DVD Studio Pro :: Compressor vs DVD-SP for encoding?

[Bakey]

Hi there folks,

I've a quick question that may appear to be dumb-ass but I'm not a DVD Studio Pro 'Pro' by any means, as I'm slowly shifting my DVD authoring workflow from Windows [Encore DVD] to Mac 100%.

Normally I would encode my MPEG-2 video externally from DVD-SP through Compressor as I'm sure many others do, but in this instance I've decided to drop my QT DV file directly into DVD-SP and decided to let it do the encoding.

Here's the question! Which is the better method? Does DVD-SP wind-up using Compressor in the background for this task or is it a separate encoder in its entirety?

My decision for dropping the MOV into DVD-SP was simply for speed of authoring, rather than wait for the 90 minutes of footage to be encoded to begin with I could quickly sit down with my client and author the DVD speedily, quickly and easily!

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated as the manual doesn't seem to be giving anything away (well, not from what I can see at least!)

Many thanks again...

 

[Bakey]

The results are in - but now an Intel Mac question!?

Well, having completed the job in question I can confirm that handing over the encoding to DVD-SP amounted to around two hours of encoding for the 90 minute programme; this was set to 2-pass VBR and the bit rate set to an average of 4 and a maximum of 7.

However, as I had 'time' on my hands due to it being the weekend I gave Compressor a shot being the usual method I would employ.

The same 90 minutes of footage was set to the 'DVD: Best Quality 90 Minutes - 4:3' profile with the audio being set to AC3 not AIFF. In total the audio took some 30 minutes to encode with the video a further 9 [yes, "9"] hours to encode!

The quality from Compressor is far superior to say the least, but now I've another question...

My machine is a G4-MDD 1.25gig with a gig of RAM; on average how much faster is an Intel based Mac when encoding such material?

I'm asking as I'm tempted to purchase a Mini mac specifically for the encoding process and to continue using the PM-G4 for authoring and mastering to DLT, etc.

If anybody has any rough comparative figures for such tasks please, please let me know!

Thanks again...