15.7. Phase 5: Burning Your DVD Once your scene-selection screen is looking pretty good, you're almost ready to burn the DVD. Before you go using up a blank disc, however, you should test it to make sure that it works on the virtual DVD player known as the Macintosh screen. 15.7.1. Previewing Your Project iDVD's Preview button lets you test your menu system to avoid unpleasant surprises . When you click it, iDVD enters Preview mode, which simulates how your DVD works on a standalone set-top DVD player. You even get a simulated remote control to help you navigate through your DVD's menus , movies, and so on, as shown in Figure 15-16. To return to iDVD's edit mode, click Exit, Stop (the filled square), or reclick Preview.
Tip: Instead of using the arrow buttons on the remote to highlight and "click" screen buttons , you can just use your mouse. You'll find it's not only less clumsy, but also a decent indication of how your DVD will play back on computers that can play DVDs.
15.7.2. Previewing Widescreen Footage iDVD can create widescreen DVDs, just like the ones you rent from Blockbusterthat is, movies that produce a wide, rectangular picture to fit today's wide, rectangular high-definition (and enhanced-definition) TV sets. The key is to make sure that your widescreen movie begins life as a widescreen iMovie project, and then hand it off to iDVD from there. In fact, iDVD-created discs even add letterbox bars automatically when they're played on traditional, squarish sets. That's the effect, in fact, that you see in Preview mode (Figure 15-16). The words "Widescreen Preview" are telling you, in effect, "This is what I'll look like when played on a regular TV. When I'm played on a widescreen set, these gray letterbox bars won't appear." chapter 15: from imovie to idvd
Note: If you don't see the words "Widescreen Preview" during preview, on the other hand, something has gone wrong. iDVD won't treat the footage as widescreen, and will squeeze it horizontally when played on a standard TV. In that event, try reimporting it from iMovie.
 | Figure 15-16. To "click" your onscreen buttons, use the arrows on the remote to highlight the one you want, and then click the Enter button in the middle of the remote. Click the \< or >\ buttons to skip back or forward by one chapter, or hold them down to rewind or fastforward. | |
15.7.3. Maximum DVD Playback Time In iDVD 5, you don't have to make the Hobson's choice between 60 minutes of video at best quality and 90 minutes at lower quality, as you did with earlier versions. Apple has thoughtfully raided its own professional DVD creation software (DVD Studio Pro) to bless iDVD with one of its best features: Now any DVD you burn can contain up to 120 minutes of footage at best quality. To see the on/off switch for this feature, choose iDVD  Preferences. On the General panel (Figure 15-17), youll see two options under Encoding Settings. Both produce video quality that's superior to what you got from early versions of iDVD: -
Best Quality. This option gives you 120 minutes of video at best quality. The tradeoff : It takes a lot longer to burn your DVD, as the program performs quite a bit of analysis before burning. -
Best Performance. Your video will look fantastic, and your Mac will burn the disc relatively quickly. On the downside, the DVD you burn this way can contain a maximum of 60 minutes of video.  | Figure 15-17. iDVD 5 offers two ways to compress the video on your masterpiece. Choose Best Performance for up to 60 minutes of excellent -looking footage or Best Quality for up to 120 minutes of video.
When iDVD's work is over, the DVD that pops out of your Mac will come delightfully close to looking and working like a professionally mastered, commercial DVD from Blockbuster. There will, however, be one giveaway: It won't be over two hours long. | |
POWER USERS' CLINIC
Best Quality/Best Performance: How It Works | | When a DVD-burning program goes to work, it faces an important decision. Given that a blank single-layer DVD contains a limited amount of space (4.7 GB or so), how much picture-quality data can it afford to devote to each frame of video? The Best Performance option in iDVD 5 makes that decision like this: "I'll allot a fixed, predetermined amount of data to each frame of videoenough to make it look greatno matter how many minutes of video my human master has included. A lot of the DVD might wind up being empty if, for example, the project contains less than an hour of video. But at least the burning process will go quickly, and the video will look really great." The Best Quality option takes a different approach. It says, "I'm going to use every micron of space on this blank DVD. I'm going to analyze the amount of video my human has included, and divide it into the amount of space available on the DVD. The amount of information used to describe an individual frame of video will vary from project to project, and it will take me a lot longer to burn the DVD because I'm going to have to do so much analysis. But at least my human will get two hours of great-looking video per disc." Incidentally, if you'd like some insight into how iDVD is thinking of the project you're working on at the moment, open the Customize drawer and click the Status button. This panel shows you how close you are to filling up the DVD with your movies, menus, and other elements. |
In fact, iDVD prefers to burn 60-minute DVDs, because they have the best quality. The instant you try to add the 61st minute of footage to your project, you see the message shown in Figure 15-18. You can change your settings as suggested, or delete some video from the project to make it fit within 60 minutes again.  | Figure 15-18. iDVD is telling you that you've put more than 60 minutes of footage onto this DVD. To fit all this video onto your disc, you'll need to use the General Preferences (c-comma) window to switch from Best Performance (60 minutes max) to Best Quality. | |
