The Status Pane of the Customize Drawer

The meters in the Status pane give information about the size of your project and the progress of background file encoding.

• DVD Capacity: Shows how much space your project currently requires and the maximum space available. A DVD-R can hold approximately 4.3 gigabytes, or around 90 minutes of video. Click on the text to the right of the meter to show how many minutes your project currently takes.

  The Encoder Settings you choose in iDVD preferences will affect how many minutes of video will fit on a disc. See the following page.

  
  

• Motion Menus: Shows how many minutes your motion menus take, out of an allowed maximum of 15 minutes (one gigabyte). The duration total shown includes motion menus, still menus (each still menu uses one second), transitions, and autoplay movies.

• Tracks: Counts how many video tracks and slideshows are used in the project. The maximum number of tracks in a project is 99.

• Menus: Counts how many still menus and motion menus are used in the project. A maximum number of 99 menus is allowed.

• Background Encoding: Shows the progress of iDVD's background file encoding that happens invisibly while you design and build your project (if you enabled background encoding in iDVD preferences).

Movies that you place in an iDVD project must be encoded to a certain format that conforms to official DVD specifications.

If your computer's performance slows down due to so much intense processing, you can choose to turn off background encoding in iDVD Preferences. When you finish your project, iDVD will properly encode the files before burning the project to a disc.