[MacDV] QUES: burning movie to DVD

[Mark M. Florida]

On 6/1/04 3:38 PM, Tiik at aol.com at Tiik at aol.com wrote:

> Hi DV's,
> I have a very novice question here, but bare with me
> b/c it is my first time copying a movie to DVD disk.
> 
> I have a movie I made in Adobe Premiere.
> I intend to burn it to DVD.
> I am perfectly willing to go ahead and burn this Adobe Premiere movie file to
> a DVD disk but I am concerned that I will then just have an
> unreadable Adobe Premiere file on a DVD disk.

If you actually EXPORT the file to QuickTime (I'm assuming that's what
you're doing, rather than copying the Premiere PROJECT file, which is
useless on any system other than your own), then if you put that on a DVD,
yes, you'll just have a QuickTime file on a DVD disc, which WILL NOT play in
a set-top DVD player.

> I am familiar with burning to CD, and if I were to burn this movie
> to CD it will be an Adobe Premiere file that someone can open in QuickTime on
> their computer.

As long as you are actually EXPORTING this to a self-contained QuickTime
movie (rather than copying the Premiere project file), it should play on any
computer with QuickTime (Mac or Windows).  It sounds like that's going to be
your best bet in this case.

> My question is this...once I burn this Premiere movie file to a DVD,
> will a DVD player know to open the Premiere file and play it?

No.

> I mean, what if it was a Final Cut Pro file?

Final Cut Pro exports the same kinds of formats as Premiere -- you're
confusing the editing apps with the files that they export.  The apps used
for editing are an insignificant variable in this case -- what matters is
what formats they can export to, and since they both (Premiere and FCP) are
based on QuickTime, they can both export to QuickTime formats.

> Would a DVD player know how to open that and play it?

No.  Forget about that for now.  You need a whole different system if you
want to make DVDs.

> Do you see what I am struggling with here?

Kind of.  Clear your mind and just forget about making a DVD for now -- it
ain't gonna happen on your current system, unless you do some upgrading.

> So, any takers? How to I get an Adobe Premiere file,
> or any movie file for that matter, to be readable on
> a DVD disk to play on a TV monitor?

The VERY ABSOLUTE MINIMUM you'd need is a G3 with a DVD-R drive running OS X
(10.2.8 or higher) and Toast Titanium 6.  But it would be so S-L-O-W.  Toast
6 runs like molasses even on my G4/867 at home.  Ideally, you'd want an eMac
with a SuperDrive and then you could use iDVD, but that's a $999 system.

Or...  If you have access to a newer Mac with a SuperDrive and a FireWire
hard drive (do you have a FireWire card in your G3?) you can export your
Premiere movie to full-quality DV, put it on the FireWire hard drive and
take it to the SuperDrive Mac to make your DVD...

Did that help any?

- Mark