FCP Meeting: Exporting to DVD Part 1

Introduction

To all those who attended, thank you for being patient and putting up with my sporadic tutorial.
One question that was answered was “no one exports to DVD,” at least no one raised their hand when I asked.
My question is “If you do not export for DVD, what is the destination of your export?”
(please leave a comment answering this question or email me at ariapictures@inbox.com)

Importing

Types of Media

Video
I showed you that you can bring in AVI, MPG, and MOV.
I would avoid WMV.

Stills
I showed you that you can bring in JPG, PICT, PNG, PSD, and GIF.

Audio
I recommend only using AIF for your music and miscellaneous audio.
Using the audio from any video source will be fine, but if you have the time to separate them and converting the audio to AIF, do so.

Size of Media

Video
Depending on the quality of the source, you could leave it at its orginal dimensions, but if you have the time, and I recommend using MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 and converting it to MOV and using the size of your sequence.
Stills
It is recommended that you use something larger than 640 x 480 for you projects because when you enlarge smaller images they get blurry and pixalated and there is no way to fix that, especially with JPG’s.
If your sequence size is 720 x 480 than I recommend using that size or larger. You can always shrink the image in size and it still looks great.

Text

Title Safe
Keep title inside the inside box to gaurantee that your titles will be seen by all types video displays

Title Safe Bars


Color Bleed / Broadcast safe
Although most of you, if any, are going to be broadcasting your projects to more than 10 viewers at a time, it is still best to use the standards for colors and audio levels—displaying your projects on any video display is still broadcasting it and you do not want your material to give the viewer any troubles with their system. You want optimum viewing pleasure, so it is best to follow these rules.

Although the standards were created for the TV signal many, many, many years ago, the practices still hold up and are in use today just for good measure. You can, if it is going to be displayed only on your system for your viewing, ignore these rules and go out on the edge pushing the limits of the signal and it may work for you, but when you view it on someone else’s system, you may run into troubles.

With white text and all video, I recommend turning on the “SHOW EXCESS LUMA” in the canvas pull down tabs.

If you see a yellow triangle, this is telling you your signal, the whites  / highlights are too strong and will cause problems. If you try to send something with a strong signal to a tv station, they will return it to you and not broadcast it and then not take anything else from you again.

To fix the strong signal with text, I recommend using:

  1. the color sliders in the Apple Color Picker and using the Gray Scale Slide and entering 90%
  2. HSB Sliders usinf the same 90%
  3. crayons and using the color Mercury

Again, these are standard rules and it is recommended to follow them, but with the new digital standards these may change, but not everyone has a digital TV, so these practices will hold up for many years to come, and you are guaranteed to be broadcast safe.

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Published:
October 8, 2008 / 10:15 am
Category:
Sierra Mouse Trap Media User Group
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