Apple DVD Studio Pro 4 - Manual (Page 27)

Even with authoring media, you cannot burn a DVD that supports any of these high-end
features on your own system. However, authoring media supports the Cutting Master
Format (CMF), which can be used to add information required by the replicator to put
these features on your discs. General media does not support CMF.
See The Cutting Master Format for more information on the CMF standard.
An Alternative Way to Use General Media
While you cannot use the CMF format directly on general media discs, you can still use
general media discs to deliver DVD projects with high-end features to your replicator
by using them as data discs. In general, you format your project to your hard disk using
a CMF or DDP format. You can then copy the resultant Layer 0 and Layer 1 folders to
your DVD media (each layer to its own disc). While these discs are not DVD-Video discs
and cannot be played in a DVD player, they do contain all the information the replicator
needs to create the final discs. See
Output Devices for more information about formatting
to your hard disk.
Important: Be sure to check with your replicator before making the discs.
About the Different Types of General DVD Media
There are several types of DVD media available that DVD Studio Pro can use. The type
you should use depends on your requirements. For example,
• If playback compatibility is a primary concern: Burning discs that can be played back on
most set-top DVD players is often a high priority. Several variables affect this, including
the media type, the brand of media, and the DVD player itself. In general, newer DVD
players can play a wider variety of media types; however, there are exceptions to this.
You should always test your burned DVDs on a variety of DVD players to verify
compatibility.
• If rewritable media is more efficient for you: Using rewritable DVD media can be very
useful when you want to burn a test disc of a project to verify various aspects of it. For
example, you might want to burn a disc just to verify that a menu or script works
correctly on a set-top DVD player or to see the video quality of a clip on a variety of
external monitors. Being able to make a change to the project and then reuse the disc
to burn it saves having to use a new disc each time.
• If you need to burn a dual-layer project: Being able to burn a dual-layer project to a DVD
disc can be very useful. You should be aware, though, that there are big differences
between DVD+R double-layer and DVD-R dual-layer media.
Following is some general information on the types of media you are able to choose
from.
DVD-R and DVD+R
These are “write-once” discs that tend to be the most widely compatible with DVD players.
27 Chapter 1 Overview of Using DVD Studio Pro