It is with great excitement that I am finally able to make an announcement that has been eating at me for nearly a year now. In June of 2009 when the iPhone 3GS was released I had a flash of what the future could hold for editing, and it’s that moment of inspiration that gave birth to the product I’m announcing today.

Our new groundbreaking product, Final Cut Pro Mobile, is now available on the iPhone 3GS. It will also be available on the iPad later this year. You heard me right – the full suite of FCPS apps have been ported to the iPhone 3GS, and in some cases, we’ve been able to add additional features not found in the current offerings from Apple.

Much of our inspiration at SuiteTake.com to create this mobile suite was inspired by the growing interest in editing projects outside of the office. While the edit suite has been the traditional place to get your project done, technology no longer limits us to just a single location. And it was with that vision in mind that we marched forward with the project. Here is a quick overview of what the new suite includes.

Final Cut Pro M

Starting with the current version of Final Cut Pro 7 from 2009, we included all of the same new features as well as the under the hood improvements from Apple. But we’ve also added some features that are only possible on the iPhone.

For example, with a single swipe of your finger – you can save your project, duplicate it, or permanently delete it – all with the same gesture. Swiping at different speeds determines which of the functions is selected. Now that’s efficient!

Need a quick rough cut of the footage you’ve imported? Just shake your phone up and down 3 times and the built-in accelerometer will create a rough cut using the current ins and outs of each clip. The phone will use our patented Content Detection™ algorithm to analyze dialog, body language and facial expressions. It will then systematically assemble the clips in the most pleasing and logical way.

Motion M

Complete with Open GL acceleration, 3D shadows and real-time playback, you can create graphics at uncompressed 4K or HD resolution while browsing the iTunes store, surfing the web or taking a call from your client. And all of this while you’re outside of the standard ball-and-chain edit suite. Be inspired – be Mobile!

While the standard motion templates that you’re used to are included, we’ve also added the ability to buy templates through the App Store, right inside of Motion M. Using your iTunes account and 3G networking you can download the latest templates where you want, when you want.

Soundtrack Pro M

Using your iPhone earbuds you can mix your latest soundtrack while listening to your favorite iPod playlist, checking your messages with  Google Voice and browsing SFX from the SoundTrack library.  All while walking through the busy city traffic to catch your bus to the beach.

But it’s not just about multi-tasking. SoundTrack Pro M can mix up to 256 tracks of audio in real time, has new MIDI functions available through the dock connector and now includes a cool iTunes-like screen saver to help you  see your audio as you mix. This is part of our new SeeHearMix™ technology.

Color M

Who says you need a $10K monitor to color grade your latest film? Don’t let the monitor industry make a fool out of you any longer! Using the precision color LCD touch screen on the iPhone you can grade like a pro using just your fingertips.

What’s that? You don’t have time to do the grading yourself? Again we tied into the Apple App Store and you can now purchase and download preset looks based on the type of project you’re grading. Some of the categories include Corporate Training Video, Broadcast Reality Show, Broadcast Sitcom, Over Produced Documentary, Low Budget Film, B-Movie, Direct to DVD, Flip Cam to Film Look and Barely Good Enough For YouTube. Each preset will optimize the look and feel of your video based on your target audience.

DVD Studio Pro M

Apple may not have updated DVD Studio Pro, but we sure did.

Need a DVD and need it while on the go? No problem! Plug in your favorite DVD burner and create a Standard Def or Blu-ray DVD on the spot right from your iPhone using our patented USB-BlazeBurn™ technology.

Don’t have a DVD burner? That’s OK too. Master directly to our new SuiteTake.com Print-On-Demand DVD service. Most DVDs will upload over 3G in just 2-3 weeks, and you’ll receive your DVD copies within one calendar year. Let’s face it, you didn’t really need it that fast anyway.

iChat Theater M

Using the iPhone 3GS camera,  you can now chat with your client live while watching your latest cut. You can even conference in up to three other members of the “creative team” to watch and comment on the playback of your sequence while referencing a live timecode window. Getting unwanted needless feedback has never been so easy.

And Finally, Compressor M

Compressor is more then a compression engine – it’s a publishing factory. Set up automated processes that will convert your final video to the proper format and upload it to iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, FaceBook or just a standard FTP site.

As an exclusive to the Mobile FCP Suite, you can even export directly to another iPhone no matter where they are in the world. And all of this over 3G. Take that AT&T!

Need more speed while compressing? Using iPhone QMaster integration you can cluster up to 50 iPhone 3GSs together to cut compression times by up to 8.9%. (Estimated, actual savings can vary. In some cases render times can actually increase up to 75% due to some unknown reason that we’re still baffled by. Due to the increased radiation output of the phones during the render process, women who are pregnant or are hoping to ever become pregnant should limit their exposure to FCPm Qmaster. Do not taunt Qmaster under any circumstances.)

