Hi People

I have about 1:15 of edited XL2 footage in Final Cut. How can, should I compress them to fit on a DVD without loosing quality? I mean what format or what size and so.


Thank you so much,

If you're going out to DVD-Video then the only format you can use is MPEG-2. You can fit that amount of footage on a single-layer DVD-R with a pretty high average bit rate - around 6 Mpbs - if you encode the audio as AC-3. Compressor will do this for you.

Should I use Quick time compressor or another.

because when exporting from final cut using quicktime compressor, the file is very very big.

I recommend that you export a QuickTime reference movie from FCP (File>Export>QuickTime Movie, use current settings and uncheck "Make Self Contained") then feed that to Compressor to make your MPEG-2. The QT reference can be surprisingly small depending on the number of filters and effects you've applied.

What program will you make the DVD with? You can drop a Quicktime reference movie (described in a previous post) directly into iDVD and get surprisingly good results. You get more control over everything by using Compressor and DVD Studio Pro. Note that if you use Compressor, the default sound output for the presets is AIFF. With Compressor 2, you can change the audio encoder to AC-3, which will give you more space for your video. Previous versions of FCP will require you to use A-Pack to convert AIFFs to AC-3. If all of this sounds confusing, I would just try using iDVD. Most likely you will be satisfied with the result.