DVD Studio Pro Exporting Tip with FCP X

For the first time in over a year I needed to create some DVDs from a 2 hr project edited in FCP X. The DVD needed chapter markers and custom menus that I would normally author in DVD Studio Pro. I wanted to try to find the fastest workflow, so I did some experimentation, and it went very well.

1. From the share menu made a DVD to the hard drive of the main show which I had edited in a Compound Clip. Went incredibly fast, 53 minutes total. But as the Share App reports it is only MPEG2 one pass, but still looks great. (That is twice as fast as real time, and I'm on a 5 year old MacPro)

2. On another compound clip I made the DVD Menu, noting the times for the loops, exported that as a DVD file also.

3. Now, in the "Shared Items" folder for the event (like I said I did the edit in a compound clip. If this was a project it would be in the project folder), there are .m2v files and .ac3 files for each compound clip, I imported these into DVD Studio Pro. (This is very cool! MPEG2 right out of FCP X.)

4. In DVD Studio Pro I created the DVD Menu with background and lops and Tracks. I added chapter markers (I could have created the chapter markers in FCP X and then noted the markers in a text file and imported into DVD Studio Pro, but but these didn't need to be exact so I just set them by hand on the video track.)

5. Burned DVD.

The whole process took about 1.5 hrs. (with most of that in the background.) Much faster that I would have expected, and faster than real time. Here's hoping DVDSP works for several more updates.

I hope this helps someone.

I"d have gone straight to Compressor, put Chapter Markers there. They'll go on the exact frames you want that way. Once the MPEG-2 file is made, Chapter Markers can only go on I-Frames. Which works most of the time, but often I've seen it push them off time. But your way works, too!

Also, Motion can make Loop Markers, that export to DVDSP for menus that have an intro, then loop.

I was more excited about the speed. Do you think going to Compressor would be as fast?