Apple Final Cut Express HD - Manual (Page 972)

972 Part XII Output
There are essentially three phases to creating a DVD:
 Create and edit your source material. In addition to the main Final Cut Express HD
movie, you can create still graphics or short movies for use as menu backgrounds. It
is important to understand that all edits, special effects, audio fades and mixes, and
scene transitions must be added to the video and audio in Final Cut Express HD
before exporting them for use in the DVD authoring application.
 Author your DVD title. This is where you take the movies, still images, and other
graphics and create the menus, tracks, and slideshows of your DVD. iDVD includes a
variety of templates and tools to simplify this process and make it easy to create
professional-looking DVDs with minimal effort.
 Build and burn your DVD. Once you have authored your DVD, you will build (or
compile) the files that then get burned to the DVD disc. The build process converts
the video and audio movies to DVD-Video compliant formats, multiplexes them
together into DVD streams, and then burns the streams to a DVD disc. iDVD makes
this a one-button process.
There is much more to consider when creating your DVD. For detailed information on
preparing video and audio sources and planning your DVD, see the documentation
that came with iDVD.
Video for Standard DVDs
The most important thing you can do when preparing your material for use on DVD is
to use the highest quality settings available. Any flaws in your material will be revealed
on DVD much more quickly than in other media; if you use high-quality source
materials, you’ll get high-quality results.
Here are some guidelines to help you maintain high quality.
 Capture and edit your video material at the same frame dimensions that you will
use on the DVD (typically 720 x 480 at 29.97 frames per second [fps] for NTSC or
720 x 576 at 25 fps for PAL). DVDs also support 16:9 video that is anamorphically
recorded. This means the video uses the same frame dimensions as standard
4:3 video, and appears horizontally squeezed when viewed on a 4:3 monitor.
Important: When you import HDV movies into iDVD, they are automatically
converted to anamorphic SD frame dimensions.
 When saving video material to a QuickTime movie file, either specify no compression
(which requires a lot of disk space) or use a high-quality compression codec like
Animation or Photo JPEG (set to maximum quality). This provides the MPEG encoder
(including those internally used by iDVD and DVD Studio Pro and external encoders
such as Compressor) the best quality video to start with. Recompressing already highly
compressed video results in a noticeable increase in visible compression artifacts.