It used to be that putting together a DVD project was complex, requiring the DVD author to perform many steps and have a significant amount of knowledge about the underlying technology. iDVD simplifies the process of DVD authoring—it’s as easy as dragging and dropping files into the iDVD window, and iDVD handles encoding the files.
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Remember, you must have access to a computer equipped with Apple’s SuperDrive to write your iDVD project to DVD.
In this chapter, we begin with a look at DVD basics by investigating the way that DVD video works. We then take a look at iDVD, Apple’s revolutionary, easy-to-use DVD-authoring software.
iDVD marks an historic moment in personal computing because, before Apple introduced it in early 2001, the only tools available for people who wanted to make their own DVDs were prohibitively expensive. Not only was the software complex and pricey, but the DVD burners themselves cost more than many computer systems. For example, before iDVD came out, the only available DVD burner, the Pioneer DVR-S201, shown in Figure 30.1, cost about 4,000 U.S. dollars.
By cooperating with a few different companies including Pioneer, Apple was able to introduce a desktop G4 Power Mac model that included a DVD burner, as well as iDVD software, for the same price that just a DVD burner alone cost at the time. This DVD burner, known as the SuperDrive, brought the power of DVD authoring to the masses, giving them the ability to take digital video and make it into DVD video (see Figure 30.2).
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Apple issued an important update for some SuperDrive-equipped computers. This update prevents permanent drive damage when some models of SuperDrive manufactured by Pioneer are used with newer high-speed media. To see whether you need to install this update, follow these steps:
Open the Apple System Profiler application, which can be found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.
Open the Devices and Volumes tab.
Expand the CD-RW/DVD-R item by clicking the disclosure triangle.
Examine the information given. If Pioneer is the vendor, you may need the update. To find out for sure, look at the Product Identification code. For drives with the Product Identification DVR-104, no update is required if the Device Revision number is A227 or higher. For drives with the Product Identification DVR-103, no update is required if the Device Revision number is 1.90 or higher.
If your drive comes from Pioneer and doesn’t have the upgrade in place, go to the Apple Web site (www.apple.com), search for “SuperDrive update,” and then download and install it before attempting to write a DVD.
DVD video is a form of digital video, and much like the way digital video is stored on a computer hard drive, digital video is stored as data files on the DVD disc. When you insert a DVD disc in a player connected to a television, a small computer in the DVD player looks for the DVD video files and displays them on the TV screen.
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A DVD menu is simply a screen that gives you several choices, with selectable buttons of some kind that lead directly to video or to other menus.
When you watch or make a DVD, there are two types of video that you can experience: regular video such as a movie (as seen in Figure 30.3) and video contained in a motion menu.
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A motion menu is simply any screen on a DVD from which you’re making menu choices and something is moving in the background behind the DVD menu. iDVD refers to the video used in motion menus as background video (see Figure 30.4).
One advantage of iDVD is that it enables you to incorporate motion menus in your DVDs by allowing you to choose from various customizable motion menu backgrounds. The creation of motion menus normally can be complex, but iDVD gives you the advantage of motion menus without all the hassle.
To get a better sense of what’s going on under the hood of a DVD, try taking a closer look at a DVD movie that you own or have rented using your Mac as a “DVD microscope.”
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If you recall from Chapter 7, “Using QuickTime and DVD Player,” DVD Player is a program that plays DVDs on your computer desktop.
Insert the DVD in the DVD drive on your Mac.
Wait a few moments. If your Mac automatically launches the DVD player software, either quit out of the software entirely by pressing Command-Q or choose Quit from the DVD Player menu. If the DVD takes up the entire screen, you can move the mouse up to the top of the screen to reveal the menu.
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The first time you insert a DVD into your drive, you will be asked to set a drive region. When set, your DVD drive will automatically read disks encoded for that region. If you should need to play a disc from another region, insert it, and DVD Player will ask whether it should change your region code. Keep in mind, however, that your drive region can only be changed five times following the initial setting. After that, it will keep whichever region settings were made last.
Look on your desktop for the icon that represents the DVD, and double-click to open it (see Figure 30.5).
When the window that represents the DVD opens up, you’ll see a
VIDEO_TSfolder. This same folder is on every DVD that you can watch in a DVD player. If theVIDEO_TSfolder isn’t there, the DVD player won’t understand the disc. Double-click theVIDEO_TSfolder (see Figure 30.6) to open it.When the
VIDEO_TSfolder opens, you might want to choose View, As List to see the files better (see Figure 30.7).
It isn’t particularly important to understand what the individual files in a VIDEO_TS folder do, but it can be interesting to look at things from the perspective of what a DVD player does. At this point, the digital video files within a VIDEO_TS folder have been encoded into MPEG-2 and multiplexed into their final DVD-ready form.
The following list explains what the file extensions (the last three letters of the file) mean for files on a DVD:
IFO (stands for information)—. These files contain the information about the DVD menu screens that a DVD player uses to construct the interactive experience.
BUP (stands for backup)—. These files are simply copies of the IFO files.