And with our new Social Media plugin architecture, you can send custom notifications to Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and even the Creative Cow Forums. Now all of your fellow editors will know just how frustrated you are by that request to make “one more small change”. Partner deals with Gowalla, FourSquare and DropBox are in the works for late 2010.

I am proud to say that I think we’ve really hit this one out of the park. And we’re just getting started. Since I started using FCP Mobile I’ve realized that having a full size computer is a thing of the past. I used to say I would never give up my Mac Pro. Now I’m starting to ask myself if it even makes sense to have an office. Since I started using FCPm I have barely bothered to show up to work at all.

Still not convinced?

Check out the cover story in the next issue of MacWorld magazine for a full hands on review or read our Press Release.

Can’t wait?

Head over to the App Store and download it now. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are.

The talk of the future of home entertainment is largely about how we will never have to deal with having physical copies of movies anymore, as everything will just be digital downloads. This may very well be true, in fact, I’m sure it will happen at some point. That won’t stop me from grabbing my soapbox and megaphone to proclaim how much better I think DVDs are.

As a way to perhaps show how biased I may potentially be, I will say I am a full-on collector of DVDs. And not in a “yeah, I have 80 DVDs, my collection is pretty sweet…” kind of way. At the moment I’m typing this, I have 1,167 DVDs. I’m not joking.

But for the record, I’m not opposed to digital downloads. I think they are good in a certain way, but I also don’t think they are as amazing as they are said to be. I’ve even dabbled slightly in the downloading world, but in the end, I’m still a stubborn fan of the DVD. Let me state my case, and feel free to offer a rebuttal to any of my claims.

Price -

I’m not made of money. I’m in fact made of blood and organs. But I am by no means rich in any way, yet I’ve obtained somehow an enormous collection of DVDs. How? The first reason is that I haven’t had many real responsibilities to take care of over the years (family expenses/car payments/student loans), which I’ve been lucky enough to avoid (not that having a family is a bad thing…). But even so, buying everything full price still wouldn’t be possible with what I’m worth. That is perhaps the biggest factor in how I can obtain such an arrogant collection. Mainly, there is a wonderful, wonderful thing called Amazon Marketplace.

If you buy things on Amazon, you may notice under the full price there are more prices, such as “25 used from $4.76″. That is Amazon Marketplace. It’s pretty much eBay, except its all “Buy It Now” prices and they are almost always extremely cheap. For instance, why would you want to pay full price for The Dark Knight, when you can get it RIGHT NOW on Amazon Marketplace for $2.29…?

A lot of people try and claim that used DVDs are garbage, and they are all damaged blah, blah, blah. They, sir, are in fact rarely damaged. And if they are, the Amazon Marketplace seller always indicates they are scratched. They don’t want want you to be tricked, because then they have to deal with an annoying refund situation. Most of them are bulk sellers or ex-rental copies anyway, so they aren’t some creepy guy in his basement usually. And they ship faster than you think. In the (literally) hundreds of used DVDs I’ve purchased, I’ve only had ONE (yes, literally just ONE) DVD that was not as advertised and was scratched to hell. It was a 50¢ copy of American Splendor. And since I only paid 50¢ for it, I didn’t really care.

There's always one bad apple...

Which brings me to my point about downloads. The concept of “used downloads” does not exist. It never will. In a world of nothing but downloads, you will be subjected to only paying what retailers want you to pay. There won’t be any used downloads stores in strip malls where you can buy other peoples unwanted downloads for less. I went into a used DVD store recently and bought a perfectly fine used copy of In the Line of Fire for $3. It wasn’t covered in anthrax or grape jelly, it wasn’t dragged across concrete. It was just as good as a new one.

A retailer may lower the price of downloads after time for older movies and such, but they’ve been doing that with DVDs for years, so you couldn’t claim that to be a concept originated in the digital download realm. Amazon has almost daily deals for new, factory sealed DVDs for under $5 (though they are usually terrible movies, and I don’t see this being any different for the reduced download movie prices). Regardless, I don’t want BestBuy.com’s reduced Godfather download for $6.99, I want Joey Joe Bob’s perfectly fine used DVD copy for $1. People are too caught up in the concept of only wanting new things. Though, I do admittedly purchase new release Blu-ray DVDs at full price if I want to watch them the day they come out. Impatience is a key element in consumerism.

I NEEEEED to watch The Ugly Truth on release day!

