Fcp File Size Problem
 

I'm editing some footage...which came off of a 4.7 GB DVD-R and I converted from .VOB with MPEG Streamclip. I then edited roughly 15 minutes out of the footage, and exported to a Quicktime Movie. I then went to burn onto a DVD...and discovered that the file was now to big to fit on a 4.7 GB DVD. They are now close to 13 GBs. I need to get this movie on DVD for tomorrow, and it needs to be able to play in a regular DVD player. Where did I go wrong? What can I do to fix it?

Matt.

A physical DVD is nothing but a bucket for bits.

It will take ANY kind of bits.

One kind is plain digital data - which is what you're trying to put on it.

Another kind of data that a DVD is happy to accept is video that's been encoded as DVD-VIDEO - which conforms to a specific compression standard.

What you've done is skipped the step of actually AUTHORING the video to the DVD - a process that uses the DVD-VIDEO standard MPEG-2 compression to create VOB files which any DVD player can read.

You need to take your Quicktime Movie and import it into some kind of basic authoring program to do the MPEG conversion.

I assume since you're working in Quicktime, you're on a Mac. So just open up iDVD - use one of the templates to import your movie into - then when you click on "BURN" all the encoding will be done for you to create the type of disc you want.

Thanks! I tried iDVD, but I wasn't too sure about how to use it. Using iDVD do I still need to compress the data so that it will fit on the DVD?

No Matt,

The process of burning a DVD itself is where the compression takes place.

Just drag your current "too large" DV file into iDVD and it will come out compressed for DVD - with a file as short as yours expect it to come out looking just fine after compression.

(If you had a couple of HOURS of content, you might have compression issues, but not with something the size you indicated.)

Thanks again Bill! Most of my experience has been on Avid..and exported straight to DVC PRO tape...I'm still learning everything else!

Matt,

You have to use Compressor to re-encode back to DVD MPEG-2 spec, then the file size will not only fit nicely onto a DVD-5 but will be the proper format.

Don't simply drop the QT movie into DVDSP for it to encode; the encoding options are far too limiting in DVDSP and you won't get as nice an encode as you'd want.