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MillimeterBlu-ray Creation with the New Apple Final Cut Studio
Aug 13, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Figure 5. Start by adding chapter markers to your project.
Burning Blu-ray Discs with the New Final Cut Studio
Much of Final Cut Pro 7’s new functionality relates to the Share menu that's accessible via the File > Share command. In essence, this is a fast way to share a single sequence, so if you’re burning a four-act opera to Blu-ray, combine all acts in a single sequence before getting started.
One nice feature of the new Share function is that you can trigger multiple jobs from a single Share. I decided to kill two birds with one stone (don’t tell the PETA folks) by burning both a DVD and Blu-ray project using some AVCHD footage that I shot last month of my two girlies at their piano/singing recital. The grandparents had already seen the footage at full 720p on YouTube, but they’d appreciate the DVD nonetheless.
Figure 6. Then click File > Share, and choose Blu-ray output.
Whatever the content, start by adding chapter markers to your project as before. If you’ve never done this before, it’s simple: Move the playhead to the desired marker location, and click M twice. The screen shown in Figure 5 will open. Click Add Chapter Marker, and then add a name, which will appear as the button name in both Blu-ray and DVD titles.
Once that's complete, click File > Share to open the Share menu, and choose Blu-ray as your target.
Figure 7. Choosing your output device.
Click the checkbox beneath the Blu-ray output to open the options screen shown on the right. Then choose your output device. If you have a Blu-ray drive in the computer, select it to burn a Blu-ray Disc. If you choose your legacy DVD-R/+R drive, you’ll burn what’s called an AVCHD disc, which can store about 40 minutes of HD video on an DVD-R/+R disc but isn’t universally compatible with all Blu-ray players. Or, you can choose the Hard Drive (Blu-ray) option and burn the project into an IMG file that you can burn to Blu-ray Disc later, or burn to disc on another computer.
Figure 8. Choosing a template.
Next, choose one of the five templates that Apple provides. Note that you can make your own in Motion, though I didn’t explore that option.
Then, type the name of your project in the Title field. If you don’t customize the name, Final Cut Pro will assign an autoname such as “Sequence 1-Blu-ray,” which will trigger a 20-minute conversation with your parents about what that means (or a reburn to avoid same).
Other options are all, well, optional. You can customize the menu by inserting your own background image, logo, or title graphic, and have the DVD player open either the menu or the video itself when the disc is inserted. Operationally, Final Cut Pro creates all required chapter menus and all links between all menus and chapter points with preset navigation. Don’t bother looking for a preview window (there isn't one) or about burning the project to your hard drive and playing it from there (the Apple DVD Player can’t). Fortunately, if you’ve spelled your marker names and title correctly, there’s very little that can go wrong.
Figure 9. Choosing a name and other options.
Where you’re done, click the plus sign to the right of the Blu-ray option to add another preset, and choose DVD. As you can see below, the DVD options are even more limited, with only one template that Henry Ford would have loved and less menu customization. You have to choose another title, which I forgot, so the grandparents are getting a DVD titled "Sequence 1-DVD"—I just won’t take their calls.
When you’re done tinkering, click Export, and Final Cut Pro takes it from there. On my 2.93GHz eight-core Mac Pro, it took 37 minutes to convert 12 minutes of 1080p AVCHD footage (captured as ProRes HQ) into two shiny new discs: one Blu-ray one DVD. The Blu-ray played on my ancient Samsung BDP-1000, which was the first or second Blu-ray player model ever shipped. This bodes well for compatibility with newer players. The DVD played fine on all tested players.
Figure 10. Burning the DVD project.
Video quality for both cases was very, very good. Overall, while short on features, Final Cut Pro’s Blu-ray and DVD-authoring capabilities are very long on ease of use and output quality.
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.