Quickest Way to Export a Reference Video

[Bill Hunt]

I'm finding myself using SmartSound's Sonic Fire Pro 5 a lot more often now. Since it's not a plug-in, like QuickTracks, I need to Export a quick mux'ed AV file, to Import into SFP5 as a "reference," to do my scoring. Since it's only a reference (something to see and to hear, while I work with the scoring of the music soundtrack, I do not need any sort of quality, and the size can even be rather small).

I've tried DV-AVI, MPEG2 with various size/quality settings, MOV with various size/quality settings, and all seem to take about the same time to generate the reference file, as to do a full Export to go into Encore. I'm thinking that there has to be some way to do this more quickly, especially as I only need it for a few hours' work, and it doesn't need to be DV quality.

All of my Projects are going to DVD, so that is my preset and all Sequences are set up that way.

Does anybody have an suggestions of formats, or settings, that I can possibly speed up this intermediate process? Looking for quick and "dirty" is fine. I just need a visual and aural reference.

Thanks,

Hunt

[Edit] Forgot to mention that I'm using PP2, and also have most major CODECs, but will gladly purchase any additional ones needed to speed things up as much as is possible.

[RJ Johnston]

Have you tried Microsoft Video 1? You can specify a very small frame size, something like 16 x 16.

File > Export > Movie >Settings > Microsoft AVI on the General tab > Microsoft Video 1 on the Video Tab.