Need help getting ipod/phone videos onto a DVD that will play in my dvd player

Question

I have so many videos on my old ipod and my two iphones. I need to get them onto a DVD that will play in my dvd player because they are all the videos I have of my kids when they were babies(bad I know!) So I bought iLife and have iDVD and a macbook pro laptop. Would anyone be willing to write step by step what i need to do to get them onto a DVD as I am very new to all the technology these days. Thank you so much in advance

Answer 1

First you need to get them onto your Mac.  Use image capture and download them to a folder on the Desktop.  Next, you need a video DVD authoring program.  IMO iDVD is the best.
If iDVD was not preinstalled on your Mac you'll have to obtain it by purchasing a copy of the iLife 09 disk from a 3rd party retailier like Amazon.com: ilife 09: Softwareor eBay.com.  Why, because iDVD (and iWeb) was discontinued by Apple over a year ago.
Why iLife 09 instead of 11?
If you have to purchase an iLife disc in order to obtain the iDVD application remember that the iLife 11 disc only provides  themes from iDVD 5-7.  The Software Update no longer installs the earlier themes when starting from the iLIfe 11 disk nor do any of the iDVD 7 updaters available from the Apple Downloads website contain them.
Currently the only sure fire way to get all themes is to start with the iLife 09 disc:
This shows the iDVD contents in the iLife 09 disc via Pacifist:
You then can upgrade from iDVD 7.0.3 to iDVD 7.1.2 via the updaters at the Apple Downloads webpage.
Open iDVD, select a theme and drag the download movie files into the open iDVD window being careful to avoid any drop zones.  Some themes will only allow 6 items per menu, including sub menus, others up to 10 I believe.  Sub menus can always be added to add more movies to the project. This is an example of a project with multiple slideshows/movies and menus:
IMPORTANT:  iDVD is not concerned with the size of the media files in regards to what the iDVD disk can hold.  All that's important is the total playing time of all of the movie files including the menus.  A single layer DVD disc can hold up to 120 minutes of playing time.  A double layered disk 240 minutes.  IMO it's best to go with multiple single layered disks.
Follow this workflow to help assure the best qualty video DVD:
Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image  menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.
To check the encoding mount the disk image, launch DVD Player and play it.  If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding is good.
Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality.  Always use top quality media:  Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.