A disc that exceeds 60 minutes uses a lower bit ratethat is, it uses less data to describe the video, which allows iDVD to fit more information on the same size disc. (For example, 60-minute iDVD projects depict video using 8 megabits [Mbps] per second; 90-minute projects use 5 Mbps; 120-minute discs use 4 Mbps.) FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Hollywood, DVD Length, and You | | The Hollywood DVDs I rent from Blockbuster are sometimes much more than two hours long. How come I'm limited to 120 minutes in iDVD? Most Hollywood DVDs use dual-layer technologydiscs that are recorded in two layers of video data. The extra layer increases the DVD's capacity from 4.37 GB to nearly 8 GB. When you watch one of these movies, you may even be able to spot the moment when the DVD player's laser jumps from one layer to the other. You'll see the movie pause for a moment during playback, always at the same place in the movie. Unfortunately, iDVD can't burn dual-layer discs. It will take several years for the price of dual-layer burners and discs to come down and for Apple to update iDVD to handle the new discs. Hollywood uses another trick, too: variable bit-rate (VBR) encoding. When creating a DVD movie for commercial distribution, professional DVD authors use advanced software to analyze each piece of the movie, using more or less data to describe each frame depending on how much action is visible. The disc stores the same amount of data as a constant bit-rate recording like the ones iDVD makes, but conserves data for when the video needs it the most. The trouble is, VBR encoding takes a very long time. The software often requires several passes through the whole movie to analyze it and optimize the data. Apple figures that iDVD fans would just as soon not wait all night to see their finished productions . If you feel that iDVD's 120-minute limitation is standing between you and a glorious career in filmmaking , you could always upgrade to a program like Apple's DVD Studio Pro. It can squeeze up to six hours of video onto a single 4.37 GB disc (at marginal quality, of course). It can also export files for those 8 GB DVDs that can be produced at a professional replication plant. |
The tradeoff, of course, is video quality. Higher bit rates generally provide clearer and more accurate picture reproduction than lower bit rates do, especially in action scenes. If the bit rate of a DVD is very low, you get blocky-looking, unclear video. But iDVD's " lowest -quality" mode4 Mbpsis still above the minimum bit rate needed for clear video for home movies. Don't constrain yourself needlessly to the 60-minute format until you've given the Best Quality format a try. 15.7.4. Burning Your Project When you've finished editing your disc and testing it thoroughly, it's time to proceed with your burn. This is the moment you've been working toward.
Note: The following steps walk you through the process for burning with an internal Apple SuperDrive (or equivalent). If you want to burn your discs to an external drive, see page 450.
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Make sure iDVD is ready to burn. Part of iDVD's job is to encode (convert) your movies, music, and pictures into the MPEG-2 format required by standard DVDs. Therefore, it's a good idea to open the Customize Drawer, click the Status button at the top, and make sure that the word "Done" appears next to each asset. (Apple uses the term "asset" as shorthand for "picture, movie, soundtrack, or what have you.") See Figure 15-19.
Tip: If iDVD doesn't say "Done" for all assets in the list, and yet it doesn't seem to be processing them automatically, make sure you've turned on background compression. Choose iDVD Preferences, click the General button, and turn on "Enable background encoding."The only time youd want to turn off background encoding is when you discover that it's slowing down your Mac as you work.
 | Figure 15-19. Look for the word "Done" to the right of each asset. If a status bar appears instead, let iDVD 5 continue encoding until "Done" appears. There's no further action you must take. iDVD encodes in the background without any intervention. | | -
Check your Motion setting. Remember, the Motion button at the bottom of the window determines whether your finished DVD will have animated menus, buttons, and backgrounds, and whether music will play. If the Motion button is green, you'll get all this stuff. If you click it so that it turns gray, motion and audio features won't appear on the final disc. (This button has no effect on regular movies and slideshowsonly the ones on menu screens.) -
Choose File Save Project. Or press  -S. -
Check your disk space. As iDVD rolls along, it needs some extra working space on your hard drive. Be sure there's plenty of free spaceat least the amount indicated by the "Project size" statistic on the Status pane of the Customize drawer. If your hard drive doesn't have enough space, do some cleanup. -
Click the Burn button twice. See Figure 15-20.  | Figure 15-20. Top: The first click on the gray, closed Burn button "opens" it, revealing a throbbing yellow-and-black button. The second click begins the burning process.
Bottom: During the burning process, iDVD keeps you posted on its progress. | | -
Insert a blank DVD when the Mac asks for it. Be sure you're using the correct kind of blank DVD for your DVD burner . For example, don't attempt to burn 1x or 2x blanks at 4x speed. Recent Macs can burn either DVD-R or DVD+R blanks (note the minus and the plus, denoting two incompatible blank DVD formats), as well as their re-recordable, more expensiveRW and +RW counterparts. -
Wait. It takes iDVD quite awhile to process all of your audio, video, and photos, encoding them into the proper format for a DVD. Your wait time depends on how complex your project is and how fast your Mac is. Apple says that you should allow two or three minutes of processing per minute of video in your movie, but burning times vary significantly. After a while, or a bit more than a while, a freshly burned DVD automatically ejects from your SuperDrive.
Note: After your new DVD pops out, a message says, "Your disc has been created. If you want to create another DVD, insert another disc now." Sure enough, if you want to spin out multiple copies of your project, you can insert another blank DVD right then, so that iDVD can record it while it's on a roll.Otherwise, click Done.
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