[MacDV] FCP & MPEG 4 or 2?

[Mark M. Florida]

The big question:  What kind of DVR will be playing the video?

If you used a Mac mini for playback, then you could use either MPEG-2 or 
MPEG-4.  MPEG-4 would probably look better at similar bitrates -- a 2 Mb 
MPEG-4 would look better than a 2 Mb MPEG-2 file of the same content. 
But I'm not sure if MPEG-4 supports interlacing as does MPEG-2, so you 
might get weird motion artifacts in certain scenes with MPEG-4...

If you're using something like a ReplayTV or TiVo, then you'd probably 
have the best results just laying your videos to tape then playing them 
back through the analog jacks into the DVR.  No digital conversion and 
transfer hassles, and it looks great (if you use the high quality 
setting on your DVR, of course).

You *could* also use something like a Philips Streamium 
<http://www.streamium.com/> to play the media from a networked "server" 
computer (Mac or Windows box), but there may be easier (and less 
flexible) ways to do this.

But wait...  Wouldn't it just be easier to burn DVDs?  Maybe make 
different "playist discs" like you'd make an audio mix CD?  Then you'd 
know it'd work and you could archive the discs for future use.

As far as ripping from your DVD collection, you can use MPEG Streamclip 
<http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html> to convert to DV or 
MPEG-4 or to a standalone "muxed" MPEG-2 file that you can drag into 
Toast kind of like an audio track to make a video "mix" DVD.  Or you can 
rip straight to MPEG-4 using HandBrake <http://handbrake.m0k.org/> -- 
this is definitely the *easiest* way to convert DVDs to MPEG-4, but for 
editing purposes, it is the least useful.  If you just want to convert 
to MPEG-4 use HandBrake, if you want to edit use MPEG Streamclip.

Anyway...  There are so many different ways to do things depending on 
what kind of quality you want in the end, what kind of flexibility you 
need in editing, and how you'll deliver the content (DVD, QuickTime, 
etc.), and what hardware and software tools you have available and know 
how to use (or are willing to learn).  And I almost forgot the most 
important thing -- how much time you have to edit and finish your project.

Alright, my wife needs the iBook now...  :-)

That should get you started...  Or get you thinking anyway!  ;-)

- Mark