Originally posted by weldon:
If I upgrade to Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro (to work with 16:9 widescreen source material) can I still use iDVD to create discs, or do I have to upgrade to DVD Studio?
I want FCP (or FCE) because of the features it offers beyond iMovie, but I don't really need DVD Studio Pro. Can anyone who has worked with these two apps give me some input on how well they work together?
Thanks!
They're both fine Apple products... of course they work together!
I use FCP 3.0.4 and iDVD3 works beautifully with it. Even iDVD3's new chapter markers feature can be set in FCP the same way as you would if you were exporting to DVD studio pro. The only thing you don't have (and this is obvious since FCP is a "pro level" app) is the automation involved between iMovie 3 and iDVD 3 where you instantly import a movie ready-to-burn in iDVD via a simple button in iMovie. FCP has no such simple "iLife-like" integration buttons and you have to export your movie first. I think that just about any video-editing suite (maybe even Avid's) where you can export a finished movie in quicktime format can be funneled into iDVD for DVD authoring. There really is no compatibility issue between apps when it comes to this except when it comes to chapter markers. A movie is a movie regardless of how you edited it and what you edited it with... and as long as it can be exported (or converted) to an acceptable quicktime format, iDVD can make DVD's out of them all.
I'm pretty sure FCE is the same as FCP in that chapter markers are recognized as well.
What I'm not sure of is if iDVD is capable of doing real 16:9 material properly. I know there are iMovie plugins for 16:9 but those are merely cropping effects and not real 16:9 as if captured from a widescreen camera. I don't really know much about this widescreen stuff.
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