iDVD 90 Minute Block
 

I have 101 minutes of footage in three seperate chunks that I am trying to burn to DVD using iDVD. iDVD will give me a warning stating that "Your movie is over 90 Minutes long and you can't burn until it is unde 90 minutes". I can't trim it down because none of the footage can be sacrificed, and I don't have time to learn how to use DVD Studio Pro. My question would be; is there a way around this in iDVD? I have standard 4.7GB discs that say 120min. on the box. I run OSX and made all of the clips Final Cut Pro Movies and dragges them directly into iDVD. If not I guess it will go on 2 discs. Has Apple fixed this with iDVD/iMovie upgrades I have heard about?

Thanks

Render Quality
 

While exploring menus one day I clicked the "Edit render Quality" button in the Timeline. Naturally, everything eventually gets rendered at the Hi Res setting. But I noticed that the default setting did not have the box labeled " High Quality Playback" checked. I checked this box and it seems to have done nothing. I assumed it would want me to render my Timeline again with this new setting. I usually play directly from the Timeline to tape (Print to Tape often fails me) and I want it to look its best. Does anyone use this setting? Does it make a difference in quality?

After FX plug ins
 

Where is the best place to get After FX plugins for FCP 3? Are there any that you would consider essential? On a side note; can you use I-Movie's effects/transitions in FCP without importing your footage into I-Movie?

iDVD will only allow the 90 minutes.even in the latest release its still the same 90 min limit.

My follow-up would be: Does DVD Studio Pro allow you to burn over 90 minutes?

I have had no problems with the external firewire box made by Granite Digital (GD). You buy the bare drive, place it in a GD enclosure and slide it into the drive box. It's even hot swappable. I always buy the fastest IDE bare drives I can. Last one was a 7200 rpm. I have heard that some of the laptop internal drives are only 4200 rpm. What also appears to matter is the "bridge" or transfer protocol. An Apple guy demoing FCP4 said the Oxford 911 bridges are the most reliable, and that's what the Granite Digital uses.

Since bare drives are getting so darned cheap, I've started buying a new drive for each new project and keeping it online, rather than erasing the drive. That way, if there is a change a couple of months, a year, later, it is no trouble to load the whole project back into the box and make changes.

LS-A

I dont own DVDSP as of yet but yes it will allow over 90 min for it lets you adjust the bit rate when convering to mpeg2. I'm sure some of the DVDSP users here can give a more in depth answer on this.

Sounds like a lot of double talk to me, Charles. Some models had a separate FireWire connection on the board. I think this has been done away with.

The Oxford 911 bridge board set the standard for FireWire 400. Oxford has a new chip set out for FireWire 800, the 922. Indigita is also doing great work on a FireWire RAID card that is said to offer best of class performance.

Any IDE drive can be paired up with an enclosure. Good enclosures can be had at OWC, Granite, and Weibe Tech. For comparisons look at Bare Feats

Sounds like the sales droid is just under the impression that retail firewire drives that are "pre-built" are somehow technologically different than firewire enclosures that allow you to buy the drive separately.

Examples include the Maxtor or Western Digital "drive in a box" packages that are already housed, versus a Pyro box and an OEM drive that you just toss in. They're really no different, everybody uses the same tech on the inside, as described in the above posts. About the only difference I can think of is that usually you can get a better deal on the empty enclosures and an add-in drive.

No, the iMovie transitions only work in iMovie. But, as you have already figured out you can export and import your footage between the two programs.

AE plugins are available through many small companies. Use Version Tracker to search for various plugins.

Many people feel that Joe's Filters are an essential for FCP. Joe is also a member here at DV Info.

I don't remember what that does. So I guess that shows how often I use it. I am away form the office for a few weeks and I don't have FCP on my laptop. You can use the help function, within FCP, to find your answer. Sorry to pass the buck. Anyone else remember what it does?

DVD SP is limited only by the total size of your project, bit rate you choose and the media you are going to. General Authoring media is limited to around 4.3GB of data. I know the disc says 4.7GB but it's the difference between bits and bytes. There are also some files that need to be present as part of the DVD spec and these take up 100mb or so.

Audio... from pd150 to iMovie2
 

Could anyone tell me if iMovie2 can capture more than one channel (audio)? If yes, how?

Thank you.

Anybody?

Doesn't my question make sense?

I don't use iMovie, but to the best of my knowledge it captures a left and right channel (channel 1 and channel 2). It should do it as a part of the normal capture. iMovie help indicates that iMovie uses 3 tracks, one video and two audio.

If it doesn't capture to both tracks it may leave one track for music and sound effects.