Humongous iMovie file to iDVD

I have a 23.56 GB movie (onlt 24 minutes worth). I know iDVD just uses the iMovie file and adds the themes, etc.
What do I have to do to get the project down to a manageable size? What happens if I share the movie over to iDVD?
Am I going to have to record the movie onto the miniDV camcorder and then put it back in iMovie?
Any suggestions? I want to get this GB hog finished and burned to a DVD.

Hi RiverLover!
Panic not!
iDVD compresses the movie by about 4:1, and in any case does not care about project size, only length, which is maximum 2 hours including menues, themes etc.
You are well within that limit, so just go for it!
But instead of 'share' I recommend doing the following: Save your iMovie project and close iMovie. Open iDVD, name your new project, and from the File menu scroll down to Import. In the sidemenu select Video. That opens your Movie Folder, where you can select the iMovie project in question, which then zips straight into iDVD.

Similar Messages

Using Multiple iMovie files in iDVD

After how quickly I learned to use iMovie, I'm quite upset with how difficult it is to do what I want in iDVD. Here's the issue:
My parents went on a trip last year and took a lot of video (over 9 hours). Over the past few months, I've pared this down to just under 2 1/2 hours. My sister, who is a journalist, at one point suggested extracting all the audio to make it easier to edit. I'm not sure how much easier this made it, but I did it nonetheless. This made the file just over 50GB, and it was so large that the audio was choppy when I tried to play it as one big file. So I had to cut the movie into 12 files of 10-15 minutes each and finish the editing.
The point is that now I want to make a DVD out of this, but iDVD won't let me re-combine my 12 files into one big movie with separate chapters. It wants me to have 12 separate movies, each with 3-4 scenes (and even getting it to show all 12 "Play movie" and "Select Scenes" buttons on the menu page is difficult).
Basically what I want is to show iDVD that after it plays scene 4 from file 1, it should go to scene 1 of file 2, not back to the main menu. This should of course continue until all 12 files are done. I also want the "Scene Selection" menu to include all 40-50 scenes instead of having 12 different "Scene Selection" menus, but so far as I can tell, there's no way to add something so simple as a "next" button! If I could do this, then the main menu would have only two buttons (play movie and select scenes) instead of 24.
Is there any way to make iDVD understand that these 12 files are really one movie without having to combine them all together again in iMovie? Even doing that would require me to purchase an external hard drive, since the separate files are now 60GB and I only have 47GB free space... and I don't want to paste one file into another and then immediately delete it (which I know would allow me to combine all files without need of extra space) since this leaves me with no back up if something goes wrong during the pasting of these large 4-5GB files.
Or does someone know of a different, free, iMovie-compatible (so I don't have to remake all my chapter titles) program that lets me do what I want for myself?

I agree with everything that F Shippey said.
For future reference, I believe that your problem started when you extracted all of the audio from your video files. When you did that, you created several audio files. The number, not the size, of audio files likely is what caused that choppy playback that in turn moved you to cut up your movie into 12 files. That made a mess, because when you exported to iDVD you were stuck with 12 movies that you cannot not combine in iDVD. Of course, you had no way of knowing that extracting the audio into several clips would cause the choppiness. (The choppiness will be only on playback, not in your final product.) You would have had to have been reading the iMovie forum for a couple of months, where audio stutter and skipping have been frequently discussed. The next time around I would suggest that you leave the audio embedded in the video and not extract it. Embedded audio does not seem to cause stutter on playback. Also, in your iMovie preferences, set your playback quality to Standard (smoother) playback, and that might help.
If your sister or friend has an apple computer with some extra disk space, you could back up your movie to that computer using a firewire connection. But external drives are so inexpensive now, you might consider buying an Apple formatted external drive for yourself. (A windows formatted one will not work.) You can always use more storage space even after you are done with this project.
Sorry for all your trouble here. We've all gone through that frustration at one time or other as we learn our way through these movie programs. The good news is that you've done nothing that isn't correctible. Some folks lose their entire project, which increases the suicide rate considerably.

