FCP dvd authoring problems

[sksvideo]

Hi Everyone,
Thanks for allowing me into your forum. My problem is not complex. I own a Mac Powerbook G-4, 800mhz, maxed out with 1gb ram. I have Final Cut Pro 5 installed. The problem is that I am trying to edit an event, a bat-mitzvah, that when finished, will run more than 60 mins. in length. I have reached the 35 minute mark, and tried to test the results to DVD. First attempt went well...I encoded the timeline into a Final Cut Pro file, that was over 2gb in size. It encoded pretty quickly. But very large file size. Althought IDVD liked the file, it is apparent that I will get less than 60 mins. of video to work with for the maximum space allowed on a DVD, (I beleive that I have only 4.5GB to use for the DVD).
I then tried to compress the 35 mins. using Quicktime to make the file smaller. I tried to make a .mov file, using H-264 as the compression. When the processing began, it went 7% pretty quickly, then began to bog down quickly, getting slower and slower. The timer went from an estimated less than 30 mins. processing time to over 12 hours in the span of 60 mins. of processing. Then, it came to a grinding halt after about 4 hours time( processing a little over 25% in those 4 hours.) and died.
Now, the video has lots of dissolves in it. But that;s all the effects I've used. Otherwise, its just standard def 4:3 video. Now I don't know how I can finish the project if I need more than 60 mins. of finished video. I don't know if my Mac G-4 has insufficient processing power to complete and process the video to DVD. I don't know how to overcome the slowdown and crashing. Does anyone have an idea?

[terryj]

welcome 2 our corner of the universe!

ok, by the numbers:

1. your mac is old, but still powerful enough to process video.

2. your workflow should be:
a. edit in FCP.
b. render all files (including dissolves) BEFORE export, to
find/fix any issues.
c. export out to Quicktime .mov file, not as H.264, but as DV-NTSC.
This is a good generic codec, that transcodes MUCH, MUCH EASIER
to DVD than h.264, which requires huge amounts of ram and
horsepower to transcode it from h264 to dvd.

then,

3. Use Compressor to create the DVD files, creating your video and audio
to fit the 60 min HQ spec.

4. Use DVDSP to create (author)your DVD.

the above tools should be installed on your mac....FCP 5 came packaged
with these two in the studio package at the retail level.

Also, transcoding to DVD will use up 90% of your ram & all available
power of your processor...so no surfing email or the web while
transcoding. Also, make sure you have enough HD space available.


If you are doing this on your laptop, check your available free space,
if your are more than 80% full, you are running into scratch disc errors..
transcoding has to have available disc space double to the size of the
exported quicktime movie to create DVD video.
so if the QT movie is 4gb in size, then another 8gb has to be free
to transcode. if you have an 80gb HD, and your 80% full
(62 gb in use), then transcoding the file will push the
mac to the limit, as OSX requires 20% remain free at all times for
Virtual Memory. (16gb)
So you wouldn't have enough space to transcode your video.

[sksvideo]

Thanks for the advice Terryj, I'll give it a try....are you advising me not to use IDVD ? I was going to use DVD studio pro, but it's more complex than IDVD and I need to keep editing, rather than devoting lots of time to learn DVD studio pro....so I switched to IDVD because it's simpler.

[terryj]

for what you are wanting to accomplish, and to be able to get your
60 min project on DVD using the assets from Compressor, then yes,
I recommend you use DVDSP.

IDVD is simple to use, but has it's drawbacks, such as encoding assets
that aren't straightforward and simple ( think ingested clips into iMovie).

DVDSP isn't that hard to learn, and once you get the hang of it,
easier to use each time.