Compressing Movie in iDvd

So I need to get a movie created in iDvd down to an acceptable filesize so i can save as a disc image. Anyone have any tips or tricks on how to do this... notice the menu's are the things taking up the most space...
Here's my dilemma:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3210/3109321067d2fce65f4ao.png

Well, the problem isn't that the movie is even 460 minutes in length.. that's just based on the calculation of all the media (menus, slideshows, audio and movies) correct? All of the menus are on 30 second loops to keep the motion under 15 minutes... the lengthy things are the photo slideshows, which are only available once you enter an 'extras' section and select the slideshow. My problem is that I know that all of the media used takes up less than 1GB of space on my hdd, actually it's closer to a 700mb. Yet I don't understand why iDVD should calculate the disc length to be so horrendously long... but more importantly, why it calculates the disc image as being several times larger than what it ought to be....
And even when I break the DVD down per section (ala individual discs) each individual section is way over the time and file size limit. (Example: I have broken down one section into a main menu that has 3 subchapters, in each subchapter is an extras slide with credits created in iMovie. iDVD still tells me that the content for this is well over 200 minutes and 12GB.
My next inclination was to try and import the iDVD project into DVD Studio Pro... well, as it turns out DVD Studio Pro does not support iDVD projects later than 4 or 5.. which seems rather odd, being as it is essentially iDVD's bigger brother(no?). Anyway, i'm still open to suggestions... any tips on compressing content and media would be well appreciated.. i'm at my wits end here trying to figure what to do with this thing without having to re-author it all in a different program such as Adobe Premier or DVD Studio Pro.
Much thanks.

Similar Messages

Should I compress our FCP4 project or drag our QT movie to iDVD?

We're relativity new to editing and have completed a project in FCP4, which is 50 mintues in length. We rendered the project and then made a QT movie.
We believe we need to now compress the project in FCP prior to dragging it into iDVD for completion...is that correct? or should we just drag the completed, self-contained QT.mov into iDVD and be done with it?
If we don't compress in FCP, will there be a degradation of quality?
We tried using the standard compression settings in FCP; 60 min high quality for video and 44.mhz for the AIFF audio files...it ran all night and nothing happened?
Any thoughts or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much.
Randy

You can drag that self-contained file to iDVD. That works well. You can also use reference files if you want to save disc space. There shouldn't be any difference in quality.

Problems with FC widescreen 16:9 movie and iDVD 4:3

Running: FCE v3.5 HD and iDVD 8
I'm doing a large domestic film project for friends which requires me to author my FCE movie as a DVD (as a broadcast professional my editing is normally just played straight out to digi-tape and so I'm a little green in this department!)
I've now edited the entire FCE movie and exported it as 'stand alone' files in two ways (giving me two separate movie files). One is created via the simple Export>Quicktime Movie option in FCE but, when this didn't appear to be 16:9 widescreen in the iDVD preview, I went back to FCE and created a Quicktime compressed .mov with a DV PAL 16:9 ratio.
The latter also doesn't appear as 16:9 widescreen in iDVD 8 (nor is it widescreen when I burn the DVD and play it on a TV). Both of them play in 4:3 squeeze ratio despite the iDVD project menus being in lovely widescreen.
Why is this?
I can't see any setting that will solve this so I'd appreciate any solution or offers of help on this!
Before anyone asks, the FCE project is defintely captured and edited in 16:9 DV PAL format. I've printed it to DV video for an approval viewing and it was beautiful 16:9 widescreen.
HELP, this was supposed to be easy!