Can't drag and drop iMovie files into iDVD project

I created a bunch of iMovie projects, went through the share/media browser process. They show up as icons in iDVD but when I try to drag and drop them, I don't get the green plus sign and they don't drop. I've tried both widescreen and standard settings, in both iMovie and iDVD, matching them up - still won't drop.

What's the path to the file? Is it on an external drive? A network drive? A mapped drive? Can you try copying the file to your desktop and dragging it from there?
It's on an external e-sata drive. No problem accessing the file from within Premiere. Just can't drop it into Encoder. Doesn't work if I drag to desktop and try from there either.
Are you dragging it in from Windows Explorer? If not, then what app are you dragging from?
Yes, from Explorer.
Are you dragging the actual clip or a shortcut to it?
Actual clip.
Have you tried importing via File > Add Source...? [Double-clicking a blank spot in the Queue gets you to the same Open dialog.]
Yep, tried that. No luck. Double clicking and adding didn't work either.
Definitely only seems to be QT files. Have tried H264 files from 7D camera and ProRes files. No luck. Files that are MP4 work fine.

Poor image quality using iMovie 8 or iDVD after importing DV file via FW

Hello,
i am a complete newby and asking for help. I have bought a Panasonic NV-GS320EG-S miniDV Camcorder. First i connected it via S-Video to my Pioneer Plasma which worked fine.
I have connected the camcorder via Firewire to my iMac 20/2,4 GHz, camcorder will launch import window, streaming works but in iMovie the image quality is already rather poor. I can cut files and all but after using Import film and burning it with latest Toast, picture quality is even worse, that means colors are natural but no sharpness, lots of shivering lines as soon as the angle is moving.
I've tried to import directly into iDVD with the direct transfer function for Firewire which works technically as well but the result is mainly the same, when i burn the DVD the picture quality gets far worse than via S-Video connection.
Last thing i tried is importing to iMovie, importing for media browser and reopening file in iDVD which burns the DVD later, all that works technically fine, but the image result remains absolutely poor, my wife meant inacceptable...
Any ideas what that could be??? I've always imported and exported the film with the largest picture mode possible...

I am using the Panasonic HDC-SD5 camcorder which records in AVCHD.
I also have a JVC miniDV camcorder.
The following is available in iMovie 08 help:If the larger sizes are not available, the original project media isn’t large enough to render in that size. The largest media size used in the project determines the final movie sizes you can render.
Tiny: Always 176 by 144 pixels.
Mobile: Always 480 by 272 pixels.
Medium: Varies in size from 640 by 480 pixels (standard aspect ratio) to 640 by 360 pixels (widescreen), depending on the size of the media in your project.
Large: Always 960 by 540 pixels (widescreen). No large size is rendered if your original video isn’t high definition (HD).

Why Does idvd take my 26.2gb imovie file and compress it so small?

Please help. I've created a 17+ minute long imovie file that is 26.2gb. When I view the file information in idvd it says that it's only 0.6gb.
I've already burned a test copy and it looked way too compressed. Like a bad jpg file. From idvd, I burned 'best quality' to a disc image and toasted it. I know that idvd decides who to do the compression in some complex way, but is there another method to not have so much compression?
Thanks...

Robert,
DV (as normally exported from iMovie to iDVD) runs
about 13 GB per hour. You say your content is 17
minutes and 26.GB - what CODEC did you use?
DVDs are in MPG-2 compressed format. In Best Quality
mode iDVD will take 120 minutes of DV content and
compress it to about 4 GB. So 17 minutes of content
could be about .6 GB.
F Shippey
Thanks for your reply. I didn't pick a codec. I just clicked create idvd from imovie and it did it for me. I've made at least 10 other dvds and haven't seen this much loss of quality before. I'm just not sure why...
0.6 was project size and I guess your math is right, but I've very disappointed with quality.
Thanks,
Bob

