DVD Studio Pro 3: In the Studio

Supported Formats

The DVDSP User's Manual recommends MPEG-2 encoded video with AC3 encoded audio. For impatient readers, that's the primary format you need to be concerned with. To be honest, that recommendation came from the 1.5 release of DVDSP, but it still applies. If you create your own MPEG-2 (.m2v is the common file extension) and AC3 (.AC3) files, that leaves you with maximum control over your audio and video. DVDSP can accept many other formats, but it will convert them to MPEG-2 and AIFF (audio) before burning the disc. You'll get good results, but you probably will not get the best possible results. For the more curious and detail-oriented, read on!

LEARNING MORE: More Detail Than You Want

If you're looking for some of the really low-level stuff, there are plenty of resources on the web. One of the best overall starting points is the DVD FAQ maintained by Jim Taylor:

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

His book, DVD Demystified, 2nd Ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2000) is an unparalleled source of technical, readable details on DVDs and surrounding technology.

On the AC-3 front, you should take a look at 5dot1.com (http://www.5dot1.com/).

Video

The technical details on what video formats are supported are fairly straightforward, as shown in Table 2-4. Owing to the vast improvement in quality provided by MPEG-2, we'll work with that encoding for all the projects in this book.

Table 2-4. Video standards in DVDSP

Format	Maximum Bit Rate (Mbps)	NTSC Resolution/Frame Rate (fps)