Space -

Hypothetically, in the lowest possible scenario, lets say that every DVD I own is 750 MB as a digital download. At 1167 DVDs X 750 MB, I would need to obtain 875 GB of free space to store all my DVDs. That seems like a lot. And that is a vast understatement on space. That’s not accounting for increased high-definition Blu-ray sizes, full TV seasons, box sets, or countless special feature bonus discs. It’s probably actually more like 2 terabytes, who knows for sure?

Still, I know I’m on the high end of that spectrum, but I always like to think of things in terms of my parents. Having to buy computers for storage space, and the prospect of having to potentially upgrade it for space at some point, it’s a scary prospect to old people. They like having a disc tray that they can just put things in. They never have to upgrade that, regardless of how many movies they buy. I know in the industry we are in, we tend to think about these kind of computer/space issues as not that big a deal, but to my Mom, this all of the sudden becomes a big hassle. And there are more people like my parents out there, than there are tech savvy people. Think about having to explain this new concept to YOUR parents. Or even worse, try explaining it to some hillbilly! They watch movies too!

I know what your saying, “But Scott, with all your DVDs, you must have a huge space problem yourself, having to physically put them somewhere, you dolt!” Yes and no. They do take up a lot of space, but they don’t really get in the way.

Blu-Rays and Comedies on the left wall.

Horror/Documentary/Assorted on the East wall.

Several drawers like this filled with assorted.

TV shows go in the left closet.

Even more assorted in the right bottom closet drawer.

Drama and Action in the self-built DVD case. See and all of it barely takes up any floor space!

I even have a list online that I have so I can keep track of my collection. I also have it so my friends don’t have to ask me if I have “this movie” or “that movie” for them to borrow. I just send them the weekly updated list. They often refer to my place as Scottbuster Entertainment.

But I’m sure normal people don’t really have that big of a problem dealing with their DVD collection taking up a bunch of space. I mean, c’mon, everyone has a shelf somewhere.

Or if you live in a sardine can apartment, you can always buy a sleeve case to hold your DVDs. That can slide under your bed!

Theft -

It’s much easier to gank a hard drive and an Apple TV than a DVD collection. Some jerk can walk away with your whole movie collection without you realizing it, at your OWN wine mixer. You shouldn’t have invited that guy with the shifty eyes wearing the trenchcoat…

Nobody is gonna get away with stealing my DVD collection, at least not all of it, or even a 1/4 of it. That would take multiple trips in broad daylight. Plus if they robbed my house, they’d probably just grab my TV and my computer! The bastards! Besides, what are they going to do with DVDs? Whats next, are they going to steal my mid-90s AM/FM clock radio? Burglars only like shiny futuristic electronic looking things, like iPods and cameras. I think they are more interested in filling their arms with my Playstation 3 than they are with my Planet of the Apes box set.

"This kid's gonna regret leaving his copy of Legally Blonde out in the open...!"

Download Time -

Speaking of losing everything, two months ago my Playstation 3 completely broke. For no reason at all, after the warranty expired… It angered me. The relevance? Well, for one, it proves that electronics break all the time right after warranties expire. But also, I had about 60 GB of downloaded games and Rock Band songs that existed nowhere except on my broken PS3. As I assume how it is with all digital downloads, I can re-download anything I want for free in a case where my PS3 gets destroyed. I have an average internet connection (not sure of specifics, I think it’s Comcast, but it’s shared with the other people I live with), and it took me 5 straight days of almost non-stop downloading to get everything back on my new PS3. It was annoying beyond belief to get everything back, and I actually had the time to waste to download as hastily as I did, most people probably don’t.

Computers break all the time, and average people almost never back anything up. This is going to turn people off to the concept of downloading to a hard drive, because the first time Joe Schmoe has to re-download something, he may lose complete patience with the whole concept. Whereas if a DVD player breaks, he can go to the store down the street, pick up a new one, and watch whatever DVD he wants immediately upon getting home.

Another example: about 8 months ago I actually downloaded a movie off of the Playstation Network, which works exactly the same way as any digital download site will/does work. I downloaded a $4.50 rental of The Substitute in HD format.

It was over 6 GBs and took about 5-6 hours to download. I didnt even feel like watching it anymore by the time it finished downloading. I ended up watching it two days later. Average consumers dont have super fast internet speeds. Which leads me into my next topic…

Rentals –

Perhaps though, more than anything else, I may have to side with downloading for rentals. Even streaming would be fine (if you can get it on your TV somehow). Most of my argument is for long term owners. I’m more of a buyer than a renter, but even so, let’s say a family decides they want to have a movie night together on a Tuesday evening. They want to try to download a rental to watch. Then they make popcorn and snuggle up next to the fireplace, while little Johnny and little Sally are already singing the stupid Hannah Montana theme song or whatever annoying crap kids watch nowadays. And Dad then hits the “purchase download” button only to see they won’t be able to watch Miley Cyrus for another 4 and 1/2 hours… But it’s a school night! Now we have to start planning our impromptu DVD watching plans HOURS in advance…? Suddenly a 10 minute trip to Blockbuster doesn’t seem like such an outrageous idea now, does it?