Check out this Apple doc: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305337

Help Please ::: Quicktime .mov into iDVD 5 playback or encode problem issue

Originally Imageready files burned into Quicktime. Importing Quicktime .mov into iDVD results in project which looked great in preview, but after burning images were elongated, flattened. I am stumped, especially given preview results would indicate no such problems but unsure where to analyze on the DVD burn end to check. Any tips on what/where to check? Have tried re-importing original ImageReady (Photoshop) files into new Quicktime .mov (original project was done on OS 9 fyi). But no change in results.. any help greatly appreciated.
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thank you for the feedback. I wasn't privy to the process that converted these files originally but suspected the theory on compression/codec initially used.. may re-convert. Also will try Disk Imaging... seems that this is not an uncommon problem in the iDVD 5 world...
regards, Senor Peaches
Originally Imageready files burned into Quicktime.
Importing Quicktime .mov into iDVD results in project
which looked great in preview, but after burning
images were elongated, flattened. I am stumped,
especially given preview results would indicate no
such problems but unsure where to analyze on the DVD
burn end to check. Any tips on what/where to check?
Have tried re-importing original ImageReady
(Photoshop) files into new Quicktime .mov (original
project was done on OS 9 fyi). But no change in
results.. any help greatly appreciated.
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Need Time Estimate for Rendering Movie in iDVD

Hello.
I am a brand new Mac user and have recently finished a 45 min. movie in iMovie. I simply want to get this movie onto a DVD so that I can share it with friends and also watch it on a TV. I'm running into trouble, though.
I've gone through the process of importing the movie into iDVD, and have selected an option that reads "One step iDVD from Movie" from the File menu of iDVD. iDVD then went through and compressed the images in the movie, but has been "encoding audio" for the past 3 or 4 hours. Is this normal given the length of the movie? I'm not sure at this point if the program has simply stopped responding (I checked the Activity Monitor, and it DOES say that iDVD is not responding, however the computer itself seems to be working -- the drive is spinning and the fan is on). Or is there a better way to get my movie onto a DVD? I just read about the DVD image in another thread, so perhaps that was the right way to go about this?
I am doing this on a new 2GHz Macbook with 1GB RAM.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Fun2Sail

Thanks for responding, Sue.
You were right. I let iDVD run overnight and this morning it had created a DVD with VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders. Now, I just have to figure out whether this DVD will automatically play in a TV's DVD player (and also how to get it so that Winodws machines can view the video).
If anyone happens to know the answers to these questions, replies will be much appreciated. I'm not a movie-making or an apple afficiondo by any means.
Thanks again, Sue, for your quick reply.
fun2sail

Sharing More than One Movie with iDVD????

Okay.. I would like to know if there is another way to burn MORE than one movie an iDVD project. It seems that sending the movie straight to iDVD creates it's own project, and when you try to send another movie, it creates a completely different project. I know I can send a movie to Media browser but the quality of the movie is much better when I share it via the command in iMovie 09 (Shrare->iDVD). I've noticed that the file type is different when you send it to iDVD than when you put it in Media Browser as well.
Currently this is what I do.. Share it to iDVD.. Then I save that iDVD project to my desktop. I close iDVD, and start sharing my second movie. I then Control-Click on the first iDVD project and choose "Show Package Contents". I then dig into the trenches of that file to find the movie file. I then drag it to the desktop and delete the first iDVD project. When the new iDVD project gets made, I simply drag the file on my desktop into the iDVD project I want it in and then it works. This seems like a so un-apple way to do this though. I think iMovie definetly needs and update here. It's great if you ony want to burn a 1 movie to iDVD, but what if you want to do more. There should be a way to select multiple movies to send to iDVD or the option of adding a new imported movie to the current project in iDVD.
Am I missing something or is there another way to do this? Is there a good export option in QuickTime? DV doesn't work because the quality I get is horrible. Somehow the shared to iDVD movie is the best quality and it's a QuickTime file via h.264. Is that my best export option? Sharing with the Media browser creates a mv4 file that's much smaller in size, even at the largest setting. The frames are more jumpier when iDVD finishes with it than the h.264 file.
Any better suggestions? Also, where do I go to make suggestions for Apple. I can't find it anymore on this website.

Q:Also, where do I go to make suggestions for Apple.
A: Launch iDvd and then scroll down to Provide iDvd Feeback.