How to extract iMovie files from an archived iDVD project

Hi,
After archiving an iDVD project which contained several individual iMovies to my back up hard disk I deleted all of the individual files on my internal HD to free some space.
Query: Is it possible to extract an individual iMovie file from the archived project for future editing revealing all of the transitions, audio tracks, etc back in iMovie ?
I have used 'show package contents' and can see the individual movies as Quick Time files but when I load these into iMovie all I get is the whole movie as one single clip.
I suspect the answer is once it's archived I cannot retrieve the iMovie files ?
Any help appreciated. Many thanks.
iMac G5 20" 2.0GHz 1Gb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.4) eMac 1GHz 512Mb RAM

...I ..can see the individual movies as Quick Time files but when I load these into iMovie all I get is the whole movie as one single clip. I suspect the answer is once it's archived I cannot retrieve the iMovie files ?
that is correct: hitting "export" or share in iM creates a single movie(file); what you have in mind is the imovie project (e.g. where you can change titles, transitions etc)... to make this accessible you need to backup that iM folder/package (the one with a star)... these files are for sure much bigger = containing more data...

I have created an iMovie file and have created an iDVD menu file. I am now ready to burn a DVD. But my superdirve is broken. If I put my files on a mac without iMovie or iDVD, can I burn my DVD with Toast 11?

I have created an iMovie file and have created an iDVD menu file. I am now ready to burn a DVD. But my superdirve is broken. If I put my files on a mac without iMovie or iDVD, can I still burn my DVD with Toast 11?

no need for Toast ..
tell iDVD to create a disk-image
transfer dmg to othe Mac
launch the Disk Utility, burn that dmg .......

Demuxing error right at the end of the iDVD process - iMovie file bad?

Hello!
I am getting a demuxing error right at the end of the iDVD process. I am posting here because one comment I received is that the issue could be the iMovie file?
I am using:
QT 7.6.2
iMovie 6.0.3
iDVD 7.0.4
OSX 10.5.7
Are these compatible?
All my "apps" are on a 10K main drive, the files on another 7.5k - have been using this for two months with no problems.
It is a big project pulling a number of clips from 4 imported VHS (I have been doing this successfully for years). I do a lot of "split clip of video head" to distinguish the clips.
The first project using about 25% of content worked fine creating a VIDEO_TS file (I always use pro quality setting). The second project trying to use another ~25% gave the aforementioned errors. One symptom is went I begin to create DVD process, the Time Remaining is 5+ hours, which is higher than normal. After about 20mins processing it drops down to the usual 2hr or so.
I create the iDVD project first, then import video.
To resolve: I am making sure I dont have index points close to anything etc., reinstalled both apps, fix this and that, removed pref file, themes, ALL the fixes I could find on all the discussions.
I even exported all the project clips as one .dv file, didnt split at video head, just put index points, and entered into new iMovie project, and started over. No good.
How can I tell if the iMovie file is bad?
Help - thoughts?

It might be that you have mixed audio formats in your movie, one or more of which is incompatible with iMovie/iDVD.
Make a copy of your movie and try using the free download Streamclip to demux to aiff. Drag the copy of your movie into the Streamclip window and then File > Demux to Aiff.
Don't know if that will work, but it is worth a try.

I started to publish an iMovie project in iDVD but it failled .... the mesage was start up disk needsmore space. deleate files to make more space. how can I do that, please? in help menue thre are no entris on start up... Thank you VERY much. Michael

I started to publish an iMovie project in iDVD but it failled .... yhe mesage was start up disk needs more space. delete files to make more space. how can I do that, please? in help menue tehre are no entris on start up... Thank you VERY much. Michael

Startup disc is Macintosh HD. If your HD is getting near full capacity you'll need to offload some files to an external drive or drives.
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
How to free up my disk space:
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

Import files into iDVD from iMovie OR export files from iMovie to iDVD?

