Deleted a pic, broken link, lesson learned

Question

Thanks to Beverly Maneatis' description in other posts I learned that iDVD 09 project file does not hold all the elements needed (images, pics, sound clips) for a project. I made a DVD for my brother who took his family to Disney. Imagine my surprise when the Drop Zones showed the "broken link" icon; I had deleted the images I dropped thinking they'd be saved within the project file.
So my question to you all: how do you organize your iDVD workspace? Do you set a up a folder and add ALL files associated w/ the project including the saving of proj. file?
Cheers
Frank

Answer 1

You do not have to regorganize your workspace to utilize iDVD without losing your links. You can certainly do this if you wish and if it seems to be more sensible to you, but it is not necessary if you do not disturb any of the media you are using.
I save ALL of my iDVD projects as disk image files after I have finished editing the project, before I burn to disk. I do not rename, move, delete or change any of the media elements used in the project until after the disk image has been created, and I have used it to burn at least one DVD disk. Then, before deleting anything, I play the burned DVD to be absolutely certain it is correct.
When I have done that, I delete the original iDVD project and the original iMovie used to create the iDVD project, both to save space and because I no longer need the iDVD projects.
A disk image file is self-contained....all the media used is encoded within it so you don't have to worry about losing it.
(I also export my edited iMovie back to miniDV tape in my camcorder...my reason to stay with iM6).
The only reason to keep an iDVD project is if you think you might want to re-edit. If you always keep the images used for it in the same location, iDVD can always locate them for burning. But, for me, once I have finished the project and a burned disk plays correctly, I have rarely wanted to go back and change/redo the project. Once I found a spelling error on one of the subtitles, and once I found some other minor error, which I corrected before deleting the project. I have probably created several hundred iDVD projects, and I have not found the need to redo them. If I need another DVD of any project, I just burn from the disk image file, using Disk Utility.