How do I move an iDVD project to external

I recently upgraded to iDVD '08 and see that now, one of the output selections is iDVD, meaning it goes straight to that. When this is selected, it automatically begins creating the file as opposed to asking where you'd like to store it. It ended up in my documents on my HD. I figured no worry, I'd just move it over to my ext HD since it was over 2GB. But when I did this and tried to open it, it said 2 files were missing. So, couple of questions. First, I remember with the last that you just output a file that you then, yourself, dragged into iDVD. This seemed very easy. But with this way, it seems to automate it. How can I output so that is does it the old way, where it generates a file that I can place in iDVD myself, and that I can store on an external. Second, if that's not possible, what files do I need to locate to move to the ext, where do they hide, and where should I store them?
Why do they make what was perfectly easy, hard?

If I understand you correctly, you are actually asking two different questions.
1. Do you mean that with iMovie 08, when you select to 'share' your movie to iDVD that iDVD opens a new project automatically?
You do not have to use the output options in iMovie. Just close your iMovie and open iDVD yourself, choose to create a new project, select a theme, then go to the Media tab, then 'Movies,' locate your iMovie and drag it onto iDVD's main screen. Be careful not to drop it into a menu Drop Zone.
2. You also would like to have your iDVD project saved to a different location than the default 'Documents' file. When you open iDVD and create a new project, you will see a dropdown box showing Documents as the save location. You can change that right from that drop box.
However, it is recommended that you save your project on your computer's drive, not an external drive. The iDVD application itself must run from your computer. Some users have successfully created and burned projects located on other drives, but many have run into problems.
You can certainly save your completed iDVD projects to an external drive by doing a 'save as disk image' from within the iDVD project. This will look like the burn process, and take just as long for the encoding, but the end result is a disk image file, not a burned DVD disk. The disk image file is a self-contained file that is an exact replica of your iDVD project. It can be moved without losing the ability to burn DVD disks from it in the future.
Remember that an iDVD project itself should be thought of as a container that has references to media files used in it, but it does not actually CONTAIN the media files. When a DVD is burned from an iDVD project, iDVD locates the needed media and copies it for the burn, doing this for each disk burned. Sometimes there are burn 'glitches' where the first DVD disk burns fine, but others may not. Also with an iDVD project, if you rename, move, change or delete any of the files used in the project, iDVD will be unable to locate them and will not be able to open properly. With a saved disk image file, you can safely delete the original iDVD project and the original iMovie, thus saving drive space.
Burning DVD disks form a disk image file using Disk Utility or Toast is a better way to burn DVD disks since the files are all encoded in the disk image file and do not have to be copied in each time.
Please post back if any of this is not clear, or does not answer what you need to know.

When burning a completed movie in idvd the whole sound track of the last chapter disappears

When burning a completed movie in idvd the whole sound track of the last chapter disappears. When I play the whole movie in iDVD before burning to disc both the sound tracks are their, but when burnt to a DVD the two sound tracks disappear half way through the last chapter, can any one help please.

Mike,
There is an iMovie forum, please click the link and repost your question. I suspect the iMovie guru's may be able to help you out.

Problem with split screen quicktime movie to iDVD

hey folks, i've just spent two 6-hour renderings for naught and have the following problem:
QT Pro 6.5.2
iDVD 5
OS 10.3.9
I pulled together a Quicktime movie consisting of talking head interview, then split screen (two clips simultaneously), back to talking head, then split screen again, etc etc.
the first time i rendered the composite Quicktime movie to iDVD, my split screen background was a sickly lime green color. blech
so, i added a black slide in TIFF format ONLY to the split screen video portions. played around with the Layers property until my split screen video clips were in front of the black background. recut and pasted my full Quicktime movie again.
However, upon my second iDVD rendering, a funny thing ocurred. Now, when the DVD gets to a split screen portion, the VERY LAST FRAME OF THE PREVIOUS TALKING HEAD CLIP freezes, and appears in the background of my split screen clips.
What gives?
I plan to do some testing, but sure would like to shortcut this problem, it's eating away at my weekend and i need to get this project done.
thanks for any insight you can give
mike

Some ideas given in your iDVD post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=958281&tstart=0

