New to iMovie: What can I expect questions

Question

I recorded 2 days worth of a presentation for work. (About 6 hours) each day. I have imported the footage into iMovie. The Camera/iMovie broke it into about 52 minute clips. I'm currently working on day 2, it has 7 chips. I've figured out how to export the clips as one movie to the media browser. Here are my questions.
What are the recommendations for getting both days onto a DVD?
Can I get both days on a DVD or am I going to need to break it down into shorter segments?
My end users/viewer will probably be viewing this on their computers. And may want to use short clips in other powerpoint presentations. What export format would you recommend? (video size,compression,...) and other detailed recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
As I write this post. I started exporting one 52min clip via quicktime the progress bar started out with 5.5hours of time remaining. My questions is this reasonable?
Also, if there are websites that have these type of helpful insights/suggestions links to them would be appreciated.
I guess what I'm looking to do is to get the video that I shot onto a dvd disk in a format the my coworkers can view/use and minimize the time that it takes to get it there is my goal.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Paul Conaway wrote:
I recorded 2 days worth of a presentation for work. (About 6 hours) each day...
.. what I'm looking to do is to get the video that I shot onto a dvd disk in a format the my coworkers can view/use and minimize the time that it takes to get it there is my goal.
so, a videoDVD, as iDVD produces, is NOT your goal ( ? ) .. videoDVDs are final delivery, end-of-the-road, not meant for further processing..
but..
you ask for the 'universal' video format.. which is, anyone remembering the beta/vhs wars?, not invented yet..
you haven't told us the format of source.. ? miniDV/Standard.. ? HiDef? AVCHD? .. depending on that info, we can give advice for a 'faster' export.
and, you haven't told us, what format your co-workers can handle? video-format.. powerpoint is no video format, nor avi and mov are formats (these are containers...); we need dv, h264, mpeg4, .. something like that as answer ..
just to mention: 1 hour dv 'native' is ~13GBs data.. so, DVD is perhaps the wrong media.. using a 'better' compressor as h264 allows much more to fit on one dataDVD, but, as you noticed already, means hours or encoding.. (btw: your Mac needs 20-40GBs free internal to handle encoding.. going under means slowing down the process dramatically .... ).
do they need 'fullsized' or is e.g. 320x240 allowed (=reduces file size dramatically)
.. so, a few Qs, now it's your part to answer..