I just don't get it...
 

Okay, swallow your drink and food so you don't end up spewing it all over your monitor after you read my dumb question(s).

I want to take my project(s) on FCP and put them on a DVD. Seems simple enough, right? I've been following the instructions in my FCP book and am up to the part on COMPRESSOR.

Folks... I don't get it.

AT ALL.

After a few days of racking my brain, I finally exported a project as a quicktime movie, imported it into iDVD and 20 minutes... a DVD!

Man that seemed so much easier! Whew!

So what am I missing here? What's the point of compressor, what does it do and do I really need to use it if I can go this other route?

I bow to your wisdom.

Although I'm not a fan of Compressor I'll still try to answer.

iDVD took that QT file and compressed it prior to burning the DVD... it used compressor without your knowledge... fine for entry level authoring but you probably have no clue what quality setting was used. Do you know what quality settings, codecs, or audio format/settings were used? You could potentially get average quality when it was your intention to get the best quality possible for a short clip.

What if you had 2 hours of QT video? That's approx 22 GIG of DV files. Compressor could crunch that down to 4.3 GIG file which is easily archived on a 4.7 GIG DVD-RW. You could also import that file into any DVD project and the authoring program would not have to go through the process of compression because you provided the authoring program with an asset that was already compressed. In your case, with only the original 22 GIG QT file you would have to go through the entire compression process all over again with every new project. Fine for a 5 min file but not fine for a 90 min file which could take 5 hours to compress.

Compressor can also be used for Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, streaming media, and scaling of video.

Here's the workflow I do see if it helps you out at all. With the sequence you want to put on DVD open in the timeline go to File Export Quicktime Movie, from there choose where you want to save it and uncheck the box "make movie self contained" this will speed up export time, but if you delete any of the reference media it won't play. Once it is done drop the movie onto the compressor icon in the dock and when compressor loads you should see your movie in the batch window click the pop up to apply a setting choose DVD fastest encode for the time closest to your movie and then choose all. Delete the aiff encoder which is uncompressed audio which takes up a lot more space. After that hit submit and let it render.

HI Colby, here's what you need to know.
When you've finished your project hook-up a DVD recorder, via your monitor/TV. Press record on the DVD player, and play from the timeline.
Result; A DVD in real-time, no waiting 3 weeks for it all to sort itself out.
Cheers, Dave

I gave up carp fishing to work-bad move!

Someone said it earlier but i think a lil elaboration might help. Like Craig said it helps time wise when you have a big project having to go through the encoding process each time.
basically compressor allows you to fine tune your encoding settings to get the best quality to file size ratio so you can essencially cram as much stuff onto a single dvd. There are other things too but thats the best way i understand it. and being a DVD authorer(?) i use compressor and import those compressed assets into DVD studio pro which cuts down on compiling time for me because while compressors is doing its thing i can be working on other things.Plus if you have multiple movies that you made and want to compress them as a batch that is also possible which is great(something you cant to in FCP you would have to export each one individually where in compressor you set it and forget it...er sort of)