3D -

In a time when a lot of talk is about the future of 3D movies, how do you obtain the 3D glasses necessary to watch a 3D download? Is everyone expected to just own several pairs of 3D glasses? Different movies use different types of 3D, so we need to obtain all these different kinds of 3D glasses? Last time I checked we don’t live in the same era as The Jetsons, so we cant download physical objects to our Cogswell-Brand Materializer. Do they come in the mail? That would seem to defeat the convenience of downloading wouldn’t it? Just wondering…

Sharing -

One thing I do very often is loan DVDs to my friends. Yes, they like to abuse their friendship with me in exchange for goods. But how am I supposed to do that with digital downloads? Can we not share movies anymore? What if I want to hang out at my friends place, and we want to watch my copy of Re-Animator over a few beers? Do I need to bring my entire hard drive, and hook it up to his TV? What about the other people in my house, do they get the shaft on all movie watching because I need to take the entire hard drive to watch one movie at my friend’s place? Can I just put the movie on a thumb drive and dump it on my friend’s computer? Is there going to be copy protection preventing me from doing that, like in the old days of iTunes? No? Then what’s to stop me from transferring my friend’s downloaded copy of Slumdog Millionaire on a thumb drive for free, to keep forever on my computer? What are the chances the government will hunt me down for this evil crime? Oh, they probably won’t look into it? Cool beans!

Wait, isn’t this what’s killing the music industry?

If you share anything illegally, Lars Ulrich will annoy the crap out of you.

The Suite Take -

In a perfect world, if I could instantly have my enormous DVD collection on a single hard drive connected to my TV with an easy, organized database, I would do it. Sure, I would do it. In a perfect world I’d also be dating Scarlett Johansson while I quarterbacked for the Miami Dolphins. But it wouldn’t be such a perfect world when that hard drive crashed. Having to re-download everything (even for no cost) would make me want to smash my head through my TV.

I’m sure you can call me a hypocrite for all of this, as I’m preaching for the average person, yet defending my abnormal collection. And I’m pretty sure most of my arguments can be voided by saying “Well, Scott, in a few years everyone will be able to download at 1 GB a second, and terabyte drives will cost $10…! There goes your argument!” Yeah, that would destroy my argument, jerk. But you can’t predict the future, and neither can I. Hey, the world is supposed to end in 2012 anyway, right?

Perhaps DVD collectors like myself will become like the new vinyl enthusiasts, constantly and annoyingly inserting ourselves into other people’s conversations at parties, insisting that DVDs are the REAL way to watch movies (besides a movie theater of course). Having a large DVD collection is not only an extremely personal thing in my life, as I watch these films/TV shows over and over again because it makes me happy, but it’s also almost an aesthetically pleasing part of my decor, in an insane and menacing kind of way. Plus, with downloaded videos, how are you going to get hold of nerdy-yet-awesome limited edition packaging???

As promised here is part 2 of creating custom buttons and a chapter index automatically with DVD Studio Pro. You can find Part 1 here.

In this video tutorial we pick up right where we left off in the last tutorial and show you how to take the custom button we made and incorporate it into a custom menu. Then, with a little bit of setup, we take that custom menu, save it as a template and then use that template to automatically create a series of chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop.

A recap from part 1…

“One of the most tedious things to author in DVDSP is creating chapter index menus with links to all the various chapters within a project. If you’ve ever had a multi-hour long video with dozens of chapters, creating chapter index menus can take hours and be extremely frustrating, especially if you make a mistake or there are changes after the fact. This 2 part video tutorial will show you how to easily create custom buttons and menus, complete with video drop zones, save them as templates, and then automatically create a chapter index menu series with one simple drag and drop.”

The SuiteTake
Creating, linking, and authoring extensive DVD titles with lengthy and complicated chapter index’s can be tedious and time consuming. Using DVD Studio Pro’s built-in functionality you can easily create, save, and author extensive DVD chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop process.

Video compression has come a long way from the days of using Cinepak on a Quadra 950 tower and the old NuBus slots. For the most part, the wars between online formats has been settled with Flash leading the way. But behind that Flash Player is often H.264 encoded video, ever since it was introduced with Flash 9 in December of 2007. Even video powerhouse YouTube is pushing out H.264 video wrapped in a flash player. If that’s not enough, one of the officially supported video formats for Blu-ray is H.264.

