Section B.11. DVD Problems

B.11. DVD Problems

iDVD 6 has not exactly earned a reputation for rock-sold stability. (Be sure to check the note in Section B.3.2.)

If you're having problems beyond general mysterious glitchiness, may the following hints help you along.

B.11.1. Exporting to iDVD Fails (Error -43)

As noted here and there throughout this book, you can extend iMovie's effects, transitions, and title styles by installing plug-ins from other companies. If you haven't updated your plug-ins to iMovie 6specific versions, you've found the problem; they can prevent you from exporting to iDVD.

B.11.2. Video and Audio Aren't In Sync

On some longer movie projects (20 minutes or more), everything plays fine in iMovie, but when you turn your project into a QuickTime movie or burn it to a DVD, the audio and video grow slowly, horrifyingly out of sync. The longer the movie plays, the farther apart they drift .

The most important thing to check is the audio recording settings of your camcorder. As described at the beginning of this chapter, most camcorders come set to record 12-bit audio , which lies at the heart of the video/audio drift problem. Change it to 16-bit audio, using the camcorder's own menus . (If you use a video converter like the Formac Studio or Dazzle Hollywood Bridge, make sure it, too, is set to import 16-bit audio, not 12-bit.)

If it's too late for that step, here are two possible fixes.

B.11.2.1. The back-to-camcorder solution

Set your camcorder to 16-bit audio. Once editing is complete, export the entire movie to your camcorder (see Chapter 11).

Then start a new iMovie project file and import the camcorder's footage right back into your Mac (Chapter 4). This time, you should be able to export the project without the drift.

B.11.2.2. The start-over solution

If your video was shot as one long clipa 60-minute lecture, for exampleit may help to set your iMovie preferences to limit the length of imported clips to 5 minutes or less. (Choose iMovie Preferences, click Import, use the "Limit scene length to __ minutes control.) Re-import the video from the camera to iMovie.

B.11.2.3. The export-as-QuickTime solution

For this trick, you'll export the project as a high-quality QuickTime movie.

Chapter 12 offers details on exporting iMovie projects as QuickTime movies. For this particular task, though, these steps guide you through the proper settings:

1. Choose Share QuickTime .

   The Share options sheet appears.

2. From the "Compress movie for" pop-up menu, choose Expert. Then click Share .

   The Save Exported Movie dialog box appears.

3. From the Export pop-up menu, choose "Movie to QuickTime Movie." Click Options .

   The Movie Settings window opens.

4. Turn on Video and click the Settings button .

   Now the Compression Settings dialog box shows up.

5. From the pop-up menu, choose DV/DVCPRO - NTSC. (For PAL videos , choose DVCPRO - PAL.) Specify Best quality, 29.97 frames per second (for PAL, 25). Click OK .

   You return to the Movie Settings window.

6. Click Size .

   You meet the tiny Export Size Settings dialog box.

7. Click "Use custom size." For a standard DV project, set the Width to 720 and Height to 480; for a DV Widescreen project, set Width to 869 and Height to 480 .

   The numbers are slightly different if you're working in the PAL format. For standard DV, set the width and height to 768 and 576; for widescreen, use 1040 and 576.

8. Click OK. Back in the Movie Settings window, turn on the Sound checkbox, and then click on the Settings button .

   The Movie Settings sound box opens.

9. From the pop-up menu, choose None. Set the Rate to 48.00 kHz, Size to 16 Bit, and "Use" to Stereo .

   The resulting summary box should look like Figure B-3.

   Figure B-3. Here's how to properly set up for an export of a perfect QuickTime copy of your movie.

   

10. Click OK, and OK again .

    You return to the Save dialog box.

11. Name the movie, choose a folder location for saving it, and click Save .

If all went well, you now have a very large, perfect- quality QuickTime movie on your hard drive.

If your project contains no DVD chapter markers, drag this exported movie into the iDVD window to place it therewith no audio-video sync problems, if the programming gods are smiling. If the project does require chapters, import the exported movie to a new iMovie project, add chapters, and then send it to iDVD as usual.

