Align chapter marker in FCP to VOB boundaries?

[Donie Kelly]

Hi all

How can I put chapter markers on the timeline which will fall onto a VOB boundary when imported to DSP 3?

How to I export the video from FCP with chapter markers? I used compressor to export the video but it doesn't appear to have the chapter markers when I import to DSP 3?

thanks for any help
Donie

[Rob Lohman]

I'm not sure if any of the packages have the features you are
looking for. I'm pretty sure FCP doesn't have align to VB boundary
since it does not work with VOB files. DVD SP does, so if there
is such a feature it should be there.

[Donie Kelly]

Hi Rob

FCP allows you to set markers and I was hoping they could be imported into DSP as chapter markers. I know I've done this before, I think you have to export using quicktime, I forget. Maybe somebody could clarify.

Anyway, my problem is that I have a short gap between two scenes and I wanted the marker to sit where the screen was black, however, when I tried to set the marker DSP would not allow me to set it in the area I wanted and I had to put it a bit to the left which, when played back, show a fraction of the fade from the previous screen.

If FCP could have warned me that the break point was not on a VOB boundary I could have sorted it during editing but now that the thing is edited it's a little tricky.

Just wondered if there was a way to ensure that the chapter points could be set more accurately during edit time.


Thanks
Donie

[Rob Lohman]

Your answer validates my first reply. Since FCP is not doing the
VOB encoding, it cannot have an idea about VOB boundaries. So,
yes, you may be able to set markers to export to chapter marks
(we can do that on the PC with Sony Vegas + DVD Architect as
well), but I don't see how you could take VOB alignment/boundaries
into account in that phase of the project.

[Donie Kelly]

So when you set chapter markers you have no way of setting them accurately? But, if you are in a spot where the scene changes what is the procedure of making sure that that point is going to be aligned?

Or do you have to leave a wide enough gap to be sure that the marker will fall somewhere within the gap?

What happens if you don't have a gap and you want it to be frame accurate? That's not possible is it?

thanks for the replies...
Donie

[Rob Lohman]

I can't answer your questions for certain, but it seems plausible
that we cannot control the exact points a chapter point will go to
or where the VOB boundaries are. This is the reason that the big
boys have high-end machines where they can finetune such
details and other things like VBR allocation etc.

If you want this features you should be looking for them in your
authoring application (ie, DVD Studio Pro or something else), and
not in FCP. The authoring place is where to look for such features
(together with the MPEG-2 encode). Whether DVD SP has that,
I do not know. I would suggest the following:

1. look every where in the application

2. thoroughly check the manual / help

3. ask this question on Apple's forums. I hear they are quite good and people should know for sure overthere