Apple DVD Studio Pro 4 - Manual (Page 21)

• When saving video material to the QuickTime format, either specify no compression
(which requires a lot of disk space) or use a high-quality compression codec like DV or
Motion JPEG.
Encoding Video and Audio
Once you have created your source materials, they must be encoded to comply with the
DVD specification. DVD Studio Pro can use materials encoded using its integrated MPEG
and AIFF encoders, as well as materials encoded using the Apple Compressor application
and other methods.
What Is Needed for DVD?
Before video or audio material can be used on a DVD, it must be prepared in one of the
formats defined in the DVD specification. This usually means MPEG-2 format for video
and Dolby AC-3 format for audio files (although you can also use standard PCM audio
formats, such as AIFF files, DTS format files, and MPEG-1 Layer 2 formatted files).
SD projects also accept the older MPEG-1 video format, most commonly seen in web-based
applications. Because MPEG-1 is about one quarter the resolution of MPEG-2 (352 x 240
as opposed to 720 x 480 for NTSC or 352 x 288 versus 720 x 576 for PAL) and utilizes much
lower data rates, the quality is significantly lower. However, MPEG-1 is useful for very long
programs if the picture quality is not of primary importance. Using MPEG-1 encoding,
you can fit many hours of material on a single DVD.
Important: You cannot use MPEG-1 formatted video assets in HD projects.
MPEG encoding performs extremely complex calculations on your source material to
determine what can be safely “thrown away” with minimal impact on the visual quality.
As a result, MPEG encoding can produce files that are less than ten percent the size of
the source files, while still looking great.
Using the DVD Studio Pro Tools
DVD Studio Pro includes integrated MPEG and AIFF encoders. When you add a QuickTime
asset directly to your DVD Studio Pro project, it is automatically encoded to be
DVD-compliant. You can choose whether the asset is encoded in the background while
you continue authoring or whether the encode waits until you build your project.
Also included with Final Cut Studio is Compressor, an encoding tool that provides
additional MPEG encoding configurations and can process batches of video and audio
clips in one step.
21 Chapter 1 Overview of Using DVD Studio Pro