So from on-line video (SD or HD) to high end Blu-ray DVD’s, h.264 is a huge player. It’s all good, right? Well, mostly. Have you ever compressed an h.264 video file? It can be unbearably long. We first started running into this bottleneck when we switched from doing mpeg-1 client web approvals (something that was very fast to compress and widely compatible) to h.264. We switched mainly because we wanted to post high resolution web approvals for our clients at higher quality, and MPEG-1 just wasn’t cutting it. H.264 really filled that need. But even a shorter video, say 10-15 minutes could take 60-90 minutes to compress on a Quad Intel MacPro, and some of our videos are more in the 30 minute range. If you have the time, leaving it running overnight is no big deal, but most of the time we’re doing these web approvals close to 5 or 6pm and they needed to be posted and sent to the client that same day. Waiting around just to finish a web post feels like a waste of time (although we did minimize this to some degree using LogMeIn as covered in my previous post).

After hearing others brag about how great it was, we finally decided to try the “to good to be true” Turbo.264 USB key from Elgato (the non-HD version). I really fought it because I had a hard time believing that a little USB key could do what my huge expensive multi-processor MacPro could not. But also because it did not integrate with Compressor, which is part of our workflow. For the price though, we decided to give it a try.

For what you end up paying, the Turbo.264 does a pretty good job. It is FAST for sure, and the output is not too bad, but it’s not perfect either. It gave us the speed that we wanted, but not the quality. One of the main reasons it’s able to do what it does so fast is that the very first thing that’s done is resize the video frame, and then pass it off to the USB key for processing. This is key, because the rest of the processing is done on a lower resolution frame instead of working with the original uncompressed frame. Great for speed, but not optimal for quality. But for many people, this might just do the trick depending on your needs and budget. You end up seeing compression artifacts in places that you wouldn’t when using compressor with similar settings, typically areas of fast movement, effects or dissolves. But it did take care of the time bottleneck that we were having. So we decided to sacrifice some quality for the sake of actually getting home on time but continued to look for other options.

Then I read a press release about a new product from Matrox called CompressHD, and I had a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. I contacted Matrox and asked them if it was possible to get a review unit and they were nice enough to send it out a week later. While it’s 4-5x the cost of the Turbo.264 USB key, (depending on which one you compare it to, the first SD key or the more recent HD version) it has some great benefits that make the cost worthwhile.  I’ve been using it for nearly 2 months now and it has taken the pain out of h.264 encoding.

Installation

Installation is easy, but for most editors the biggest problem may be finding an open card slot on your MacPro. We decided to sacrifice a SATA card to make way for the CompressHD card. All it needs is a PCIe slot. Once installed I started the computer and installed the software, and after a quick reboot it was good to go.

Integration with Compressor

The biggest selling point (aside from the speed)  is the seamless integration with compressor. Inside of compressor there is a new preset folder called “Matrox MAX H.264 Settings”. If you take a look at what’s inside, you’ll find that the presets are very similar to what you’re used to seeing in the Apple Settings.

If you’re used to using compressor, not much changes in your workflow for creating h.264 files. You pick one of the Matrox presets that fits your needs, apply it and submit just as you did in the past. However, much of the processing is now handed off to the CompressHD card. The only thing handled by compressor now is the decoding of the video frame, everything else is handled by the CompressHD card. The card has 2 processors that are optimized for different functions. One chip handles resizing/scaling, and the other handles the color space, compression and output. So what you end up with is this nice little video assembly line and each frame is passed from chip to chip to perform it’s designated function.

But what if you don’t want to use one of the presets included? What if you have specific needs of your own? No problem! You can create your own settings and still take advantage of that nice processing power. As an example, here is a setting that we created to use for web approvals.

What is the difference between the Apple h.264 presets and the Matrox ones? Nothing really. The Matrox folder was created for convenience and to streamline your experience. You can choose any of the Apple h.264 presets and they too will access the card.

If you want to compare performance with and without the card, there’s no need to pull the card out and then put it back in. Open up the control panel and you can turn the card on and off. This is what we did for the comparison tests. We’ve been running version 1.6 of the software, but the current version is 1.8 and is now Snow Leopard compatible. However, we’re still using Leopard and do not plan to upgrade until sometime late next summer.

Performance

Once we got this card in the machine, we just couldn’t wait to start compressing something… ANYTHING, just to try it out. It’s not that compression is all that interesting, but I really wanted to see how this baby performed. It was like dropping a new engine into a used car, we just wanted to hear the engine fire up. Here are the details on how we tested the card.

All tests were performed on a 3.o ghz Quad Core Intel MacPro with 12 gigs of RAM. We ran each compression twice. Once with the CompressHD card enabled, and once without. During these tests there were no other operations being performed on the machine, but only for the sake of making sure we were comparing apples to apples when we got the final numbers. One of the main reasons to use this card is that it handles so much of the work load, you can continue to work and even do processor intensive functions on the computer while having little or no effect on the compression times that the card puts out.

