advc: capture and reduce file size in osx?

[shamusom]

Forgive this newbie type question, but I can't find this in the forum. Here is my question:

I just bought a canpus advc-100 to transfer my VHS movies into digital form. As you all know the DV files are huge. Using OSX, what program can I use to encode the DV files so I can use them in iDVD or DVD Studio Pro. I realize that when I capture the files in iMovie I can export to iDVD and use iDVD (version 4) and use it's encoding to reduce the size, but what other programs can I use to encode the files?

As well, what programs do people here use in OSX to capture the video from the ADVC? iMovie and what else? Final Cut Express? anything else?

thanks!!!

[WiseWeasel]

DV files are the only type that iDVD will accept. If you have DVD Studio Pro, then you've also got the QuickTime MPEG2 encoder and Compressor (for version 2.0 of DVDSP and above). You can use either of those to encode to MPEG2, for use in DVDSP. I also have the ADVC 100, and what I do is capture in iMovie, put the clips in the timeline, and edit as necessary. Then I export (command-shift-e), choose QuickTime in the first popup menu, and Expert Settings... in the second. Then, in the next window that pops up, I choose 'Movie, Self-contained' as the export format, and save it to HD as a QuickTime .mov file. I then drag those into Compressor, set up my MPEG2 preset for the quality and filters I want, and submit for encoding. I also do a Sound to AIFF conversion (with 16 bit 48 kHz stereo settings), and save the soundtrack. Once I have the .aif soundtrack, I launch A.pack, set it to two channels, 192 kbit, and drag the .aif file to the left and right channels, and encode to AC3. Once I have m2v and AC3 files, I can import them into DVD Studio Pro, and set up a DVD. You can either use the built-in templates, or make your own with photoshop. There are more detailed instructions for this in other threads in this forum. Besides iMovie, I've also used BTV to capture, but it doesn't have the nice editing capabilities of iMovie, and doesn't seem as stable, but has a few more capture options. FCP and FCE work as well. I've settled upon the iMovie + DVDSP combo, and have had excellent results.