The first thing to understand about the process of creating HD DVDs is that it is very similar to creating Standard Definition DVDs. The main difference is that the content is encoded at a higher bit-rate which means you get less time for content on the disc. In other words, you can burn a HD DVD, but what you are really burning is HD video onto a regular DVD. The 3x DVD is comparable to Blu-ray BD5 and BD9 formats.

Second, and probably more important, DVD Studio Pro cannot yet create a 100% compatible HD DVD. The HD DVD abilities in DVD SP were added before the HD DVD format was completely standardized. Yes, some Toshiba HD DVD players will play them, but they are far from compatible with ALL HD DVD players, and completely incompatible with anything else.

Yes, they will play on a mac but that is because Apple has made the DVD player software on the mac able to play the HD DVD's made in DVD Studio Pro. You can’t even play a real HD DVD on a mac because no mac has an HD DVD drives.

With that in mind, expect to get just over 50 minutes of HD footage onto DVD-R (type 5). This applies for both 1920 x 1080 footage and 1280 x 720P.

to get your video to a regular SD DVD, ether pull your movie file into compressor or send it to compressor from FCP and then choose the DVD preset that matches closest to your video length and use that to create your DVD SP ready files for a SD DVD. Then create a new SD DVD project in DVD SP and bring in your files.

As far a encoding your material with Compressor

Encoding via Compressor is the way to encode your material. While it is possible to encode inside of DVD Studio Pro the only option here is to encode to MPEG-2. When encoding your material using Compressor options are provided to encode to either H.264 or MPEG-2. In my tests the results one gets using H.264 are vastly superior to MPEG-2.

There are two ways you can encode your material in Compressor:

(1) Export direct to Compressor from Final Cut Pro

(2) Export your HD movie from Final Cut Pro, save it to disc, and then import this into Compressor.

The advantage of using method 2 is that while Compressor encodes you can carry on editing with Final Cut Pro. If you export direct from Final Cut into Compressor you will not be able to continue editing until the encoding process is complete.

My settings:

1. use the apple intermediate preset to capture.
2. use that same timeline preset when editing.
3. fully render out when editing complete.
4. export through compressor, and this is where it gets a little grayer on which codec to use to prepare for dvd, i recently used the hd-dvd w/h.264 90 min, and it worked well, so i'd recommend that. (repeat this step with each timeline as necessary)
5. now the file or files are compressed you use it/them in dvd studio pro to build your disc.

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Creating Hi-Def DVDs Using 4.7GB Type 5 DVDs

Last update: 08:22 PM Thursday, August 14, 2008