iDVD Themes

For purposes of this discussion, there are 2 types of DVDs. The kind that you want to play on any device, like a computer or a TV etc. For those, you would use iDVD or a similar DVD AUTHORING software to create a DVD like those that you would buy movies on. You put them in a player and they have a menu. You select PLAY or Select the title from the menu and they will play almost anywhere. Those DVDs have the TS files that you are describing. There are some programs like Wondershare and Toast Titanium that are able to take those TS files and play them, copy them, burn them to another DVD or convert them to another format. But, for the most part, they are for playing on your DVD player and viewing on your TV.

The other type of DVD would be a DATA DVD. They act like any other drive or thumb or flash drive or disc that you might have. For that, you do not need iDVD to author a DVD. You already have a Quicktime (.mp4, .m4v, .mov...) that you made your DVD From.

You can also use .wmv, .avi, mpg... or whatever format you need. See the suggestions above for software to convert your current file to others that someone may want to use. For example, all my work is done on a Mac and is in Quicktime formats. My employer utilizes a PC network and other departments sometimes want to put a video into a Powerpoint or they want to share a video on the network. Many times the Quicktimes don't play well with the PC network and applications. So, I convert them to .wmv . To do so, I convert my movies using Wondershare Ultimate. It costs some money but it is one of the most valuable programs I have ever purchased for my work. I can convert almost any format that I have or that someone sends me, to any format that I need or someone else might need. Including, I think, taking TS files to Quicktime or a Quicktime to a .wmv. Anyway, my point is, you can then take whatever file you have and put it on a DVD to distribute to others who might be wanting to play the file on their computers.

All you do is put a blank DVD into your DVD Drive and drag the file onto the DVD. Find the picture of a DVD on your Desktop or in your Finder Window and drag the file there and click the icon or folder. In the Upper Right, you will see the word BURN. Click that. You are now creating a DATA DVD. You can also put other files on the disc like scripts, notes, photos, documents.... and burn all those files together. The difference on this disc is that you CANNOT put it in your DVD player at home and play it. You would have to put it into a computer. Open the DVD and you will see all the files. Just like on your hard drive, memory stick, flash card.... You can click on the movie files and play them through Quicktime or other viewing software.

hm... okay.. when the disc ejects after burning, I'm used to just popping it back in and checking if it works and it usually plays as a movie, not files. So that's what happened on my mac. I played it on our PS4 and it did play as a movie... I never used to have to mount the disk image (which, by the way, what is that?) : ) Thank you for all your help in advance!

Check the System/CDs & DVDs preference pane and see what's set for DVDs.

Set it to "open in dvd player' for "when you insert a video dvd," but when I inserted it, dvd player couldn't recognize the disc. The DVD menu used to just automatically pop for me. It worked on my computer at work though... which is a PC, so hm, I don't know. Any idea about the missing themes?

Check the disk with another Mac that has an optical drive to see if that Mac can read and play the DVD. If it can then there's a hardware issue with your optical drive. Maybe running a CD/DVD cleaning disk, one with brushes only and no liquids, might help.

I've tried it on my husband's mac and it does the same thing. On the disc are the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders.. and when try playing on DVD Player, it says disc unsupported.

What type of disk did you use? A DVD+R or DVD-R disk? How old is your DVD player?

How fast did you burn the disk and what disk brand did you use.

Follow this workflow to help assure the best qualty video DVD:

Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.

To check the encoding mount the disk image, launch DVD Player and play it. If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding is good.

Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality. Always use top quality media: Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.

What speed and brand of disk did you use?

I used a memorex dvd-r. My macbook is about 3 years old. I'm not sure how fast it burned at, I just hit burn and it burned, I didn't click on any settings.

Okay... so far I've done what you said.. and I VAGUELY remember some of those steps when I learned how to use iDVD in the first place in grad school, haha. I'm not sure what you mean by "mount" the disk image : P. When I saved it as a disk image, I had the file on my desktop with a .img extension and an icon that looks like my hard drive icon. When I double click on that, I get an icon that looks like what happens when you stick a flash drive in, and when I double click on that I see AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS files.

When I double click on that, I get an icon that looks like what happens when you stick a flash drive in,

That mounts it.

If you burn directly from iDVD set the burn speed in the iDVD's Advanced preference pane:

If you use Disk Utility to burn the disk image set the speed in this window that come up after you click on the Burn button:

For Toads there's be a similar window in its preferences.

Memorex is considered one of the very low quality brands of DVD discs for video DVD application. They may be OK for data disks but not for video DVD discs.

Hey Old Toad.... Following your very clear instructions for where to save the "Installed Themes" after deleting the cache and preferences. I understand that I should use Copy and Paste from a file that clearly shows the themes on my desktop. I am running El Capitan and trying to migrate my iDVD 6 to my new iMac.

When I paste the Installed Themes in Application Support --> iDVD, the file structure changes to show Installed Themes -->iDVD6-->Library-->Frameworks-->Quartz.Framework-->Frameworks-->ImageKit.Fram ework-->Resources-->OKTheme.theme

I'm guessing that iDVD6 won't work with El Capitan (10.11.2) Am I wasting my time?

Thanks so much for your help.

Where are you coping the themes from? Rather than copy and paste just drag the Themes folder to the new location.

This is what the contents of my iDVD/Installed themes looks like:

I have no idea where the Library/Frameworks folder came from. It should not be in there.

I brought them over on a USB drive from the old iMac. Then, I dragged them to my desktop, and copy and pasted from there. Frameworks was bizarre, I agree. I'll drag over and try again... but not optimistic...

OK.... I dragged and dropped. Here are screenshots of Application Support-->iDVD--> Installed Themes before and after I launched iDVD

Remove the Library folder from the Themes folder. It doesn't belong there.