Burn time...why so long?
 

I know my Mac is aged a bit considering what is the "latest, greatest" offerings by Apple but should it take 4+ hours to burn a 45min DVD? I export from FCP 2.0v with chapter markers, build the DVD in DVDSP4 with a play all button plus buttons to 8 chapters, nothing fancy.

My "old" machine:
Dual 2.7Ghz PowerPC G5
2.5 gig RAM
OS X 10.4.11

Would more RAM result in faster render times, faster DVD burns and exports on FLASH/MOV files?

I can't afford a new machine, but will consider adding RAM if you think it will significantly help.

Save the money on RAM and apply it to a RAID configuration (SCSI, Fiber or eSATA). Rendering has two main controlling components: 1) Hard drive spindle speed and access times. 2) Processing Power and Number of processors.
-C

What exactly is taking a long time? Rendering the video or burning the DVD?

I was thinking the same thing. If he's only talking about the burn time then just replace the internal one with a new faster drive. Just make sure to buy one that is compatible with mac ( i believe Pioneer is the brand you need) with the non sata interface.

It's actually the formatting of the DVD that seems to take forever. Large projects seem to take a long time to export as QT files, converting to other formats in 3rd party programs and Compressor are slow as well. Sorry but I mentioned rendering when really what little rendering of effects in FCP I do are not a big deal.

The only thing that should take a long time is the transcoding of video assets to the MPEG2 format required by the DVD standard. If you create that correct format out of FCP ("Export with Compressor..."), DVD-SP shouldn't have much left to do other than multiplexing the various streams (video, audio, subtitles).

It sounds to me like when you exported from FCP, you created some other format that wasn't suitable for a DVD. DVD-SP accepts such assets, but needs to transcode them when you create the DVD. If that's the case, be aware that you have multiple encode steps in your workflow that probablu degrade the final picture quality more than necessary.

- Martin

As well, if you've included multiple motion graphics menus and chapter indexes, DVDSP needs to render those to MPEG-2. This could be contributing to your overall preparation load.

Edit: I just re-read Tyge's opening statement about a simple menu structure. My above note does not apply here but I leave it unadulterated for all that shall come after. Sorry Tyge. Got sidetracked.

I just completed the same project with much better results by exporting from FCP into Compressor, then importing those files into DVDSP. Overall it saved me about an hour or maybe a little more.