I've been told it is better to import iMovie projects into iDVD (within iDVD) rather than exporting from iMovie to iDVD within iMovie. I was told that iDVD does a better job of rendering things than iMovie. Is this true because this is not the instructions given in the iMovie tutorial.

Not sure what advice you have been given and how you have interpreted it.
You are of course referring to im6 here since you can't drag projects from im08 to iDVD.
I don't make many DVD's anymore and may well be wrong here but I'm not aware that dragging an im6 project to iDVD is any different than using share/iDVD and I'm wondering if the advice relates to exporting from im6 and then importing the exported movie into iDVD which is indeed a different workflow.

Moving an imovie file from one mac to another

My mac says it's too big to burn the file onto a disk and I don't have a DVD burner. So I've been trying to move the file to my friends mac. I've tried to export the movie and made it a DVD project and burned it as just a normal data file but when i try to open it onto my friends computer there are missing components. Now I've given up i just want the imovie to be on my friends computer.

Welcome to the forums.
The iDVD projects don't transfer because they are not self-contained -- they are drawing information from the iMovie projects. If you Shared/Exported from iMovie to Full-Quality Quicktime, and the resulting file was bigger than 4.5ish gigs, then some options (rather than a data DVD) are:
- connect your two Macs with Firewire or Ethernet and transfer the Quicktime file (I have a small Ethernet network that was very easy to set up).
- use an external hard drive to transport the Quicktime file.
- use Quicktime Pro (or similar) to break up the large Quicktime file into pieces that will fit on a DVD (I think Roxio's Toast 8 automatically splits files across multiple media).
The Quicktime file will be smaller (perhaps dramatically smaller) than the iMovie files, and it will be self-contained. Perhaps do a search in the forum and see if there are some other ideas for transferring video files/iMovie projects between computers.
John

I am trying to send an iMovie project to iDVD and I keep getting the following error msg. "Unable to prepare subject for publishing: The project could not be prepared for publishing because an error occurred. (-43)"

I am trying to send an iMovie project to iDVD and I keep getting the following error msg. "Unable to prepare subject for publishing: The project could not be prepared for publishing because an error occurred. (-43)"

Check out this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1421870
It may mean you either your Event or your Project. Have you moved any of the files in the Finder by any chance? That error may come up if you moved anything outside of iMovie. Do you get an error message when you choose Share>Export to iMovie (choose medium size) and save it to the Desktop? If you can export it to the desktop, you can pull that file into iDVD separately and still make it work.

Best practice for exporting from iMovie '08 to iDVD

I am looking to find out what is the best practice for exporting from iMovie '08 to iDVD. I have read the other postings that give the basic howto (export to Media Browser then select the video in iDVD). However, my question is a little more technical. I have 1080i HD projects. I am interested in burning them to DVD in the best possible quality. What setting should I be using when I publish to Media Browser?
I am wondering about quality loss due to more than one conversion/compression. I suspect that when I export to the Media Browser then this is occurring. If I am not mistaken iMovie is using something like H.264 for this. Then, when I run iDVD I suspect it will it do another conversion/compression, I think to get to MPEG2. Not only could this result in a loss of quality but also it will take extra time. I am interested to know what others think about this.
Finally, I am looking to create DVDs for a lot of video. I am wondering if there are any USB or firewire hardware devices out there that could speed up the compression. I use the Elgato Turbo.264 when I want to encode to H.264 but I wonder if there is something similar for DVD creation.
Thanks in advance.

the standards for videoDVD are 720x480, and usually mpeg2 encoded..
so, your HiDef project HAS to be 'downsampled' somehow..
I would Export with Qucktime/apple intermediate => which is the 'format' your project is allready, and you avoid any useless 'inbetween encoding'..
iDVD will 'swallow' this huge export file - don't mind: iDVD cares for length, not size.
iDVD will then convert into DVD-standards..
you can 'raise' quality, by using projects <60min - this sets iDVD automatically to highest technical possible bitrate
hint: judge pic quality on a DVDplayer + TV.. not on your computer (DVDs are meant for TVdelivery)

