After you've edited your movie and put on your Chapter Markers, you'll learn how to output an encoded MPEG-2 file, which you will be able to import into DVD Studio Pro.

1. Once you've finished editing, rendering and putting chapter markers on your file, you are ready to output it to MPEG. Go to File>Export>Quicktime. You will get a dialogue box where you should choose the MPEG-2 format and click the Options button.

 

2. You will now select your Movie Settings. Click on NTSC and 4:3 and Save Audio. Here is where you'll choose a Bitrate Quality for your movie. The average rate for decent quality video is 5.8 Mbps. We will talk more about bitrates when we do our encoding lesson in a couple of weeks. For now, you can move the slider to 5.8. The information at the bottom left of the screen will give you a synopsis of your settings, including an estimated file size of the encoded movie.

Final Cut Pro will then encode the file, creating two datastreams, one for video and one for audio. You will import these as separate assets into your DVD Studio Pro project.

 

QuickTime Output

If you're outputting a QuickTime movie instead of an MPEG-2, you will get a different dialogue box to set your Movie and Sound Settings. Click on the Settings button in the Video section to choose your video settings. Set your Compressor settings to DV-NTSC, Quality: Best and Frame rate: 29.97.

You can leave the Sound settings at 22Khz if you aren't using music. If you're using music, you may want to change this to 44Khz.

Click the OK button once you've chosen your settings.

Further reading: QuickStart Guide to Final Cut Pro 3 for Mac