Chapter Markers help (I know...)

Question

Chapter Markers help (I know...)

Ok, I've been hunting down chapter marker questions for an hour and absolutely cannot find an answer. So I hope someone can help me.

I *did* find this fantastic thread here (apple discussions) that had some good advice, but it too seems to miss the one thing I need.

That thread recommends that movies be edited on iMovie 6 (HD) and no later, for best video results. Fine. I have both iMovie 6 and iMovie 7 ('08).

Everyone says to NOT use Share -> iDVD. If I do, the picture quality will drop to zero. Ok fine. However, if I do share -> iDVD, my chapter markers are beautiful and kept.

I've read a lot of "share to media manager" or something, and I can't find that. Maybe that's in the newer iMovies? But I'm not supposed to use a newer one, since half a field is thrown out.

If I share -> Quicktime, the chapter markers are supposed to be kept. But on my word of honor, THEY ARE NOT. I open the export in quicktime, and I don't even know how to look for markers. I import the exported video into iDVD, and no chapters appear... am I supposed to tell iDVD to look for them, somehow?

Oh, btw, I'm using iDVD '08 (v.7).

Hopefully someone has an answer. If I can't do chapter markers, then fine, that'll be the only way I'll do this. But I'd love to have a super high quality video, *with* chapter markers, which just doesn't seem possible here.

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.5.8), 2.4 GHz 2GB

Posted on Jun 22, 2012 10:49 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Bengt Wärleby

Level 6

19,458 points

Jun 23, 2012 1:14 AM in response to keraunoscopia

Hi

I've read a lot of "share to media manager" or something, and I can't find that.

iMovie HD6 - doesn't work like that. When editing is done (to 100% - DO NOT go back from iDVD)

(If You must - Then start a brand new iDVD project when done - else You trigger the iDVD BUG and all chapters starts as Chapter one)

(NO Chapter mark at very beginning or within 2 sec from it - or in any transition or within 2 sec from it)

Close iMovie HD6

Open iDVD

Import or just drop the iMovie movie project icon (With a black Star in it) into iDVD.

Done - and all Chapters are kept - as sub-menus "Chapters or Sceen selection" (or alike)

Yours (just tested - and works to 100% for me) - Bengt W

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Answer 2

Jun 23, 2012 10:41 AM in response to Bengt Wärleby

Oh wow, I hadn't read that suggestion anywhere. I'll try it, thank you! (I'll get to it in a short while, I have to move my iTunes library to another drive before I start making dvds.)

My one extra question, then, is: by dragging the iMovie movie project icon onto the iDVD, does this keep the quality at a very good rate? Since I'm not exporting anything, I'm going to assume it's as best as it can be (no compression).

Thanks!

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Answer 3

Jun 23, 2012 11:16 PM in response to keraunoscopia

by dragging the iMovie movie project icon onto the iDVD, does this keep the quality at a very good rate?

Yes - this hinders iMovie to render and let's iDVD do this - and so much better.

Really the best DVD one ever can do is

• using interlaced SD-Video (HD yield less quality and so do progressive material)

• using iMovie HD6 or FinalCut

• direct import without iMovie rendering - or in FC - NO QuickTime Conversion

• minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk

• I use only Verbatim DVD

• I use DVD-R (as they play on even older DVD-players) and never +/-RW

• Pro quality encoding if movie is > 45 minutes

• set down Burn Speed to x2 or x4

• Save as a DiskImage - to test that all's OK

Good Luck

Yours Bengt W

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Answer 4

Jun 24, 2012 11:09 AM in response to Bengt Wärleby

Thanks for all your help Bengt, also with the thread I linked to. I dragged the iMovie icon for the main movie onto the iDVD menu, which added chapters and stuff, but I had to remove the "scene selection" sub-menu since it took too much room (considering my extras).

I did NOT try dragging iMovie icons for each of the extras (each of them being a video, not a slideshow) so I'm not sure if that would have worked, but I rendered those through iMovie as "Full Quality" Quicktime videos. I'm working with 17 year old VHS footage, so I wasn't too concerned about the quality for now...

But for future reference, could I have just dragged more iMovie icons into iDVD?

I also used Pro quality (no other choice, really, considering the length of the videos). Thanks again!!

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Answer 5

Jun 24, 2012 1:32 PM in response to keraunoscopia

could I have just dragged more iMovie icons into iDVD?

if using iMovie HD6 - then YES

BUT do not as I did when i thought I was clever - re-naming then (QT.mov files on desktop/finder) - as this results in Silent Movies. Audio files connected to the old name.

If You want a new name - e.g. more related to content - then re-name in iDVD application in the Menu window. This will work OK.

There are some limits in iDVD

• time limit - movie + menu - and encoding quality

• max 99 movies

• max 99 Chapters

• max 99 photos per SlideShow (btw - You can have 99 of those too)

Yours Bengt W

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