Section 15.1. Why iDVD?

15.1. Why iDVD?

You already know from Chapter 11 that you can export your finished iMovie project back to a good old VHS cassette, one of the world's most sure-fire distribution methods . Anyone who doesn't have a VCR in this day and age probably wouldn't appreciate your cinematic genius anyway.

But preserving your work on a DVD gives you a boatload of benefits:

• DVD blanks are inexpensive. In fact, blank DVDs nowadays are cheaper than VHS tapes.

• DVDs are durable. VHS tapes begin to deteriorate in 10 to 15 years . DVDs, though, are built to lastup to a century or more, if you believe the manufacturers. Store your recordable DVDs in a dark, cool, dry place, avoid flexing them, and they'll last a lifetime. (Your DVD player will stop working before the discs do!)

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  Tip: They'll last, that is, if you stick to buying brand- name blanks like Verbatim and Imation. Cheaper brands don't use the same amount of organic dyes and are more likely to suffer premature deaths.

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• DVDs are compact. You can store your DVD collection in small, convenient DVD jewel boxes or in soft, protective loose-leaf sheathsand you can cram hundreds of them into the space occupied by only 25 video tapes.

• DVDs never need rewinding. No one ever had to pay Blockbuster for not rewinding a DVD. In fact, you can skip around a DVD almost instantaneously using the navigation buttons on your DVD player's remote control.

• DVDs are cheap to ship. DVDs cost less to ship than a VHS tape, and no wonder . They take up less room. They weigh less. They're more rigid and have zero moving parts .

Still, there are reasons to pause before committing your work to DVD. For one thing, homemade DVDs don't work in as many DVD players as commercially pressed discs do. Stick an iDVD production into an older DVD player, and you may see the dreaded "No Disc" message on the TV screen. (In this regard, DVD-RW discsthe ones that you can erase and re-record over and overare worse than DVD-Rs, which you can record on only once.)

DVD players sold since 2002 are generally a safe bet, but check the master player compatibility list at www.videohelp.com if you're ever in doubt. (Some players are fussy about which DVD-R brand discs they'll play, too. Here again, sticking with brand names like Verbatim is your best bet.)

15.1.1. Getting iDVD 5

If you have iMovie HD, that means you also have iDVD 5, because they both come on the same iLife DVD from Apple.

In addition to a DVD burner , iDVD requires a Mac with a 733 MHz G4 or faster processor, plus 256 MB of memory or more preferably a lot more. Few programs rely on computing horsepower as much as iDVD, so faster computers work a lot better than slow ones.

iDVD 5 also requires Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later to run, and 10.3.6 or later to create widescreen DVDs.