We used version 3.05 of compressor, that is part of Final Cut Studio 2. If you’re running the latest version of Final Cut Studio (we call it 3 because Apple forgot to give it a number) you will already have the ability to create Blu-ray movies within compressor. In our case, the card actually adds that ability to compressor, since this version of compressor does not directly support Blu-ray (only the now dead HD-DVD standard).

Our test video is 14:12 long and in 720p format using the ProRes 422 codec. The original file is 7.85 gigs in size, and we compressed it to 6 different formats as part of a single batch for each of the tests. We chose some of the most common presets that we might use, as well as one custom one that we use in house.

Here are the results.

As you can see, there is a significant difference with the card enabled.  There’s something very satisfying about watching it crank through the data so fast. It does however cut down on the coffee breaks and long walks on the beach.

One thing that I noticed is that the biggest benefit comes when you are changing resolution. This is where having the dedicated hardware really pays off. When you’re simply just converting from one format to another (say ProRes to h.264 with no other changes) the speed bump is less noticeable, but still there.

As an example, look at the Apple TV bar compared to the iPhone bar. Because the frame size for Apple TV does not need to be changed, the card just passes the frames through at the same resolution. But for the iPhone version it has to be scaled down a lot, something that the card does much faster and with better results then just using compressor.

*NOTE:  You might have noticed that the Blu-ray bar is the same on both passes. Because I was running Compressor 3 instead of the newer 3.5, Blu-ray is not supported natively. So on both passes, the CompressHD card was used. So kind of pointless for our purposes, but I left it in anyway.

Image Quality

The image quality is as good as anything coming out of compressor natively, but at a fraction of the time. In all of the tests that we did I couldn’t see a quality difference between using the card or not. Compared to video run through the Turbo.264 key, there was a noticeable difference. Again, I’m not totally knocking the Turbo.264 product, it does have its place. I use it all the time to convert movies/tv shows from the TiVo format to iPhone so that I can watch them while at the gym. But for trying to exceed the expectations of my clients the Turbo.264 key falls short. We’ve also had problems with it dealing with anamorphic footage properly without having weird scaling and cropping issues.

One thing to be aware of is that the CompressHD card will only do CBR compression, not VBR. Not a huge deal, but something to be aware of. This is also a limitation of the Turbo.264 usb key. VBR adds a much better quality to file size ratio then CBR, but in my experience this is not much of an issue. Disk space is abundant, the internet is fast and both SD DVD and Blu-ray can hold plenty of data. Not a huge deal.

Just to give you an idea, here are some file size differences based on the same source video.

Compatibility

One of my original concerns was that the card might interfere or conflict with other capture cards from AJA or BlackMagic, but it plays nicely. The codec’s that Matrox wrote are based on the Quicktime Component architecture built into QT, so any hardware or software that supports the implementation of QuickTime Component will work just fine.

Matrox Product Integration

It’s worth noting that you can get the CompressHD hardware (called the “MAX“) as part of some of the other Matrox products. For example, you can purchase a MXO2 and get it outfitted with the MAX card for just $400 more, saving you a $100 over buying the card separately. One of the great benefits of this is the ability to run this type of hardware on a laptop that has a Express34 slot, instead of just a tower. One of the down sides is that you can’t use both the MXO2 Max for editing/monitoring while the hardware is compressing. It’s an either/or situation. But for many that will be a small trade off for the ability to take this mobile.

The SuiteTake

At a street price of $499 the CompressHD is not exactly cheap, especially if you only occasionally need to compress to h.264, and time is not an issue for you. But if you encode as much as we do and don’t’ want to spend your whole week watching a progress bar, I would whole heartedly recommend getting the Matrox CompressHD. It’s a solid piece of hardware that integrates nicely with the FCP workflow so seamlessly you will forget it’s even there. That is, unless somebody takes it away from you.

Have you ever had a huge DVD project come across your desk that you just knew was going to be a nightmare to author? One of the most tedious things to author in DVDSP is creating chapter index menus with links to all the various chapters within a project. If you’ve ever had a multi-hour long video with dozens of chapters, creating chapter index menus can take hours and be extremely frustrating, especially if you make a mistake or there are changes after the fact.

Well, fear no more, there is actually a function built right into DVD Studio Pro that will create a chapter index for you automatically! All you need to do is either use one of DVDSP’s pre-made templates or easily create a template of your own then drag and drop; all the menus, buttons, text, and links are automatically created and set.