VOB (stands for video objects)—. These files are the actual video on the DVD.
The iDVD interface, shown in Figure 30.8, has two distinct parts: the viewing area and the Customize tray. The viewing area is where you can see how your project looks at a given time, but it also acts as work space for arranging items menus and for creating slideshows of still images.
Below the viewing area are seven buttons: Customize, Folder, Slideshow, Motion, Map, Preview, and Burn. Let’s examine what they do.
You might discover that sometimes when you’re working on a DVD project, you want to turn off the motion. (Recall that you can add motion menus with iDVD, and this movement can be distracting while you are trying to design your DVD.) You can turn off motion in menus simply by clicking the Motion button.
If you want a general overview of the structure of your project, click the Map button. A DVD “map” will appear in the viewing area, as shown in Figure 30.9. Double-click an item to go directly to a screen in your project so you can edit it.
As you work on your DVD project, you can test it by clicking the Preview button. This plays the current version of your project as it would appear on a finished DVD, including menus and video clips.
When you are satisfied with your project, you’re ready to burn a DVD disc. You simply click the Burn button to activate it (see Figure 30.10) and then click it again.
When you click the Burn button a second time, the SuperDrive opens so that you can insert your DVD disc.
The Slideshow button allows you to add a series of still photos to a DVD and to choose background music. DVD slideshows are a nice way to share digital pictures, so that people who watch your DVD can see the pictures on their televisions. Just as when you’re working with video clips in iDVD, a slideshow is as easy as dragging and dropping digital pictures into the iDVD window (see Figure 30.11).
When you drag digital pictures into the editing window, you can easily rearrange them and preview the show.
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You may recall from Chapter 23, “Using iPhoto,” that you can easily export a slideshow created in iPhoto to iDVD.
There’s also an option for iDVD to draw arrows on the screen so that when a person views your DVD, there’s a visual reminder to press the arrow keys on the remote to select which slide he wants to see. See Figure 30.12 for an example.
Although you can add individual items (such as movie clips and slideshows) to your DVD menus, you can also create folders in the menu to add a secondary menu in which to add even more movie clips and slideshows. Simply click the Folder button at the bottom of the iDVD window. Double-clicking a folder in the viewing area will open this “submenu” so that you can work with it as you would the top-level menu.
Did you Know?
You’ll know you are in a submenu rather than the main menu if a button marked by an arrow appears in the menu. (Refer to Figure 30.8 for an example.)
When you click the Customize button, the Customize tray opens along the left side of the iDVD window, as you saw earlier in Figures 30.8 and 30.11. The Customize tray consists of several different panes with controls for different tasks. Let’s take a brief look at what you can do in each pane.
The defining characteristic of a DVD is that it gives you the ability to watch digital video interactively on your television. It’s possible to make a DVD disc that goes directly to the video when you put it into a DVD player, but most DVDs have some kind of menu.
Apple has put together a number of customizable templates, called themes, which give you the ability to make professional-looking menus for your DVD projects. You can choose a theme from the list in the Themes pane of the Customize window, shown in Figure 30.8.
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By default, the Apple logo is shown in the lower right-hand corner of all the themes. To remove it, open the iDVD preferences and uncheck the box for Show Apple Logo Watermark.
Some available themes have video clips as backgrounds, and some also include sound. These themes enable you to include what’s known as a motion menu on your DVD. You can even set your own motion backgrounds in some themes by dragging a movie into a customization area known as a drop zone.
We’ll discuss applying and customizing themes in the next chapter.
After you’ve chosen a theme, you may want to go beyond the default colors chosen for text. To customize a theme, open the Settings pane to select colors and text (see Figure 30.13).
Also in the Settings pane is the option to choose different styles of button shapes for your DVD screens. You can also change, or remove entirely, any background music for the menus.
When you choose to customize your DVD, and if you like what you’ve done, you can save the settings for later use in a Favorites list. A customized theme can be saved so that you can access it later for other projects.
You can insert a variety of DVD content, including audio files, still photos, and movies. The Audio settings in the Media pane, shown in Figure 30.14, integrate with your iTunes library to allow you to add background music to your chosen DVD theme.
Besides integrating with your iTunes library, iDVD connects directly to your iPhoto library. From the Photos option of the Media pane, shown in Figure 30.15, you can drag and drop photos to create slideshows, which we’ll look at shortly, or to customize themes that contain special drop zones where you can put in one of your own images or video clips.
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Make sure that you’ve upgraded your version of iPhoto to at least version 4 and launched iPhoto at least once (so that it can perform file system changes) before trying to integrate with iDVD4.
The Movies option lists all the movies stored in the current user’s Movies folder, which is the default location for iMovie to store your projects. (You can add other folders in the iDVD preferences.)
When you make your own DVDs, at some point in the process the computer system has to encode the video into a special format (MPEG-2) so that a DVD player can play it properly.