B.11.3. Photos Look Jaggy and Awful on DVD

All over the world, every single day, more Mac fans try to turn their digital photos into DVD slideshows using iMovieand find out that the photos look terrible . What makes this syndrome so baffling is that the photos probably began life with super high resolution and look fantastic in Photoshop or iPhoto. But once they arrive on a DVD, the pictures look lousy.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How to Save Your Project for Future Generations

OK, I'm done editing my iMovie. How do I back up my project to reclaim the hard drive space ?

That's an excellent question. Considering the hours you've probably spent building your masterpiece, preserving a full-quality copy, preferably in editable form, is probably extremely important.

(As you know, exporting the movie to QuickTime, cellphones, the Web, or VHS entails a huge deterioration in video and audio quality. Surprisingly, even burning to DVD involves losing some of the original quality, because the video is stored on the disc in a compressed form.)

In the end, there are only three ways to preserve a movie at its full original quality.

First, you can store it on a hard drive. This method is getting less expensive every day, and offers fast and convenient storage of your entire project. Because you can store your entire project package or folder, you'll be able to re-edit the project next year when iMovie 6 comes out with enhancements you can't resist.

Second, you can use a backup program like Retrospect to copy your project folder onto multiple DVDs (not video DVDs, but DVD-ROMslike glorified blank CDs). It takes a handful of these blanks to store one hour of video. But this solution is certainly cheap. And in a pinch , you'll be able to reconstruct your entire project folder, with full editing capability.

If the project is small enough to fit on a DVD, you can use the Burn Project to Disc command described in Section A.2.8.

Finally, you can send the movie back out to your DV camcorder, as described in Chapter 11. MiniDV tapes have about a 15-year life span, but they store the original video quality, even if you rescue the footage by copying it onto a fresh tape once every 10 years .

You lose the ability to edit your titles and substitute new background music, of course, but you don't lose all editing possibilities. If you ever re-import that movie back to iMovie, most of the clips will still appear as distinct, rearrangeable clips in your Movie Track (because clip boundaries are nothing more than breaks in the originally recorded time code).

(The exception: Clips that you create within iMovie, as opposed to those captured from a camcorder, don't have a time stamp, so they'll re-import as one conjoined clump of scenes.)

It turns out that when you choose Share iDVD in iMovie (the usual way to hand off the project to iDVD), iMovie offers to process any still photosto render them, turning them into what amounts to motionless video."Your movie contains still, slow motion, and/or reverse clips," it says. If you click "Render and Proceed," iMovie does a pretty poor job at converting them into video, resulting in jaggy blockiness. (This conversion is permanent in iMovie. Once it's done, your photos will always look bad in iMovie until you reinsert the originals .)

The solution is to bypass iMovie's low-quality photo-rendering cycle altogether. You can do that in either of two ways.

B.11.3.1. The Ken Burns Method

If you turn your photos into digital video clips, then iMovie doesn't consider them stills any more, and won't attempt to render them. Here's how to do that:

Turn on the Ken Burns Effect checkbox (Section 9.3), configure the pan or zoom settings, then import the image.

After the bright red progress bar finishes its trip across your photo clip, you're left with a very high quality "still" video clip that iMovie won't attempt to process when you hand off to iDVD.

Repeat this process for any other still photos in your movie.

At this point, your still photos are no longer still photos. Clicking the "Create iDVD Project" button is now safe. iMovie will make no attempt to render your stills, because they've already been rendered by the far superior Ken Burns feature.

B.11.3.2. The Drag-into-iDVD Method

The second way to bypass iMovie's still-photo rendering feature is to avoid the Share iDVD command altogether. As you may remember from Chapter 16, theres another way to bring an iMovie movie into iDVD: Drag its title-bar icon right into the iDVD window. See Section 16.3.5 for the proper technique.

If you do that, iMovie's weak photo-rendering software doesn't touch your stillsand iDVD's own, much better rendering software processes them instead. You may find that the Ken Burns technique looks slightly better on some photos, but of course, it's much more work than the drag-into-iDVD method. Either way, though, you'll be delighted with the results.

At disc-burning time, iDVD will perform the photo processing itself, with much better results.