I need some advice please.

I am having the devil's own trying to author from Final Cut Pro, via Quicktime, onto a hard-copy DVD. Neither iDVD nor DVD Studio Pro are generating discs that will work when played back.

The discs I am burning on iDVD are showing a squashed, black & white, 4:3 playback (when it plays back at all), even though the original media is a full-colour, 16:9, HDV project); while discs produced on DVD Studio Pro are simply failing to work at all... producing a "disc error" display on my DVD player.

I have followed a number of online tutorials (I gave up on the FCP manuals a long time ago), and still no joy.

I am using Imation DVD+Rs and have already used up six of them on my efforts thus far.

If anyone can offer some advice, I would appreciate it... I have a 17m short that I would like to share with my cast and crew, not to mention the world in general!

peace,
MM

I've used iDVD before and I've found there's a difference in the versions. It's easier to burn a widescreen DVD in iDVD 6 than iDVD 5, but I use version 5 because it works better on my system.

The first thing to do is export your FCP film as a QuickTime movie. Select the box that says "make movie self-contained".

Then start up iDVD. Check iDVD's preferences and make sure Video Standard is set to PAL.

Then, select the "Customize" button on the bottom left of the screen. In the panel that appears select "All" themes.

From the customised templates that appear, scroll down until you find "Transparent Blue" which shows a surfer.

If you want a picture to appear on your menu screen, drag your photo to the top half of the screen. Then drag your self-contained QuickTime movie to the bottom part of the screen.

I've suggested this template, because I've found some templates won't burn a widescreen DVD, but this one definitely does.

Then select the "Preview" button and playback controls will appear.

Then select the name of your movie - it should be showing in the bottom part of the screen, and it'll start playing. The movie that's playing in the preview screen should have bars at the top and bottom to indicate it's playing in 16:9 widescreen. If there's no bars, you probably need to check your preferences in FCP to make sure you're outputting in the correct format.

Then select the "preview" button again and the preview will stop playing. Select the "burn" button and you'll be prompted to insert a disk.

The disk will take an hour or so to burn and once it's done you should check it on a DVD player to make sure it's ok. If it is, you can burn more and each extra disk you do only takes a few minutes.

If you're having a problem doing it that way you can do it from iMovie. Start iMovie and create a new project. Then import the self-contained QuickTime Movie into iMovie and see how it plays on your screen in full-screen mode. If it's wrong, check iMovie's preferences because you may need to deselect HD Widescreen and change it to 4:3 and then re-import the movie. When you import it in 4:3 mode it then displays in 16:9 widescreen. I know it sounds strange but that's the way it worked for me.

Then select "iDVD" from the options in the iMovie Screen. Then highlight everything in the timeline and select "Create iDVD Project". iDVD then starts up and it's all the same as detailed above.

If you can't get your film to play back in colour and widescreen in iMovie, then you may need to alter your video settings in FCP.

I use DVD-R.

If you can't get it working you could get a quote for the job from FTI's equipment section.

Good luck.

Kevin Plunkett

I just want to check a few things. You say your camera is HDV. what frame size are you shooting in, editing in and finishing on?
DVD is a standard definition format. Anything you give it bigger than that won't work, so what happens is the authoring package will cram it on there anyoldhow (Undoubtedly this is what happened earlier. You might already know all this, I'm just checking)
How long is this video you're trying to fit on the disk? is it just the 17 minutes?
I haven't used iDVD, but in there somewhere should be a comprehensive set of compression settings where you can set bit rates and so forth (athough it is Mac supplied software, so maybe not. Try right clicking on the video itself in the assets collection. DVD studio pro has its settings in there somewhere too).
The best way to avoid trouble with automatic compressors is to give the authoring software exactly what it wants so that it won't touch your video. This usually involves mucking around with export settings and even the dreaded Compressor.
Anyway, tell us a bit about the clip itself before that gets delved into.

Thanks to everyone who has replied. I am far from out of the woods with this and it's doing my head in.

I film & edit in HD. When I try to output to DVD in HD, the disc won't play in anything other than HD-compatible players, which has apparently been my problem so far.

BUT... when I go to author in SD (changing the preferences in DVDSP), the software won't recognise the HD file I'm trying to import and thus I can't even build the DVD.

Is there a way I can output SD 16:9 from FCP?

Please help... the monkey is losing it. :|