Can not open iMovie files

I have a strange problem. I just got a new Intel iMac. I moved all my files over tot he new system, no problem. On my old system, I kept some files out side of the users folder so my wife and I can both access them (iTunes, iDVD, iMove, etc)
I have been running like this years with out issue. But the new system seems to have problems with this arrangement. The problem is limited to iMovie, and limited to my wife account (not scoring any point here ).
I keep these “shared” project files in users folder, but outside of any home folder. So the folders look like this.
~\users\iMove
~\users\iDVD
~\users\iTunes
Also under users are our individual home folders
~\users\sunil
~users\tish
When my wife tries to open a iMove file she gets an error that the disk is full or she does not have permission to write to this folder. This only happens with iMovie files, the others open fine. From my login I can open iMovie files, as well as other files.
I have checked the permission on the users folder, the iMovie folder and she seems to have rights to read and write to them. Additionally we are both Admins on the system.
Here is what I have tried already (none resolved the issue)
• Repaired permissions on the volume
• Verified permission, she has read/write to the folder as well are the files she is trying to open, she is also an admin.
• Optimized the system (onyx)
• Reapplied permission, including subfolders.
• Moved files to another location.
• Moved files into her home folder
• Moved files into the shared folder.
My Config
Intel iMac 1.5GB
250GB HDD (125GB) free
OSX 10.4.7
iLife 06
Any ideas?

Sorry, I don't have any firm answers for this situation, but I can offer some guesses.
iMovie seems particularly sensitive to permission issues. Problems can occur when moving projects from startup disk to startup disk, as you've apparently done.
The issues are complicated by the fact that an iMovie 5/iMovie 6 project is a package, a special kind of file that behaves like a folder. The package contains other files and folders.
When you use the Get Info window to assign permissions to the package, the new permissions aren't necessarily applied to the contents of the package. Those items retain their old permission settings, which I suspect is what causes the problem for iMovie. (The Get Info window lets us apply new permissions to the CONTENTS of a folder, but that doesn't work on a package.)
To change permissions inside the package, try this:
• In the Finder, create a duplicate of the project. Work on the copy.
• Select the name of copy and remove the suffix ".iMovieProject" from the name. Tell the dialog window that opens to accept the change. The iMovie project icon will disappear, replaced by the normal Finder folder icon. The project will now behave like a folder.
• Select the folder and use the Get Info window to set permissions for the folder, then press the "Apply to enclosed items" button to apply those permissions to the items it contains.
• Re-select the name of the folder and add back the suffix ".iMovieProject". When you accept the change, the folder icon will change back into an iMovie project icon.
• Try opening the project in iMovie. With luck, everything will now work.
When using an external disk to store projects, another solution is to use the Get Info window (for the disk) to set the disk to ignore permissions.
Karl

How can I copy a very large iMovie file (10.08 GB) onto a disc?

I have an imovie project of my daughters wedding and I would like to put it on a disc for her, however, it is so big ( 10.08GB) that I can't find a DVD disc big enough. I bought a 16GB USB drive thinking I could copy it to that but my iMac says that it is too big to copy. Can anyone help please?
Also is it possible to save an imove file as a different type of file? if so, how do i do it?

If you want your daughter to be able to play the movie in a DVD player, you need DVD authoring software. Get a copy of iDVD (discontinued but you can still find copies of the old iLife09 or iLife11 package that include iDVD) or Roxio Toast.
Export your iMovie project to a QuickTime movie file, then import the resulting QT movie into iDVD or Toast and create your DVD. They will encode & compress your movie to fit on a DVD and be playable in a DVD player.
Note: you can fit up to about 2 hours of video on a single-layer DVD disk and up to about 4 hours on a dual-layer DVD disk. The iMovie project file size is not the correct measure here, the length in time of the video is.

Humongous iMovie file to iDVD

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