In this 2 part tutorial I’ll first show you how to make custom buttons, complete with video/image drop zones, that can be saved and inserted into any other menu. Part 2, coming later, will demonstrate how to incorporate those custom buttons into a custom menu, save it as a template, then create an entire 24-chapter index with one drag and drop.

The SuiteTake,
Creating, linking, and authoring extensive DVD titles with lengthy and complicated chapter index’s can be tedious and time consuming. Using DVD Studio Pro’s built-in functionality you can easily create, save, and author extensive DVD chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop process.

Well, for this post I thought I’d show you how simple it is to create DVDs in DVD Studio Pro that utilize multiple audio tracks. We use it around here for making DVDs with multiple languages, so you could watch the same video in French, German, Portuguese, etc. This same theory can be applied to putting in director’s commentaries, or maybe you’re doing something awesome with audio tracks that I’ve never even heard of! I’m sure some of may think it’s really easy to do this, while others may have never attempted it so they don’t know where to begin, but the truth of the matter is that it is extremely easy.

There’s that saying that “it’s so easy that my grandmother can do it!”, well, I’m gonna prove that theory correct, as I have actually brought my Grandma Shirley here to the office on my lunch break to prove that even she can create multi-language DVDs!

Scott: How are you doing today Grandma?

Grandma Shirley: Ehhhh, I’ve been worse. I thought you said we were going to Max and Erma’s?

Scott: We are, but I want to do this quick tutorial first, and I thought it would be nice if we did it together.

Grandma Shirley: Is this some computer thing, I don’t like computers.

Scott: Well, that will just prove how easy it is, I will teach this to a person who doesn’t even use computers!

Grandma Shirley: Is this some e-mail thing? Madeline down the hall has e-mail, gets all her mail on the computer, it’s crazy, I think she’s crazy.

Scott: Well, OK… Let’s get started with this. I’ve taken a video of my 10th birthday, and had some of my college friends translate it into 11 different languages. This should make a nice christmas present next year, huh Grandma?

Grandma Shirley: Yeah, if you want to be cheap about it.

Scott: There’s nothing cheap about sentiment. I’ve already created the audio tracks in Final Cut Pro, exported the AIFFs, and compressed them to AC3 files, and now I’m taking them into DVD Studio Pro.

Grandma Shirley: What?

Scott: Now the first thing I need to do is drag my video track from the assets up into the graphical view.

Grandma Shirley: OK?

Scott: So if you check in your track window, there will be only your video track, see it?

Grandma Shirley: I guess so.

Scott: I’ll start off by adding the English audio first.

Grandma Shirley: Makes sense.

Scott: One method of doing this, which certainly works for the first language, but not so much for the next languages, is to just drag the English audio file on top of the video in the graphical view.

Scott: Now as you can see the English audio track is in the track window.

Grandma Shirley: Yeah, it’s the two bar things, yeah I see it.

Scott: If you were to just drag the next language onto the graphical view, it would just put that language on the same audio track as the English one, so the method for adding the rest of the language tracks is by dragging them onto the next audio track in the track window.

Scott: Uh-oh! It appears as if there are only 8 audio tracks! But there are 11 languages! How are we suppose to get out of this dilemma, Grandma?

Grandma Shirley: I don’t know Scott, I’m hungry, and frankly I don’t care.

Scott: Well you should be excited, we’re now problem solving now, like on that show you watch, MacGyver.

Grandma Shirley: That show tends to have real problems. Why is this a problem?! What are we even doing?

Scott: What are we doing?? We are going to add another video track, that’s what we’re doing! Drag the same video clip into the graphical view to create two of them.

Scott: While you’re at it, make sure to change the names of them to something so you can tell them apart easily. Then bring up the 2nd video in the track window, and drag the remaining 3 language tracks in the first three audio tracks of this video.

Scott: Here I have a simple menu created with buttons for each of the languages, this is what you will see first when you put in the DVD, Grandma.

Grandma Shirley: I don’t like those disc things, you bought me them for christmas last year, I tried to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, so I put the CD in my clock/radio which also has a disc hatch, and nothing happened on the TV…

Scott: Wow, uhhh, that’s a whole slew of problems right there. I’ll show you the perhaps dozens of things you don’t understand after lunch. But for now, switch over to the outline view, and drag the 1st video track onto each of the 8 languages you connected to it earlier, and set the asset.

Scott: Once you’ve done that, do the same with the second video track for the remaining 3 languages.

Grandma Shirley: Is this what you do for a living? Play computer games all day?

Scott: Haha, it’s not a computer game, this is a professional DVD authoring program.

Grandma Shirley: Are your mother and father aware that they saved money for you your whole life so you could get a good education and go to college, and for what??? You go to college to make little plastic discs???

