Hey,
I’ve got a screening of a new short film we made. Now, the thing is, this is quite colour correction heavy and is filmed entirely in HD. But since the lab we’re screening it at doesn’t have Blu-Ray capable computers to read off from, I can’t really burn it out and need to show it from the harddrive instead. Our main issue is avoiding quality loss.
So I’ve exported the short movie into two files - a M2V file for the video and a AC3 file for the audio. Thing is, I haven’t been doing authoring for more than a few weeks, so I have no idea how to merge these two into a playable file without recompressing it into MPEG. (Which would take too much time and resources to do, sadly.) Is there a player that will automatically import the external audio file and synch it with the video, or a way I can merge these two files?
Keep in mind, this needs to happen on a Mac. Regrettably.
Any help would be highly appreciated!
I’ve never had to remux m2v streams, but I’d be surprised if that was something that MPEGStreamclip couldn’t handle. It’s a quick download, and free, so worth a shot. I’ll see if I can think of anything else if that doesn’t work.
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
Hope it works, and good luck with the screening!
Another option: if you have access to DVD Studio Pro or the like, use the streams to make a build of the disc on your hard drive, rather than burning it to a disc. Then play it through the Mac’s DVD Player. (File -> Open DVD Media, then navigate to the new Video TS folder you created on your drive).
Actually, glancing through the online help for MPEGStreamclip, you can probably just bring in the two streams and use it as your player. It will play full-screen. I think that should do what you need!
Thanks! MPEGStreamclip works like a charm! I’m going to set FCP to output the movie in Apple ProRes 422 over the server, with the merged file as a backup. (I’m actually quite interested to see which of them has the best quality.)
The only problem with DVD Suite Pro is that it doesn’t have a tangible hdd format. All it puts out will be in TS_ form. Which is quite annoying since I’d have to write a manual of how to play it off. (Two of my co-producers are showing it off in other places during the week and they’re not, to put it mildly, tech heads.)
You’re a life-saver, cheers!
(To Colibri, GFactor, SamClem, question has been answered for my part.) 
Happy to help! MPEGStreamclip has saved my ass more times than I can count. I’ve actually tried to donate money to the author, but can’t seem to find a way to.
I’m in the midst of authoring my first disc that will be professionally replicated, so I’m knee-deep in these specs at the moment. In fact, I was at Deluxe this morning, who’s doing the replicating, and was given a tour of their facilities. Got to see how the big boys make dvd and blu-ray babies! Some extremely impressive (and imposing) machines.
Anyway, once again, hope your screening goes flawlessly!
(my money is on the ProRes 422 version, btw, but it’ll probably be pretty damn close. :))