Nightmares exporting 16:9 movie for iDVD

I keep running into the same problem at the end of my projects. I'm editing in PAL 16:9 in FCE, and everything looks great on screen. I want to export the movie into iDVD. If I use the standard Export-> Quicktime option it keeps ending up in 3:4. This seems to happen with every export I do no matter what options I choose!
I've managed to export it into a DV file win 16:9 format, and it plays in widescreen in QTPro and in funder preview, and this has worked in iDVD, but it doesn't import the chapter markers, which I really want to have. (I am using 16:9 iDVD templates and have checked the project is in 16:9).
I've spent hours today trying to get the movie to export right and work in iDVD and can't get a perfect solution. Can anyone give me the right settings once and for all?!?!
Thanks

http://www.fcpbook.com/Video9.html

Compress movie for CD-ROM

I've been working on a video conversion project using the ADVC300 to import old VHS clips into iMovie 6.
For the past two weeks I've read and experimented every which way to get a good quality representation of my video on the computer. The only good looking file that didn't give me black horizontal lines everywhere (MPEG-4 and H.264 tests) was the full quality setting. After much frustration with this I set it on the "Compress movie for CD-ROM" setting as a last resort, only to find this was exactly what I wanted. From my comparisons these files look as good as the .dv files at a MUCH smaller size.
So, just out of curiosity, is there any way of finding out exactly what these CD-ROM settings are? How exactly is this stuff getting compressed?
Thanks for your input.

Great. I'll use those settings and experiment a little.
Now, if I could only find some way of speeding up the process. I know, buy a new computer. One 12 minute clip took about 50 minutes to finalize last evening. This will be a long process, with about 2 boxes of VHS tapes to convert, but at least there's other things to be done in the house while the computer is churning away.
Thanks!

Burning movies using iDVD?

Hi, please can you help.
I want to use iDVD to burn a movie I have on an AVI file, it's about 2 hours long. When I drag on to iDVD screen it says its too big and need to change encode on project menu, You have Best, High, Professional etc, the top one is too big. Do I use High or Professional? When I change that and go to burn a pop uo still comes up and it says there are still some things that need changing after I've done this, but can still continue burning. Can you tell me what it is and will an AVI play back on a standard DVD player afterwards when burned. I don't want to wait over 4 hours to find out it won't work.
Can anyone please help and tell me how I can speed it up, do I use High/Professional if 'Best' won't let you do a 2 hour film, and what else I need to fix. Why does it keep coming up with 'continue burning' but tells me things need to be fixed first, but now what after I've changed the encoding.
Thanks

The cause of the problem could be two-fold: the one stated, and your choice of the outdated Microsoft AVI file container which, depending on the video codec used, may not be compatible.
But if the video plays in Quicktime and/or iMovie it should be OK. Does it?
Encoding can take a considerable time. 4 hours is not unusual.
(From fellow poster Mishmumken: )
How to create a DVD in iDVD without menu (there are several options):
1. Easy: Drop your iMovie in the autoplay box in iDVD's Map View, then set your autoplay item (your movie) to loop continously. Disadvantage: The DVD plays until you hit stop on the remote
2. Still easy: If you don't want your (autoplay) movie to loop, you can create a black theme by replacing the background of a static theme with a black background and no content in the dropzone (text needs to be black as well). Disadvantage: The menu is still there and will play after the movie. You don't see it, but your disc keeps spinning in the player.
3. Still quite easy but takes more time: Export the iMovie to DV tape, and then re-import using One-Step DVD.
Disadvantage: One-Step DVD creation has been known to be not 100% reliable.
4. (My preferred method) Easy enough but needs 3rd party software: Roxio Toast lets you burn your iMovie to DVD without menu - just drag the iMovie project to the Toast Window and click burn. Disadvantage: you'll need to spend some extra $$ for the software. In Toast, you just drop the iMovie project on the Window and click Burn.
5. The "hard way": Postproduction with myDVDedit (freeware)
Tools necessary: myDVDedit ( http://www.mydvdedit.com )
• create a disc image of your iDVD project, then double-click to mount it.
• Extract the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders to a location of your choice. select the VIDEO_TS folder and hit Cmd + I to open the Inspector window
• Set permissions to "read & write" and include all enclosed items; Ignore the warning.
• Open the VIDEO_TS folder with myDVDedit. You'll find all items enclosed in your DVD in the left hand panel.
• Select the menu (usually named VTS Menu) and delete it
• Choose from the menu File > Test with DVD Player to see if your DVD behaves as planned.If it works save and close myDVDedit.
• Before burning the folders to Video DVD, set permissions back to "read only", then create a disc image burnable with Disc Utility from a VIDEO_TS folder using Laine D. Lee's DVD Imager:
http://lonestar.utsa.edu/llee/applescript/dvdimager.html
Our resident expert, Old Toad, also recommends this: there is a 3rd export/share option that give better results. That's to use the Share ➙ Media Browser menu option. Then in iDVD go to the Media Browser and drag the movie into iDVD where you want it.
Hope this helps!

