I am trying to finish burning my DVD studio pro project and am out of room. I noticed that my AIFF file is 1.3 GB!!!
My question is this:
Is there a way to reduce this AIFF file size without compromising quality or use another format that DSP understands like AC3 and in turn be much smaller file size?
Also, I'm amazed that Compressor made this audio file so huge. If I remember correctly, there use to be a program called A-Pack that did a much better job for compressing the audio, right? Any help on how to get this audio file much smaller, would be appreciated. Thanks.
Ok, I used Compressor 2 to convert my AIFF to AC3 and the file is now 111 MB. So I got excited until I noticed that when I imported it back into DSP and added it to the track, my "space" indicator still showed that the file is too big to fit on the disk, even though under my Assets tab, it shows the file size as being 111 MB. It makes me wonder if DSP is gonna re-convert the file back to AIFF for burning and therefore making the audio file big again. Maybe this is why the status indicator under my Assets tab for this AC3 file shows yellow and not green? Help!
I'm sorry, I mis-spoke. I used Compressor to encode the AIFF file to AAC, which resulted in an .mp4 file. Once I purchased DSP 4.0, suddenly my A-Pack application disappeared and Compressor appeared. I want my A-Pack back! Everything else in my previous post was true, except the AC3 part.
A.Pack got absorbed in to Compressor 2 - we all lost A.Pack when we upgraded (I think some folks have used Pacifist to get to the app in the DVDSP3 installer discs, but I haven't bothered). The functionality of A.Pack is all in Compressor, in pretty much the same interface.
Look for Dolby Digital options in the encoder settings...
That's strang, I do NOT see a preset setting for Dolby Digital. Could this be because I have only Final Cut Express and not pro? Because I do own DSP 4.0, shouldn't it come with that?
Check the audio settings in the drop down list (settings) when you add a file to the batch window. The second or third option is for Audio formats, and Dolby is in there.
You could try removing all the presets, which should be in either ~/Library/Application Support/Compressor or /Library/Application Support/Compressor. When you launch Compressor after removing the presets, it should regenerate them from its default list.
If you choose to try this, I'd simply move the existing presets to the desktop, not the trash, in the event that Compressor doesn't regenerate them.
Ok, this is what I have tried since. I reinstalled, DSP 2.0 on my Power Mac G4 (as opposed to my default machine, my Power Mac G5) to get A.Pack back, which worked, however around 99% done and it crashed. So I thought, I'll try installing DSP 4.0 on my Power Mac G4 (as opposed to my Power Mac G5). Strange thing is, it did the same thing as my Power Mac G5 and only showed AAC and AIFF as options under the Audio presets. Then I got to thinking that maybe going from DSP 2.0 to DSP 4.0 somehow had something to do with this problem of mine. So I decided to install DSP 4.0 on my PowerBook G4, which has never had any version of DSP on it and I couldn't believe my eyes, but it worked. Dolby Automatic, Dolby 2.0 and Dolby 5.0 (or something close to that (from memory)) showed in the Audio presets folder. It took about 25 minutes to encode on my PowerBook and imported perfectly on DSP and is burning as we speak. I think after this I'll try Steve Boultbee's suggestion of deleting the AS folders and see if this fixes the problem on my G5. Thanks to everyone.