Need some clarifications/help on DVD stuff

[Heath McKnight]

I'm wrapping everything up right now on my DVD, should be ready for production in two weeks (depending on how long it takes to clean up audio on the film).

I talked to CustomFlix, and they said, for Disc one (where I care about size of the movie/commentary going onto the DVD) with a 1 hour and 50 minute movie plus commentary, here's what they recommended:

1. Movie should be five megabits.

2. Audio (in 5.1 Dolby) should be 192 kb.

3. Commentary should be 128 kb.

I don't know about the size of menus, either, or the different chapters that will have my logo, no copying warning, etc. Anyone with tips, that would be GREAT! or a link to a site with that stuff in it.

Now, how do I figure that out when encoding? I'm encoding from Final Cut Pro 3.0.4 because I hear DVD Studio Pro sucks with encoding. Unless anyone can offer a cheap or free encoder. (I can't afford Toast right now. More money going out than coming in, ya know...)

Where can I find a bit rate calculator?

Thanks,

heath

[Jake Russell]

Ok first things first. Dvdsp doesn't encode it's the authoring app and you import already encoded footage(mpeg-2) into dvdsp. So you can use any encoder from free to big buck$ with dvdsp.

You get a QT component when dvdsp is installed which allows export to mpeg-2 from QT apps(QTpro & FCPro). So sorry to say but the encoder that you're going to use is the encoder that sucks. The only free encoder I can think of is a PC one(http://www.tmpgenc.net/) but other options would be BitVice Lite(http://www.innobits.se/) or Compressor(which comes with FCPro4 & dvdsp2).

Toast isn't an mpeg-2 encoder. You can write your VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS folder to dvd-r or DLT with it though so it's a good tool to have about for mastering if you dont need region coding, copy protection etc.

Ok I hope you're writing to DLT and replicating cause if not you're really gonna be pushing dvd-r and asking for trouble really. IMHO of course.

Audio:
5.1 surround I'd recommend 448 kbps and def not lower than 224.
2.0 stereo 192 to 224.

I'd bare in mind that people will watch poor footage with good audio but not really the other way around.

Menu sizes in Photoshop:
For NTSC 720 x 534 resize it to 720 x 480
For PAL 768 x 576 resize it to 720 x 576

Make separate mpeg-2's for the warning and logo. You'll set the warning as the dvd startup action and have it jump when finished to the logo clip then have that goto your main menu. On both of these you can disable user operations so they can't FFWD, skip etc.

Ok that should cover some of it.

HTH

Jake

Edited - There are quite afew bitrate calculators about, http://www.wiredinc.com/bitrate.html but for you're project you're going to need to get a better encoder IMHO cause you'll need to drop the bitrate right down. You could really do with a good 2-pass VBR encoder and Compressor or Procoder(Canopus, PC only) might be the best options with the avg bitrate dropped to 3 or 4. Compressor makes smaller m2v's than Procoder and Bitvice.

But that said, I have got 2hrs non-blocky footage out of the QT export on to 4.37 GB disc before :-) not 5.1 or an extra audio track though.

[Heath McKnight]

Jake,

Thanks a lot for the help, I appreciate it. As I get closer to the actual compression, I may have more questions.

I don't think my commentary will be in 5.1, but the movie will.

Thanks again,

heath