Help before I go crazy....

P

Palace Films

Active member
I didn't search this so forgive me if this is a dumb question. I'm at the point of literally going crazy. Can ANYONE tell me if there's a faster way to convert your final edited FCP film to quicktime conversion??? I have a 2 hour project and it take 8 HOURS!!!!!!!!! THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY.

Someone please help me, I'm dying!
 
It really depends on the compression you are using.

h.264 usually takes me about 30 minutes for a 3 minute video. Go figure.

But there are other things that you can do too that don't take as long.

Again, how good do you want it to look? What are you compressing it to?

CaptM
 
im using h.264. The quality doesn't have to be GREAT so to speak. I'm making a DVD for a community of elderly people. It's a piece on a priest who is retiring. THe film is about 2 hours and I'm converting it to quicktime in order to burn it on DVD with iDVD. Is there ANY way possible to do this faster??? Or a quicker way without using iDVD???

Thank you
 
just export using export to quicktime NOT quicktime conversion and make movie self contained NOT recompress frames should take seconds or minutes then bring that into iDVD for conversion on the fly, easy, peesey, lemon squeezy:)
 
Thats
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Nope not unless you are converting it too MPEG2 which I hope you would be if you were intending it to play on a DVD player!:)
 
Everything works fine but it doesn't even fit 1 HOUR ON DVD!!! WHy is this???? I know the GB capacity of a DVD but how can it only fit 1 hour????? There must be something wrong. How can there not be a way to put 2 hours of footage onto 1 freaking DVD! Sorry just frustrated.
 
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AH... ok... you're stuck doing 60 minutes.

Sorry.

I think the most recent one does 90 minutes... sheesh, I wish I could help!!

I've got a friend in Chicago who MIGHT be able to help if this is really critical... which I'm sure it is... but any way of getting DVDSP NOW?

CaptM
 
How much does a DVD hold normally? An hour of mpeg 2 on a single layer/sided disc? How do companies fit feature films and special features on a disc?
 
no no -- don't get confused.

iDVD has a set recording ability -- or maybe 2. I think you can force it to do 90 minutes... but you HAVE to let IT do the compression. SUCKS!!

If you use DVDSP it will let you take YOUR mpeg2 compression which you do in Compressor (or let DVDSP do it) and you can control it down to 2 hours give or take. I can even get 24p stuff to 2.5 hours and still look good.

Major Motion Picture studios use dual layer discs... have for a while now. They get the highest quality 1 hour per side... ever notice the little bump in the movie around minute 61 or so?

iDVD is for home movies or a quick one-off of a scene for the boss. Nothing more.

CaptM
 
Just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of you for ALL your help. Regardless if it helped me or not. The best way to learn is through trial and error so thanks for the answers that I need in my crucial time of need here. THANKS!

Anyway back to the questions, So now I'm using DVDSP and so far its encoding...but will the 2 hours fit on a single DVD??? Shouldn't it tell me if it will not fit on a disc BEFORE I start the encoding process??
 
Believe it or not, I feel DVDSP is easier. When you import your compressed files into DVDSP and place them into a track, DVDSP lets you know how much space is used. A single layer DVD will hold about 4.3 GB, give or take. I had to compress my move in four sections. The movie's running time is 87 minutes, so each section is roughly 20-25 minutes. I compressed them using mpeg-2 60 minutes best quality. It came in at 4.4GB and I was actually able to build a working DVD. Obviously, there was no room for anything else on there.:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

Make sure you encode your audio using Dolby Stereo (or A-Pack). PCM will eat up a lot more space than the Dolby encoding.

Depending on your quality requirements, if you are using the presets, you might want to try the: DVD:Fastest Encode 150 minutes. It'll do a one pass with an average bit rate of 3.7 Mbps. You'll be able to fit more on the disk at that setting.
 
Yes, you can fit 2 hours on a DVD.

Wait, how are you doing your MPEG2 compression? QTPro? Compressor? No matter how I do my compression, I usually 'flatten' the movie by using FCPs 'Make Quicktime Movie' Export. This will give me a single layer of video fairly quickly, and it will compress to MPEG2 faster.

Usually, if I need to make a lot of video fit in an MPEG2, I'll just use QTPro's MPEG2 compression. If using QTPro, EXPORT to MPEG2. Open your movie file in QTPro, and then select EXPORT...Then at the bottom select MOVIE TO MPEG2. Click the OPTIONS button, then in the next window click on QUALITY. You can screw around with some of the settings in there to make the final file size fit on a DVD (best to stay under 4.3 GB). A TWO-PASS can pack more into a small file size, but it can take two or three times longer to process.
 
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