It used to be that you had to use a separate program and adjust a variety of advanced settings to prepare video for DVD. In iDVD, you simply drag your iMovie into the program, and—if iMovie hasn’t already encoded it—iDVD automatically encodes the video for you as you work on your project. And if you want to check in on how things are going, iDVD can give you an update on how the encoding is coming along, when you open the Customize tray window and click on the Status button, as shown in Figure 30.16.
When you’re just starting out with a few video clips and DVD screens, you might not need to think much about exceeding iDVD’s capabilities. But at some point, you’ll probably be curious about how many minutes of video you can fit on a DVD, how many menu screens you can have, and so on.
Items on a menu = 12—When you create a DVD, the buttons on the menu screen can lead to movies, slideshows, or other menus. iDVD enables you to have up to 12 buttons on each screen.
Images in a slideshow = 99—You can add up to 99 digital pictures to each slideshow that you have on your DVD.
Movies/slideshows on a DVD = 99—You can add a total of 99 movies and or slideshows to a DVD project, assuming that the total amount of video used in the movie portion of your DVD does not exceed 90 minutes. Because digital pictures take up a relatively small amount of space, you don’t have to be concerned about how many pictures you add.
Menus in a DVD = 99—Because motion menus use short video clips, you’re limited to using 1GB worth, or 15 minutes, on a DVD project.
GB of data on a DVD = 4.1—The total size of your project can’t exceed 4.1GB, including movies, photos, audio, and menus. (The number of minutes of video that will fit on a DVD depends on the quality of the video you want to output. It’s generally recommended you not exceed 60 minutes of video if you want a high-quality image, but you can get as many as 120 minutes if you don’t mind a grainier image.)
Before you move on to Chapter 31—where you’ll learn how to design DVDs, customize menus, and add DVD-ROM content—we will take a brief look at the iDVD preferences, which are divided into General, Slideshow, and Movies options.
The General Preference settings, shown in Figure 30.17, affect entire projects. Under the Project Settings header are check boxes for the following three options:
Show Drop Zones—. As you learned earlier in this chapter, drop zones are areas in iDVD themes where you can insert photos or movie clips of your own. If the Show Drop Zones option is checked, these regions are emphasized by a yellow and black border so that you can recognize them more easily during the design process.
Show Apple Logo Watermark—. If this option is checked, an Apple logo will appear on the menu screens in your project.
Delete Rendered Files After Closing a Project—. Each DVD project you create consists of the raw files and the files that have been encoded for DVD. To save space on your hard drive, you can select this box to remove the encoded files each time you close a project. (Because the encoded files can be constructed from the raw files, iDVD creates them again if you open the project.)
In Encoder Settings, you can choose between encoding your project for best quality or best performance. Best quality gives the best quality for your specific project, so movies more than 60 minutes long will be made to fit, and movies less than 60 minutes long will be encoded at a higher than usual quality because the space is available. Best performance uses a standard encoding quality that isn’t determined in response to the size of your project. (Best performance can’t be used with DVDs that are more than 60 minutes long.) If you choose best performance, you can also choose whether to enable background encoding, which allows iDVD to encode your project’s content to DVD format while you work. If you choose best performance with background encoding, you won’t have to wait as long for your DVD project to finish encoding before you burn your DVD.
The Video Standard options are NTSC or PAL. As discussed in Chapter 24, “Exploring the iMovie Interface,” video standards differ by region. These standards specify the picture dimensions as well as a frame rate. If your intended audience lives in North American or Japan, be sure to use NTSC; if your viewers will be from Great Britain, choose PAL.
The Slideshow preferences, shown in Figure 30.18, affect how iDVD copes with images you add to slideshows. The first check box is Always Add Original Slideshow Photos to DVD-ROM, which includes the raw image files on the DVD along with the DVD-version of the slideshow. This gives your audience access to the original images for printing, editing, or otherwise working with on a computer.
Checking the second option, Always Scale Slides to TV Safe Area, scales each image in a slideshow to leave room around the edges of the screen. This ensures that extreme edges of your images will not be cut off when played on some older television screens. When slides are scaled to fit the TV safe area, a black border appears around each image. You’ll learn how to create slideshows in Chapter 31.
Movies preferences, shown in Figure 30.19, allow you to choose whether available chapter markers are recognized by iDVD when a movie is imported. (Recall from Chapter 29, “Exporting iMovies,” that chapter markers can be added in iMovie to allow you to skip to a specific place in a movie clip or movie.) The options are to automatically create chapter markers, never create them, or to ask each time a project is opened.
You can also choose where on your system iMovie will search for video clips to list in the Movies pane we talked about earlier in this chapter. (By default, iMovie tries to save files in an account holder’s Movies folder, so that’s the default place the iDVD will look. If you prefer to save your projects to the desktop, you can tell iDVD to also look on the desktop.)
In this chapter, you learned about the basic DVD features as well as some background about DVDs in general. You became acquainted with the iDVD interface and the various options it provides for making a variety of DVD projects that can include a combination of movies and digital pictures. You also saw the controls you’ll use to customize your DVD menus as well as preview your project and burn it to DVD.