1080p Project need to burn DVD or Bluray

Question

1080p Project need to burn DVD or Bluray

Hi there,

I have a film that was shot in 1080p 24fps and edited in FCP 7 as ProRes. We are hoping to submit to film festivals and we have the option to submit as DVD/BluRay it seems.

In my research it seems that we can use compressor to create a BluRay compatible export and I should be able to use Toast with an external BR drive to burn the export, but then we won't have any kind of menus or chapters apparently. Just the film itself as far as I can tell. DVD Studio Pro doesn't seem to support anything other than DVDs. In which case, I am uncertain about how the image will be impacted by such a downgrade. To my understanding the presets only allow for up to 1080i at 29.97 which would seem to result in very poor image quality compared to our original source.

Can anyone shed some light on what we can do here? Or provide a good work flow/tutorial links that might assist me.

Btw, I do have FCP 7, FCP X, DVDSP and Adobe CS Premiere and Encore at my disposalin case there is a cross platform solution that would work better.

Thanks very much.

Posted on Jul 16, 2013 1:58 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

David M Brewer

Level 6

9,669 points

Jul 16, 2013 3:31 AM in response to dvdflashbacks

How long is the video? If it is under 30 minutes you can use Compressor 3.5 or 4 to burn a Blu-ray Material (dics) onto a regular DVD. Compressor has simple menus and the chapter marks will also work. You don't need a Blu-ray burner to do this.

Would be best to supply a regular DVD too.

Reply

Answer 2

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Jul 16, 2013 4:45 AM in response to dvdflashbacks

dvdflashbacks wrote:

To my understanding the presets only allow for up to 1080i at 29.97 which would seem to result in very poor image quality compared to our original source.

The settings you refer to are for the obsolete HD DVD format. As a practical matter, DVD Studio Pro is now limited to 720x480. But that's not to say that DVDSP Compressor can't produce very good-looking DVDs, They can do a very good job with good quality source material and the right Compressor settings.

As David suggested, an AVCHD disk is a nice HD alternative if you don't need complex menu structure, multiple tracks and eye candy, extras, etc.

Russ

Reply

Answer 3

Jul 16, 2013 7:51 AM in response to Russ H

Thank you for the quick replys.

Our film is just around 2 hours. So I imagine that going the DVD route, which we might need to do to ensure max compatibility at this point, might be our best option. I know that Sundance had stopped allowing BluRay submissions at one point and do not allow Short film submissions on BluRay still.

I just watched a Tutorial on using Compressor alone to make the DVD instead of using DVDSP. At this point we definitely do not need any complex menu structures or fancy extras, although the director and executive producer do want us to include extras and official film trailer on DVD at some point after the initial festival submissions.

It looks like the basic menu structure I saw in the Compressor example (with a simple background image) would work just fine for our festival submissions.

So, one question on this...when I walked through the Compressor method it looks like by default the encoding was MPEG-2 not AVCHD. Was the AVCHD only if we go the BluRay route?

Thank you again.

Reply

Answer 4

Jul 16, 2013 8:23 AM in response to dvdflashbacks

DVD, MPEG-2

BluRay, AVCHD (h.264)...

To make the best compression to MPEG-2, use Compressor to make the MPEG-2. Drag both the MPEG-2 and audio file into DVD Studio Pro. DVD Studio Pro doesn't make that great of a MPEG-2 file compared to Compressor. That is if you decide to use DVD Studio Pro to make the DVD.

(Personally I don't make DVDs straight out of Compressor or DVD Studio Pro. I make a disc image from Compressor or DVD Studio Pro. Three reasons, 1) If for some reason the burn fails I don't have to redo the MPEG-2 transcoding again (Compressor)... 2) If I need to make more DVD copies I have the disc image to burn from... 3) I need to tweak the MPEG-2 settings I don't have to re-burn the DVD. Just mount the DVD disc image and open it with DVD player on the Mac to check it out before burning.

To burn the DVD disc image... mount the disc image... open Disk Utility... select the disc image... burn.)

Reply

Answer 5

Jul 16, 2013 8:30 AM in response to David M Brewer

also, if you have toast, you can use toast to do the burn after buidling in dvdsp.

Reply

Answer 6

Jul 16, 2013 9:43 AM in response to David M Brewer

Thanks guys. This has been very helpful.

Reply