Monkeysee Filmmaker Videos - How to Export to Disc

David Rotan: Hi! I am David Rotan, video production manager with www.

monkeysee.

com. I am discussing the post production process and the deliverables required for videos created through our MonkeySee Filmmaker program. Right now, we are going to talk about how to export your project to a data DVD.

Now what I mean by data DVD? Its not the same as a DVD, like a movie DVD that you would create, let's say, for DVD Studio Pro, where it has a nice menu page and you select the chapters and you watch a movie. That's not what we need here. We just need an informational data DVD, which holds all the files and images on it. That's all we need. So don't waste any time trying to make a pretty DVD menu page or anything like that. That's the long kind of DVD.

Before you begin to export to that disk, you want to make sure that all of your file settings are proper and ready to export. I am using Final Cut Pro HD. Depending on what you have, you just want to check the Compression Type in your program, your export settings. A good rule of thumb is make sure however you shot your video. If you shot this on MiniDV, then you would want to select DV/DVCPRO-NTSC. If you shot this on HDV, as I did on this particular project, you want to select HDV 1080i60. So you just want to make sure you choose whatever it was the format that you shot it in on your camera, that it matches that. You want to make sure that the Frame Rate is set for Current or whatever it was shot for as well.

Finally, you are going to want to make sure that the size of your video is the exact same way that you shot it, which should be, for all MonkeySee videos, 16:9 anamorphic. Be very careful on this. A lot of times we have projects sent to us that they were shot anamorphic 16X9 wide screen, but they are exported letter boxed in the standard 4X3 square frame. The files are all square with the black bars letter boxing at the top and bottom. That's not right. We want it native 16X9, the way it was shot. You just want to make sure at the dimensions that it is native to how you shot the project which should have been 16X9. The sound, the audio, again is the same way shot it. Typically, the standard is 48 KHz of 16-bit. You just want to make sure that's consistent.

So once you have made sure that the export settings on your video are exactly the same as how you shot it. In other words, it matches the format that you used on your camera, whether it be DV, or HD, or 720 HD, everything needs to match and the Aspect Ratio should be set for 16X9, the Export Settings should be set for 16X9 as well. Once you have got all that figured out, depending on whatever editing program you are using, you want to familiarize yourself with the export process and export all of that information to a writable DVD. You will also want to drag in, to the writable DVD, your JPG images or you can provide that on a separate disk. Next, we will be talking about the required deliverables.