Quick and dirty technique to make DVDs of Raw Footage

[L.J. Morelli]

Back in the days of SD, I'd send a signal into a DVD recorder. Some of my clients want to see raw footage, so I've crammed 3hrs plus onto a disc. Quality was low, but it didn't matter. Anybody have a work flow, or do I have to encode these things, and burn a disc. Thanks.

[Rusty Rogers]

I can throw any resolution footage on a DVD compliant timeline and burn direct. Nothing fancy, it just works.

I have an upcoming project that needs to be in NTSC and PAL. I'll just change the project settings to PAL DVD compliant and burn again.

Download the demo, I think the DVD software is included.

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by L.J. Morelli

Back in the days of SD, I'd send a signal into a DVD recorder. Some of my clients want to see raw footage, so I've crammed 3hrs plus onto a disc. Quality was low, but it didn't matter. Anybody have a work flow, or do I have to encode these things, and burn a disc. Thanks.

I have a Sony M15 deck attached to FCP via FireWire, and a SD JVC Monitor. Remarkably, I get a SD image on the monitor when I use the f12 trick. the magic is in the M15. It seems to do a fairly 'okay' downconvert - not as good as a SW, but good enough for a 3 hour DVD of rushes. Just line them up on an XDCAM-HD timeline, hit go (and Play+Rec) and away you go.

[L.J. Morelli]

I don't have an M15 deck, unfortunately. And not sure if I get Rusty's suggestion. Are you saying just make an SD sequence, like this guy is saying:

Outputting Standard Definition in FCP from the Sony XDCam EX1

And play out of the time line, like I used to do?

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by L.J. Morelli

Are you saying just make an SD sequence, like this guy is saying:

{Ooh, and there's that article again! Rick and I bashed out that workflow early this year, but have since improved on it in the way I described in your other thread.}

Yes, you can shove all your footage onto an SD timeline, but it may look a bit mushy until you render it, which will take a bit of time. For bashing out 3 hour DVDs of rushes with Burned In Time Code, it would either be time consuming but high quality, or real time and not really good enough (what you see is what you get).

Rusty's refering to Edius Pro, PC package which has, IIRC, a similar 'multi-format timeline' - it may perform tricks to get better quality in real time.

Do you have a Sony Z1 or A1? That may do a similar thing to the M15. Before I got my deck, I'd pump FCP into the Z1 via FW, then use its S-Video and audio outputs into a DVD-Recorder for just this use.

[Ted OMalley]

I do this in Vegas as well - timeline accepts any media (and I'm now using the 64-bit edition!). For the final product, my workflow would be a bit different, but for a "Quick and Dirty" options it performs great.

[Craig Seeman]

Matt maybe you or Rick should update that article for Ken Stone since people keep referring to it.

Not everyone there is here and having to look for the "other thread" isn't very tidy.

I'm always bumping into this issue and I've yet to be completely happy with workflow or results.

Originally Posted by Matt Daviss

{Ooh, and there's that article again! Rick and I bashed out that workflow early this year, but have since improved on it in the way I described in your other thread.}

Yes, you can shove all your footage onto an SD timeline, but it may look a bit mushy until you render it, which will take a bit of time. For bashing out 3 hour DVDs of rushes with Burned In Time Code, it would either be time consuming but high quality, or real time and not really good enough (what you see is what you get).

Rusty's refering to Edius Pro, PC package which has, IIRC, a similar 'multi-format timeline' - it may perform tricks to get better quality in real time.

Do you have a Sony Z1 or A1? That may do a similar thing to the M15. Before I got my deck, I'd pump FCP into the Z1 via FW, then use its S-Video and audio outputs into a DVD-Recorder for just this use.

[Alister Chapman]

I have a decklink extreme card in my edit suite. I just drop everything into a HD sequence and the set the decklink card to output SD composite and feed that to a DVD recorder.