iDVD on Lion OS X

Macs shipped with Lion do not have iDVD on them, only iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband form iLife.

I believe that Apple is moving too fast on this one, but that's the way it is. Some people have complained to Apple and gotten boxed versions of iLife 11 (with iDVD) to install it.

I owned an older boxed set of iLife 09, and could custom install iDVD and update to the latest version.

So in short, you are not "supposed" to have it, and cannot download it. Complain to Apple Customer support, and/or either find a boxed set of iLife 11 or iLife 09.

Yes I have the same issue on my new iMac pre-installed with Lion. Funny that Apple have gone down this path, yet still have the option for it in iMovie.

I'm just going to export the movie, and use Toast for the DVD writing piece....

FUNNY: Yes Lion, I agree.... where is iDVD? You tell me 🙂

Make a couple of phone calls.

iDVD is a “Must Have". (Yes, it should be included.)

Call Apple they will sent out iDVD at no charge.

800-692-7753

800-275-2273

Many people report that by asking here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/idvd.html

or here: http://www.apple.com/contact/

they got a free copy of iDVD.

I have an early 2011 MBP that obviously came with Snow Leopard. I don't recall if I had iDVD on my machine then, but I have since upgraded to Lion. I came across this thread a few days ago and imediately searched through my applications folder and could not find iDVD.

I called Apple to see if I could get a copy of iDVD, but was told by Apple Care that Lion did not support iDVD.

Then after some playing around I was in iPhoto and clicked on the "Share" tab. It listed iDVD as one of the options. I clicked it and it opened iDVD on my MBP. Since then I have been able to open iDVD from my applications folder.

I'm wondering 2 things here. One, where was iDVD hiding before I shared a photo to it from iPhoto? and two, why was I told by Apple Care that Lion doesn't support it when it obviously does?

Thats interesting. I tried that, and I see the words iDVD but they are grayed out. I tried to burn an iMovie but of course was unsuccessful due to lack of iDVD. I went to the Apple Store and the guy essentially had no clue what to tell me except to download Toast. He said nobody knows why iDVD wasn't included.

Found this forum earlier today after noticing iDVD was missing from my MB Pro running Lion. I called the number listed above and the Apple rep said they do not provide free iDVD software. Where did this info about the free iDVD software come from? Did you receive it yourself?

If you are unable to get your hands on iDVD, you can easily burn DVDs in OS X with Burn.

Thanks for the info. I noticed that iDVD was missing when I was working on my old MB. I found out about Burn the other day and am using it now.

I called the number ziatron listed and explained very nicely about my situation about downloading a home movie from the camcorder and come to find out I can't burn it to dvd becuase idvd is missing. In short, he did some research on his side and I received a dvd to install idvd.

Just give the number a try and try again until you get an answer you want I guess 🙂 My apple care was still in effect if that made a difference or not.

Has anyone tried the iphoto sharing with idvd and if that worked for them?

Burn is not an authoring tool. It is not about burning content to portable media, but how it appears when you put it into DVD player (menus, chapters, e.t.c.) iDVD is a must and it is shame Apple does not include it. Since I am owner of older iLife for family pack I am going to install it on my new MacBook Air and on my cousin computer. Then I am going to bog Apple to send us free copies what should be delivered with Macs (they got iMac for Christmas).

Apple... shame.. really shame on you... I have been using network of your compters (business and home use) since 2005.

I bet this is not Apple correct answer (no support is correct), but I care less about Apple opinion in this matter and more about what we consumers do with computers.

Some of my posts are "rants" and subject to Apple censorship (so I post more solutions on other non-Apple forums), but hopefully this one is not one of them.

I just grabbed my Family Pack iLife '09 and installed just iDVD on top what came with new Macbook Air (parts of iLife 11). There is no problem, but in order to make sure there is no clash I called numbers mentioned by Ziatron and spoke with sales and tech support about mixing versions (especially when you install older components over new code base of iLife). They said there should be none.

So far so good. There were issues with USB DVD drive connected directly to Macbook Air (???) but when the same drive (it is USB/Firewire enclosure) was connected to other computer with sharing over network the installation took about 5 minutes only.

Make sure that you just do not click on "Continue" in installer and pay attention on subsequent screens. One of them contains button "Customize" that allows you to select iDVD only (and some mandatory iLife support and who knows what, but supposedly it does not clash with newer code base, but you are not able to opt out/uncheck).

I still have spare licences for Family Pack iLife '09 so I think Apple does not mind this solution. What I would recommend to others is instead of spending money on iLife 11 (not much more over '09 except more bugs as i hear and nothing new in iDVD) then buy discounted '09 somewhere online.

iLife '09 works on Lion - that's what I heard on phone from Apple people.

Good luck.

I had iDVD on a hard drive back up from my old Snow Leopard MacBook Pro. My new Air has Lion. I was able to copy the app file from the Applications folder from the Snow Leopard drive into the Applications folder of Lion, and it worked just fine. I also copied the iDVD folder that was in root/Library/Application Support over to the same location in Lion and I got all the iDVD themes working.

So if you have a friend who still has Snow Leopard, maybe you can get iDVD that way.

It woud be great idea... except that it violates Apple licensing. You cannot just get copy of iDVD from a friend. It is copyright offense by any standard. You need to get license.

I agree that copying from your previous installation just like migrating application when you retire old computer may be acceptable, but "cloning" is not the thing any software vendor would approve.

Hence I offered soution with legally acquiring license and then installing on Mac. Anyway I still think Apple may want to review policy on iDVD. Well, if the future is electronic media in cloud computing then why not to provide obsolete solution like iDVD for free... with every new Mac... or even as free download. Killing on purpose has never worked (I have been in IT for 21 years and seen quite a few things). There will always be someone who will create "obsolete" solution... and I would hope OpenSource can fill this gap if Apple does not want to.

I stumbled across this post while looking for information about custom installing iDVD with Lion OS X 10.7. (All good info BTW).

Since it wasn't too clear, I outlined how to install iDVD with Lion OS X from an iLife '09 package disc here...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3739081

Hope it helps anyone that follows.

I was reading this with interest as I found the same with my mine and my brother's MBP. In the end, we weighed up the cost of buying Roxio Toast and a good quality DVD Authoring program and came up with - iLife '11 Retail Package. We bought one each and now have the disks for good. And it was cheaper and more compatable than a combination of others and I also got iWeb back which is great as well.

Pete