FCP to DVD to Betacam SP

[tmp309]

Hi, beginner here,

I'm doing a music video that's going to be broadcast on TV. The station has told me to just give them a DVD of the video, and that they will take care of putting it onto Betacam SP from there. However, I'm a little nervous about exporting the footage and putting this DVD together.

Can anyone help with any suggestions of the settings I should use to export the footage? Should I just use Export->Quicktime Movie->Current Settings? Or is there some other preset I should use, considering it will be going to beta? It was shot with a DVX100a in 24p and I captured with the "DV NTSC 48Khz Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal" preset.

Also, any tips for color correction, specifically how to keep the footage broadcast-safe?

Thanks immensely for any help anyone can give.

 

[DerekEastham]

All in all, it really isnt' going to matter how you out-put this film, as long as you preserver the original resolution that you imported the clip with. Which, since it was shot on DV with the DVX and you'll be going to DVD for transfer to Beta, I would absolutely recommend making a quicktime movie from final cut pro. Many might argue that you should create an MPEG2 file, and they would be correct, unless you own DVD Studio PRO, which will take care of that for you.

In reality, the quicktime movie you would make, using your existing project settings, will preserve the quality of the piece you've made. By then using DVD Studio Pro to import that clip and place it on DVD, Studio Pro will then re-encode it for DVD with a standard that, in my experience, has yet to cause play-back problems with any dvd deck I've come into contact with.

HOWEVER

If you are not using DVD Studio Pro, then it would be best to out-put the file as an UNCOMPRESSED file. This will create a file that has both the video and audio in the same file, and it will play back in superb quality on DVD. I've done this with the Uncompressed 10bit file format... and though it's really rather rediculous for DVD, before I owned Studio Pro it was a great way to get the MPEG2 quality onto DVD in a recognizable format for DVD players without loosing the audio... since when you're outputing with compressor you end up with separate files, and without a DVD program you lack the ability to link the tracks together.

Anyhow, long post short.

Take your pick, whatever's going to work best for you will be the best way to go.

Best

 

[tmp309]

Thanks for all the great information. I really appreciate it!