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rdsii64

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 14, 2008
237
8
I am currently using eyeTv to get movies I want to keep into my 24" iMac. So far all I had to do was open eyeTv export as 422 Pro Res HQ open in Final cut pro X, strip out the commercials, burn to blu ray disc, stick it in my blu ray player and everything worked just fine. Well recently my blu ray burner conked out on me. So until I can afford a replacement I am trying burn avchd discs since the bit rates are lower. The max bit rage for avchd is 15. If you are trying to burn a blu ray and point final cut pro x at a standard dvd burner via share, it defaults to what should be a bit rate correct for avchd. When I tried, I got an error message that said the bit rate was beyond the max allowed. (I believe, but don't know for sure that final cut pro x uses a max bit rate of 17 when trying to burn avchd)
If I send the video to compressor I can lower the bit rate to a max of 15 and and average of 13 and everything should work. I am currently testing that theory. If this works, is there a way to get final cut pro x to default to a custom compressor setting when trying to burn a disc?
Sorry for the long winded question, and thanks in advance.
 

HobeSoundDarryl

macrumors G5
I can't help you too much with your question, other than saying you can duplicate the profiles in Compressor and then make changes to the duplicate to suit your own needs. I think this will work for you.

Also, since you state that cost is a concern, I'll point out that you could simply render all that video for :apple:TV3 and store it on an external hard drive. An :apple:TV 3 will cost you around the price of a low-end BD player and you'll easily save money vs. the cost of buying another blank BD disc each time you want to store another movie. Obviously, you have "the rest" (a computer capable of running iTunes).

A potential workflow option would be to render to Pro Res as you are doing now and then using the free Handbrake to compress those files down to a small file compatible with :apple:TV3. I've done exactly this with a bunch of my HD1080 video files and it works great. I purchased Compressor thinking I would use it a lot but find that I didn't really need it for this kind of purpose. Since you are already successful at rendering the big Pro Res file, it should be easy to run it through Handbrake to generate the :apple:TV file. Unless you really need those videos on Blu-Ray Discs for some reason, this might be a cheaper- and potentially better- option for you (also considering that :apple:TV does a bunch of other nice things too).

Also note that there are AVCHD camcorders available now that shoot at 28Mbps (since last year+), so I don't know why the speed limit you are seeing is some hard cap.
 

rdsii64

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 14, 2008
237
8
It still didn't work

I lowered the max bit rate to 14.5 and average to 12.5 and I still got the above the max allowable bit rate error. Now I am beginning to wonder if I need to uninstall final cut pro x and compressor 4 and reinstall. I bet an update has borked my system.
 

Richardthe4th

macrumors regular
Jan 4, 2008
110
0
Below Sealevel
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