Scott: Well, I went to film school, I learned all about every aspect of filmmaking. It’s almost like majoring in English, but I watched films instead of reading books.

Grandma Shirley: You majored in movies. I saw Gone With the Wind on the Turner network yesterday, look at me! I’m a college graduate! Where’s my degree!? Your grandfather worked for 47 years as a lawyer in Cook county, he did REAL work. Your brother Christopher works for the forestry department for the state of Illinois. But this? You should be ashamed of the time and money you’ve wasted.

Scott: Well, I’m happy you’re so proud of me, Grandma, I love you too. …If you click on the English button in the menu, then go to the button menu in the bottom right of the screen, you should note that under “Audio Stream” it should read “Audio Stream 1″ as the default. This is correct in this case, because the 1st video has English in the first audio track.

Scott: If you refer back to the menu, and click on the Italian button you can…

Grandma Shirley: You know who I met in Italy after the War? Your Grandfather, a REAL MAN. Look at yourself, with your unkempt beard, and Beatles t-shirt, I’ve seen the women you bring home, you don’t think I have, but I have. A bunch of floozies. You probably found them on the street with the rest of the garbage.

Scott: (FAKE COUGH) SOOOO, if you click on Italian button, then go to the button menu, you will need to change the Audio Stream to Audio Stream 6, as you have placed the Italian language track on the 6th audio track of the 1st video.

Scott: Now to do the other 3 audio tracks, click on one of the other language buttons in the menu and in the button menu, the “Target” video track should be set to the 2nd video track.

Scott: Now it is just a matter of changing the Audio Streams for each of the buttons to correspond with the correct audio tracks for the 2nd video. The key to not screwing this up is to just make sure you are working with the correct “Target” video in the button menu.

Grandma Shirley: You?! Giving advise on how not to screw up?! HA!

Scott: And there you have it. I would suggest that you go through the Simulate Disc mode and make sure that you set everything correctly, and you should now have multiple audio tracks for your video. If you wanted to just have one button with say 4 audio commentaries or 4 different languages, you could just put 4 different audio files in the track window, set the button to Audio Stream 1, then when you play the DVD, pressing the audio button on your remote control will switch the different audio, just like on a Hollywood DVD. See Grandma, this was easy as pie, I bet if I let you try this again without my help, you could do it no problem.

Grandma Shirley: Yeah, whatever you say, I can make CDs, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going to faint, that’s how hungry I am… Where is the lunch you promised me? Some grandson you are, starving an old woman like this!

Scott: Now I’m off to another charming lunch with my lovable Grandma. See you next time.

Grandma Shirley: Always with the sarcasm! That’s why you’re not married. Who can put up with your nonsense?

Since this tip appeared on the Digital Production Buzz podcast, there have been a few emails asking for more details, and a few people reporting that they can’t get it to work. To help iron out the details and hopefully solve some of the problems I have posted this quick screencast to demonstrate how it works. If you continue to have problems (or figure out a way to import the audio as well) please email me. Video after the jump.

The tip I posted earlier this week on using DVD media directly inside of a FCP timeline was featured on the “Pick Our Brains” segment of the Digital Production Buzz. If you missed the show, you can hear an excerpt of when I was on the show using the link below.

Digital Production Buzz Excerpt

My friend Mike told me this was possible, but I didn’t believe it until I tried it myself.

We all know that FCP Studio 2 has that fancy Multi-Format timeline, allowing you to mix and match various codecs, frame sizes and frame rates. But did you realize that you can drag and drop a video TS folder directly into the timeline and actually play the video?

You can also drag and drop it into the browser window, and although you will get an error saying that the files were not recognized, you’ll end up with a folder with all of the .vob files. From there you can load them into the viewer and edit with them. Even the DVD menu items are available.

Here are a few screen shots.  Video TS 1,  Video TS 2

The down side? There’s no audio. So yes, this has limited use, but there are still plenty of times that this could be useful. What I really love about this is that you don’t need to convert the DVD to any other format to start editing. If all you need to do is grab a few quick b-roll shots from a DVD the client just handed you, you can do that. Obviously, you should copy the Video_TS folder to your own hard drive first though.

Near as I can tell, this is not a documented feature in Final Cut Pro. If you have found a way to get the audio to work as well, send me an email.

Updated Tuesday; March 4, 2008, 7:02 PM

As luck would have it, I actually had an edit today where I was given a DVD with time-lapse footage on it that I needed to use (no audio needed). I just copied the video TS folder over and loaded up the VOB file I needed. It edited fine, rendered fine, and I was able to do speed changes on it without issue. So this is useful indeed!

Updated Saturday; March 15, 2008, 10:46 PM

To help demonstrate this, I have posted a screencast of the tip. You can view it here.