Getting iMovie file to fit on DVD

Thanks, Lennart. I thought file size shouldn't be a problem, either.

Unfortunately, I have tried opening a completely new, empty iDVD project, to no avail - same duration problem. I must be doing something wrong. Any other ideas?

I have about 19G of hard drive space, so I'm fine there I think.
Any other info anyone can think of I should pass on to help solve this?

The duration at the bottom of the screen in iMovie says 1:11:16:10. There is some black screen after my end of the movie. When I place the playhead at the very end the time reads 1:17:00:25.

Thanks for all your help, Lennart. Sorry I disn't reply earlier, I have been away from my computer all day.

I will try to see if there are any stray files/clips in the movie.

I have a feeling the size problem may be due to how the video tape was originally converted. The original raw digital file wa 14.96 G for a 1 hour 10 minute movie. Does that sound normal or excessive?

If that's too large a file for that length movie I'll have to go back and start from scratch and convert it again. I'm not looking forward to that!

Thanks again for your input. If anyone can answer my question about what is a "normal" file size for a 1 hour movie, I'd appreciate it!

Another question re: video file sizes: does it matter how the video was taped iin the first place? I am doing this project for a school fundraiser so I don't know how it was taped to begin with, probably on the highest resolution setting I presume.

I converted another set of tapes, from another person, total of 2 hours long, and it came out to only 7.5 GB; big size difference from my 1 hour 10 min movie at 14.9 GB. Any ideas on why such a difference?

By the way, I am currently converting the tape again, but it still looks like it will be at least 12-13 GB for 70 min. Hope that will compress in iDVD to fit!

So if 13 GB per hour is normal, then I'm still back to my original question/problem - why does the iMovie file of 14.5GB say it's too long in duration when pulling into iDVD? Is there something most people do with 1-2 hour videos in iMovie to be sure iDVD can hold it on one DVD?

Sorry if I'm being dense here, I'm still mystified and trying to learn and figure this out.

Thanks for helping!

A few hours sleep and things are starting to look up! Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions!

I did check the QT show movie info (thanks Hui!) and it shows the file as being 21.88GB. Yikes! The resolution is 720 x 480, 48kHz, 16 bit, NTSC. When I look at the movie in QT it shows it as being over 2 hours long, with the second hours' worth just being white screen. When I look at the exact same, unadulterated file in iMovie it only shows the 1 hr movie. When the playhead reaches the 1 hour 17 min mark, it skips back to the beginning of the movie. Therefore, I was not able to "see" and thus remove anything in iMovie that corresponds to the white screen time I found when playing the file in QT.

Now, I have no idea why there is and extra hour in QT, or why QT info shows the "true" data size of the file and it doesn't show up anywhere else, but my solution (trying it anyway to see if it works) is to convert the movie again (done), check the data size in QT (turns out to be 14 GB, yeah!) and import it back to a new iMovie file (next thing to do). Hope this works!

QUESTIONS: What resolution do people usually use when converting video to DV? Does the resolution of the original VHS recording impact the resolution when it is converted to DV?

Also, Joel, I would like more info on the AVI Divx for storing raw footage files. I am crammed tight for space and need room to maneuver on my hard drives. Could you point me to a web site with info?

Thanks everyone!! I can breathe again!