How to… burn an iMovie with iDVD 08
- Article 56 of 89
- MacFormat, November 2007
Apple has upgraded iDVD but made it harder to create a DVD from iMovie
What Steve giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other. iLife 08 has been a long time coming – so long in fact, Apple skipped iLife 07 in the numbering process – and brought with it upgrades to all the iLife applications. iMovie has had the biggest changes; in fact, it’s fair to say it’s almost an entirely new program, with a new interface, new features and a new attitude. It’s probably easier to use for the beginner than it’s ever been.
But for the experienced iMovie user, all this change has created problems. It’s like a team of Apple burglars have arrived in the iMovie house, rearranged all the furniture and stolen your most precious items – while surprisingly leaving a few presents of their own as recompense.
Chief among these thefts has been the simple Share with iDVD option. Despite the upgrade in broadband quality in the UK and its near-universal availability, the DVD still remains the best way to get chunky movie files around to friends, relatives and anyone else you want to impress with your holiday, wedding, etc movies. You get better quality, it’s cheap and nearly everyone has a DVD player these days, even if they haven’t upgraded their PC since 1995 and still think there’s not much point going to broadband given that dial-up’s still fast enough for their emails and occasional visit to The Archers web site.
In iMovie HD (aka iMovie 06), one menu option was all you needed, but now it’s gone. Nevertheless, iLife integration being what it is, you can still burn movies from your iMovie 08 files using the new and improved iDVD 08. You just have to know how and this is what we’re going to be showing you in this tutorial – while simultaneously taking the opportunity to show off some of iDVD’s new features.
Compared to iMovie 08, the changes in iDVD for iLife 08 have been relatively small. But they are significant. There are 10 new widescreen animated ‘themes’ – matching and very attractive templates for making DVD menus, including chapter lists – taking the total number of iDVD themes over 150. There’s a new range of buttons as well for customising those themes; a new interface for the drop zone editor that allows you to see your project and the editor at the same time so it’s easier to add, edit, or delete the photos and videos in drop zones; and alignment grids that appear automatically to help you align objects with each other. Slideshows can now include higher resolution photos as well as movie clips, which is handy because iDVD now has professional encoding to give the best quality possible. And the preview function has been sped up so it’s a lot easier to get an idea of what your DVD will look like before you’ve burnt it.
For this tutorial, you’re going to need iLife ’08, a movie you’d like to burn and a blank DVD – as well as just a hint of creative talent!