DVD authoring

To all,

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.. Finally just gave up fighting all this. I had a 120GB SSD and built a Mountain Lion image and loaded up everything up to iLife 11.. (and iDVD 7.1.2) and just booted my Mac Pro off that build (via USB)..

System saw all the drives I have on my EC system and just successfully burned the same video that failed under iDVD under El Capitan. If the worst I have to do is boot over to an older version to do the Video_TS folder creation, so be it.. Worth having the iDVD functions available. Besides.. future proofs me against iDVD not working at all under Sierra...

Or just get Toast?

Tried.. Doesn't work remotely to the degree iDVD did if you're in the business of producing Wedding and Event DVDs. myDVD didn't recognize chapters from FCPX or iMovie, doesn't provide animated inserts, etc. Will work in a pinch, but if you have to produce a customer deliverable, just didn't have the tools necessary.. Just my opinion..

Try DVD Styler

It's a free authoring app ... I remember getting chapter Markers into it... and you can build menus.

But it's free ....

www.dvdstyler.org/en/

Appologies for posting this late. Had cache of projects I needed to finish before upgrading. If you can get your hands on a copy of DVD studio pro it still works flawlessly under Sierra. I use it to burn 7-8gb files on dual layer DVD's. The resulting picture equals hollywood DVD quality assuming a 2hr runtime and broadcast legal color range.

If anyone is interested I can post my workflow.

Mulligan,

I'd be interested in the workflow if you have a chance. Thanks!

Jay S.

Mulligan wrote: Appologies for posting this late. Had cache of projects I needed to finish before upgrading. If you can get your hands on a copy of DVD studio pro it still works flawlessly under Sierra. I use it to burn 7-8gb files on dual layer DVD's. The resulting picture equals hollywood DVD quality assuming a 2hr runtime and broadcast legal color range.

If anyone is interested I can post my workflow.

Yes, post your workflow. But I think "posting" would require quite a lot time of typing text ...

After I had already authored some 50 DVDs (for others also) with DSP (a long time ago), I decided to give iDVD a try. Could by the love of God not figure out how to control this app. And gave up.

Funny thing happened yesterday. One of my friends had shot some video on his iPhone7 on the party. Had iMovie installed and said, hey, you're the expert here, can you quickly splice together the best five shots for my facebook? And use that song from my iTunes library? - "Sure".

I shouldn't have said that ...

I do a lot of authoring, I have Sierra running with DVD studio Pro and it works just fine. I also use Adobe Encore which still works well too. Why would anyone contemplate not using something that works well on the current OS? when all the others are just micky mouse solutions. In fact DVD Studio Pro works better under Sierra than the previous several OS versions. Of course with the previous version of the OS you do not try to burn the DVD from the time line, you must export it into an external folder or create a burnable disc image. This I believe has been fixed in Sierra.

Ian

Axel wrote:

Mulligan wrote: Appologies for posting this late. Had cache of projects I needed to finish before upgrading. If you can get your hands on a copy of DVD studio pro it still works flawlessly under Sierra. I use it to burn 7-8gb files on dual layer DVD's. The resulting picture equals hollywood DVD quality assuming a 2hr runtime and broadcast legal color range.

If anyone is interested I can post my workflow.

Yes, post your workflow. But I think "posting" would require quite a lot time of typing text ...

After I had already authored some 50 DVDs (for others also) with DSP (a long time ago), I decided to give iDVD a try. Could by the love of God not figure out how to control this app. And gave up.

Funny thing happened yesterday. One of my friends had shot some video on his iPhone7 on the party. Had iMovie installed and said, hey, you're the expert here, can you quickly splice together the best five shots for my facebook? And use that song from my iTunes library? - "Sure".

I shouldn't have said that ...

Funny.. I found iDVD pretty intutive and straight forward. I find DVD Studio Pro incredibly powerful, but adds a lot more steps to the picture (no pun intended)..

iskurrie wrote: I do a lot of authoring, I have Sierra running with DVD studio Pro and it works just fine. I also use Adobe Encore which still works well too. Why would anyone contemplate not using something that works well on the current OS? when all the others are just micky mouse solutions. In fact DVD Studio Pro works better under Sierra than the previous several OS versions. Of course with the previous version of the OS you do not try to burn the DVD from the time line, you must export it into an external folder or create a burnable disc image. This I believe has been fixed in Sierra.

Ian

Good to know DSP works well under Sierra, but as I mentioned above, while very powerful, I find it adds a lot more steps to get to a finished product for a client than iDVD. I do agree it's a pain to have to boot to a Mountain Lion image just to create a Video_TS folder or Image of the finished product, but (again to me) adding all the manual steps in DVD Studio Pro is also time consuming.. If I'm missing some automation, I'd love to pick up some skills on it..

Hi Karma,
You can create very simple menu templates or use the existing templates which you can create a dvd from in minutes. I'm happy to help but I have to warn you that my time is limited before Christmas. There are lots of on line tutorials which will give you a good overview.

Ian

JayS_CT wrote: Mulligan,

I'd be interested in the workflow if you have a chance. Thanks!

Jay S.

My workflow is pretty basic just extra steps which I feel increase quality of final product. My FCP timeline is set at 720p at 30 fps. I'll add my chapter markers directly to the timeline. I burn to dual layer DVD's so it is important that I have a chapter mark in the middle of the timeline so DVD studio Pro knows where to split the file.

When project is locked I'll go to share - export file use same settings as timeline to create a stand alone quicktime file.

Warning it's a big file. 2 hrs at 720p is about 121GB. You can skip this step and export direct to compressor but i've found the two programs working on the timeline can create encode errors or sometimes fail completely

Once export file is complete I'll import new file into compressor. Click on the triangle for create DVD to reveal Dolby Digital and MPEG-2. Select each of these. (this extra step will keep compressor from trying to burn a dvd.)

I generally use the default setting for dolby digital. MPEG-2 I'll manually change video settings to suit my project.

encoding mode I set to Two Pass VBR (Best)
Motion estimation set to Best

I'll deselect Automatically select bit rate. This activates the bit rate sliders. I'll raise the average bit rate as high as i can while keeping the estimated file size appropriate to disc size. For example if I'm using a DL-DVD which can hold 8.5GB I'll raise the bit rate until my file size is around 7GB. (I have to save room for audio, menus, stills and a bonus track if needed). Also you don't want to use all space on a DVD because the closer information gets to the outer edge the more likely a read write error can occur.

retiming quality I set to Best (Motion Compensated) then start batch

These settings will cause compressor to work longer to encode the MPEG-2 file but the resulting picture is noticeably cleaner, especially on moving camera shots.

Once everything is done just import into DVD Studio Pro and author away. You can use their menu templates or create your own. I've created my own with drop zones so all I have to do is add stills to customize the menus for each client. Right click on a button to add a chapter and type in the name. I can author a custom DVD in ten to fifteen minutes depending on the number of chapters.