Chapter 20. From iMovie to iDVD

iDVD is the software that lets you turn your iMovie movies and iPhoto slideshows into Hollywood-style DVDs that people can watch on their TVs. Visions of Blockbuster may dance in your head, because as you'll see in the following chapters, iDVD 5 is loaded with enhancements that help you make your personal DVD look even more like a commercial Hollywood DVD than ever before.

iDVD lets you add menus , playback controls, and other navigation features to your iMovie movies, resulting in dynamic, interactive DVDs that look amazingly professional. iDVD handles the technology; you control the style.

The software requirement is iDVD. The hardware requirement is a DVD recording drive, preferably an Apple SuperDrive built into your Mac.

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Note: The word is preferably a built-in SuperDrive, because you don't necessarily need one. For starters, you can do the design work on a Mac that doesn't have a DVD burner , and then burn the actual disc on another machine later. That's a great feature in, for example, school computer labs that have 12 Macs but only two that can burn DVDs. (For step-by-step instructions, see Section 22.9.) Furthermore, now you can even use external, non-Apple DVD burners to create DVDs. See Section 22.9.1.

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