the movie is short enough, I usually don't do any compression at all. Of course I've never done this on a movie longer than 4 minutes, so I'm not sure how big a 10 minute file would be.

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:09 pm

"Also, regarding quality, if the movie is short enough, I usually don't do any compression at all."

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Unless you're just burning the DV file to a data disc (which won't be playable on any DVD player), you have to compress it as MPEG-2.

I don't use iDVD, but you should be able to drag both files at the same time into the timeline or canvas.

Post by **rick dangerous** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:47 pm

Thanks for taking the time offer your help Evan.

I've just tried draging and dropping the two files over into iDVD and all it says is "iDVD does not support this action".

Post by **Will2** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 12:36 am

rick dangerous wrote:Thanks for taking the time offer your help Evan.

I've just tried draging and dropping the two files over into iDVD and all it says is "iDVD does not support this action".

You need to save your edited file out as a quicktime file, you can use the DV codec if you like then just drop the single quicktime file onto iDVD. I assume you're working from miniDV files so there's no loss this way. No need for compressor. Use compressor if you want to post online or go to a bizarre format. iDVD, Toast 7 and DVD Studio Pro all will compress your file for you and do a fine job too.

Post by **Shion** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:13 am

Will2 wrote:iDVD, Toast 7 and DVD Studio Pro all will compress your file for you and do a fine job too.

...provided, in the case of DVD Studio Pro, that you set your compression settings in the program's preferences first. I know this is fairly obvious, but one would assume that it is set up for maximum quality by default. It isn't.

By the way, if you ever want to make a standard MPEG-2 file rather than a DVD, there's a freeware program out there called "BitVice Helper" that can do this (multiplex the audio/video files into a .mpg file). It's easy to use, although I do think it's pretty stupid that Compressor can't do this by itself.

-Bon

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