Apple Final Cut Pro 5 User Manual
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Part III
Output
There are essentially four phases to creating a DVD:
 Create and edit your source material. In addition to the main Final Cut Pro movie, you
can create still graphics or short movies for use as menu backgrounds. It is important
to understand that all edits, special effects, audio fades and mixes, and scene
transitions must be added to the video and audio in Final Cut Pro before exporting
them for use in the DVD authoring application.
 Encode your video and audio to DVD-Video compliant formats. Video DVDs require that
all video and audio comply to a specification that defines the acceptable formats, bit
rates, and all other attributes of the video and audio on the disc. Both iDVD and
DVD Studio Pro will automatically convert any movies that are not compliant. This
means that you can export a standard QuickTime movie from Final Cut Pro and
import it into your DVD authoring application and all encoding and conversions will
be handled for you automatically.
If you author your DVD with DVD Studio Pro, you can encode your movies externally,
for example by using Compressor, so that you can have more control over the
process. This becomes important when authoring complex DVD titles, since
maximizing use of disc space can become critical. (Creating a DVD often becomes a
balancing act between creating the highest quality assets and getting them to fit on
a DVD disc.)
 Author your DVD title. This is where you take the movies, still images, and other
graphics and create the menus, tracks, and slideshows of your DVD. Both iDVD and
DVD Studio Pro include a variety of templates and tools to simplify this process and
make it easy to create professional-looking DVDs with minimal effort.
 Build and burn your DVD. Once you have authored your DVD, you will build (or
compile) the files that then get burned to the DVD disc. Both iDVD and
DVD Studio Pro make this a one-button process.
There is much more to consider when creating your DVD. For detailed information on
preparing video and audio sources and planning your DVD, see the documentation
that came with DVD Studio Pro or iDVD.