18.6. Archiving Your ProjectOrdinarily, iDVD doesn't store any videos , photos, or sounds in your iDVD project file. It remains a tiny, compact file that stores only pointers to those files elsewhere on your hard drive. That's why, if you delete or move one of those media files, iDVD will mildly freak out. (See page 447 in that case.) In previous versions of iDVD, you couldn't transfer a project from one Mac to another for this very reason. And that meant that you couldn't design a DVD on one Mac (one that lacked a DVD burner ), and then burn it on another. You also couldn't back up your project file, content that you'd included all of its pieces. Fortunately, Apple packed a solution into iDVD 5. The Archive Project command lets you completely "de-reference" your project, so that the project file contains every file that you've incorporated into your project: movies, photos, sounds, theme components , and DVD-ROM files. Your project file is now completely self-contained, ready for backup or transfer to another computer. It's also now really, really huge. Follow these steps to produce your archive.
Archived projects look like any other projects, in that they use the same . dvdproj extension. But inside, they're very different. For proof, simply open it as a package (page 112). Inside its Contents Resources folder, new folders called Assets and Themes store the extra archived elements (Figure 18-11). Tip: In order to turn your photos and videos into DVD material, iDVD must encode (convert) them into a format called MPEG. Depending on your Preferences settings, iDVD may constantly be working on this time-consuming task, or it may do the job only when you burn the DVD.Either way, an archived project also stores any MPEG files iDVD has created so far. They'll save you time when you burn the DVD, but they'll make the archive's file size balloon up like a blimp.If you'd rather keep the file smaller, choose Advanced Delete Encoded Assets before saving the archive. iDVD removes the remove encoded MPEG filesbut youll pay for this gesture in re-encoding time when you're ready to burn your discs. 18.6.1. Copying the archive to a different MacSuppose that you've designed a DVD using a Mac that lacks a DVD burner. Now, as Apple intended, you've used the Archive command to prepare it for transfer to a Mac that does have a burner. Transfer the archive project using any convenient method: copy it across a network, burn it to a CD or a DVD-ROM, copy it onto an iPod, or whatever. (It's too big for email, of course, but you could instead post it on a Web site for downloading.) The project opens normally on the other machine, with all of its pieces intact and ready to touch up and burn. 18.6.2. Relinking Missing FilesWhen you're working with regular projects (not archived ones), iDVD is pretty helpless if you move or rename any of the photo, movie, or sound files that it expects to use in your DVD (see Figure 18-12). If you encounter the dialog box shown in Figure 18-10 at top, click Find File, navigate to a folder that contains at least one of the files, and click Open. iDVD dutifully inspects that folder for any missing files. Repeat until you've located all the missing files. If you can't find a filesay, you deleted one by accidentthen keep showing iDVD the files you can find. At the end of the process, click Cancel. Your project will open just fine, but you'll see a big black space (Figure 18-12, bottom) where the missing file ought to be. At this point, you can replace it with a file that you do have.
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