Burning a movie from idvd

i made a movie on idvd and im trying to burn it...... when i put a blank dvd in it spits it back out and says insert a readable dvd..... i am using dvd-rw....... please help! i need to burn this dvd for an event today

#1 Rule ..... Don't stress.
Let me make a suggestion. Burn a disc image to the desktop if all else fails here. This essentially eliminates the need to burn to Dvd completely and uses the mac's internal hard drive as a virtual Dvd for playback purposes (keep in mind that both a disc image and a finished idvd respond to apple's dvd player in an identical fashion). You can always use your mac and apple's dvd player to present the disc image to most set tops or TV's with the proper cables ..... Might this work for you?
Other than this, the only other suggestion is to secure the correct / recommended media from the very start.
Message was edited by: SDMacuser

Distortion with sound when viewing burned movie from idvd

I created a movie in iMovie that included tracks from iTunes and exported it to create the dvd in iDVD.
When viewing it in iMovie, it sounds great.
When I exported and viewed the movie in iDVD, it sounds great.
But after I burn the dvd and view it on any of my tv's, the sound is distorted. I've tried playing the settings in iMovie changing the track volume to a lower setting but that isn't helping.
Can anyone help?

I had a similar problem. Some of the music in my movie was distorted playing on my TV. Burning the dvd in disk utility did not make a difference, but the file was 3 times larger. Anyway while trouble-shooting I found that it played much better through the HDMI cable as opposed to the component cables. It also played ok on my older TV through the AV cables. So it is either my component out jacks on my dvd player or my component cable. I have noticed other dvd's that I made from my Imac do play very loud on all my TV's.

.mov to iDVD

Seems I miss one step. I proceed so :
1 - images into iMove
2 - export into .mov
3 - .mov to iDVD (iLife 09)
4 - Burn DVD
The problem is that on TV, some images tremble, mainly where there is a contrast between white and other dark colour (could be very nice with a lake, otnerwise, it's a problem)
Tried every images' size (1600/900, or 1024/576, etc, but this problem remains (excepted on my iMac)
Any solution ?
Thakns in avdance.

TV-safe mode. I don't see anything either in iMovie or iDVD.
This is from iDVD Help:
+_Checking the TV safe boundaries of an iDVD menu_+
+When you create a project, you may not know what kind of technology viewers will use to watch your DVD. For example, if you create a widescreen project and your viewers have standard television screens, some parts of your DVD may not be visible. Also, some television sets may not show the outer edge of your DVD menus and movies.+
+If you know that your DVD will be viewed on a television screen (not a computer screen), you can check your project to make sure all elements of it will be visible to viewers.+
+To see the TV safe boundaries for your project:+
+Make sure the menu you want to check is showing in the iDVD window.+
+Choose View > Show TV Safe Area.+
+A shaded area appears on the menu. The inner area that is not shaded is visible on most television sets.+
+If your project is widescreen, with a 16:9 aspect ratio, choose View > Show Standard Crop Area.+
+The area inside the boundaries is visible on a standard television screen.+
I hope this helps.

Compressing Movie in iDvd

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