MacVideo Forums

Hi was wondering if anyone can shed any light on synch problems with studio pro 3. Is this common or am I doing something wrong. Have been importing quick time conversion. Tried using compressor but get even worse synch drift. I had given up on using it in final cut because of the synch problem. Does any one know if this has been adressed in final cut pro 5?

Hi Derek

Don't know about DVD 3 as I am yet to upgrade. I did have the same problem in DVD 2. I export from FCP an MPEG 2 from the Quick time conversion option and then hoover straight into DVD works everytime. Never got on with compressor.

Sorry to probably confuse matters by contradicting, but I've got on very well with Compressor, and follow this method:

- Export from FCP as a self contained QT movie
- Drop this movie into Compressor and use the 90 min HQ setting
- Whilst this compresses, use A.Pack to make the AC3 sound file
- Drag the M2V and AC3 into the Assets pane and work from there

I don't like letting DVDSP do the compression (which it does with Compressor anyway) as I don't trust the bitrate control with VBR to keep within its limits. Furthermore, I can set aside a period of browsing whilst compressing (e.g. right now!), then when it comes to work on the DVD, I can get into checking a burned disk far quicker.

My brief spell of bad sync problems stemmed from acquisition with errors in timecode (and discontinuous timecode can also make things drift, it seems). I've never (touch wood) had sync problems exporting from FCP and encoding from it to MPEG.

HTH.

derekpascoe,

derekpascoe,

Hi there, I had this problem and found an answer on the LA users site. Apparently it is an issue with the PAL format. What I was doing was exporting picture and sound through compressor and the sync fell out.

The solution (which i now use successfully) was to export the video through compressor, then the audio as an aiff file, then drop the two into DVD Studio.

hope this helps.

Good one - by the way, you may want to go the extra step and convert your aiffs to ac3 (192kbps), especially on shorter projects (less than 10 mins per movie).

In the past, I've bumped into the max bandwidth limit on cheaper DVD players - getting stuttering on playback. AIFFs are uncomressed and therefore use something like 500kbps of bandwidth. Compressor's 60 min HQ setting can sometimes go above 8.5 mbps on short movies, therefore busting the 9 mbps limit on DVD spec (and some do LESS - I've been advised that 7 mbps inc sound is a safe maximum).

Cure is to use 90 min HQ setting and convert AIFFs to AC3. HTH.

MattDavis,

thanks matt, always nice to be able to learn more. I may have to come back and get a little clarification after testing (it's still all a steep learning curve and sometimes i get a little lost), but thank you.

Aha! So the problem may rise from Compressor 1's audio processing rather than DVD Studio Pro, hence A.Packing from the FCP QuickTime movie works.

I found this on Larry Jordan's site (www.larryjordan.biz) some way down from here: http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_dvd_export.html ...

Uli Plank, from Germany, writes:
Thank you for your current newsletter.

I'd like to add one word of caution to your short description of exporting projects from FCP to Compressor. From your wording unexperienced users might conclude that Compressor is good for getting your audio into A.Pack as well.

I can't recommend this, since I've frequently observed that AIFF files exported through Compressor and used in A.Pack get out of sync as opposed to those exported directly from FCP. I'm not sure if this happens in PAL only, but it is a long-standing bug in Compressor well-known in our community over here. Until know it has never been fixed, even if I (and others) have informed Apple again and again.

In summary:

Export your video from FCP and encode it to MPEG-2 in Compressor
Export your audio as WAVE or AIFF from FCP and encode it to AC-3 in A.Pack
Don't route audio through Compressor (which can't compress audio anyway).
Let's hope it'll be fixed in DVD SP 4 with it's tighter integration of AC-3 encoding (and hopefully the dual-CPU bug too), but for the time being one should advise FCP users to export audio always straight from FCP and NOT through Compressor.
Larry replies: Uli, this is not a problem I've noticed here in the U.S. using NTSC video. So, thank you for providing a warning and a workaround.