Need iDVD Extra Content to get older themes

No. If you don't have iDVD fully installed on another Mac where you can copy the themes you'll have to obtain it by purchasing a copy of the iLife 09 disk from a 3rd party retailier like Amazon.com: ilife 09: Softwareor eBay.com. Why, because iDVD (and iWeb) was discontinued by Apple over a year ago.

Why iLife 09 instead of 11?

If you have to purchase an iLife disc in order to obtain the iDVD application remember that the iLife 11 disc only provides themes from iDVD 5-7. The Software Update no longer installs the earlier themes when starting from the iLIfe 11 disk nor do any of the iDVD 7 updaters available from the Apple Downloads website contain them.

Currently the only sure fire way to get all themes is to start with the iLife 09 disc:

This shows the iDVD contents in the iLife 09 disc via Pacifist:

You then can upgrade from iDVD 7.0.3 to iDVD 7.1.2 via the updaters at the Apple Downloads webpage.

Export the slideshow out of iPhoto as a QT movie file via the Export button in the lower toolbar. Select Size = Medium or Large.

Open iDVD, select a theme and drag the exported QT movie file into the open iDVD window being careful to avoid any drop zones.

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.

is there a place where i can get a clean softcopy?

Not that I know of.

i live outside the U.S. and ordering the ilife would make me pay double the price if not triple for the shipment.

To my knowledge, Amazon charges the same price no matter where you are located. I can't speak to the shipping cost, but if I were you I would try to get my hands on a iLife 09 disc.

FYI - You're doing yourself no favors burning any optical disc media at the slowest data rate possible, in fact you'll make poorer quality copies than by burning the media at the speed for which it has been engineered and intended to be recorded. Presuming you'll be getting better quality by burning at slow speed is an old wives tale and using media analyzers will bear that out. If you're using brand name discs, preferably JVC/TY, with a good quality recorder (late model/not a cheapie) of which you've updated/flashed the firmware you have no worries. Put your premastered image in a burn folder located on a clean de-fragged non-boot volume, disable your screen saver, anti-virus (and any other operating system interrupters) and launch your burn app which is best running on your boot volume so nothing interferes with or interrupts the flow of the disc image as it streams off the burn folder/volume to the DVD. The best recording strategy is to set your recorder at a fixed burn speed, 8X is fine, 24X will buy you nothing that matters for time savings and is only achieved at the outer most radii of the disc, so pass on that setting. After the track is setup for writing the laser will turn on and burn at a continuous data rate until complete and you'll have what is the effective equivalent of a glass mastered image. We burn thousands of CD/DVD/BDs every year from Masters that have been created by this exact process – it works. Good Luck to sicura and much thanks to OT for the info re installing the Extra Content from the iLife 09 disc! All the Best, AK

iDVD encoding settings:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US

Short version:

Best Performance is for videos of up to 60 minutes

Best Quality is for videos of up to 120 minutes

Professional Quality is also for up to 120 minutes but even higher quality (and takes much longer)

That was for single-layer DVDs. Double these numbers for dual-layer DVDs.

Professional Quality: The Professional Quality option uses advanced two-pass technology to encode your video (The first pass determines which parts of the movie can be given greater compresson without quality loss and which parts can’t. The second pass then encodes those different parts accordingly) , resulting in the best quality of video possible on your burned DVD. You can select this option regardless of your project’s duration (up to 2 hours of video for a single-layer disc and 4 hours for a double-layer disc). Because Professional Quality encoding is time-consuming (requiring about twice as much time to encode a project as the High Quality option, for example) choose it only if you are not concerned about the time taken.

In both cases the maximum length includes titles, transitions and effects etc. Allow about 15 minutes for these.

You can use the amount of video in your project as a rough determination of which method to choose. If your project has an hour or less of video (for a single-layer disc), choose Best Performance. If it has between 1 and 2 hours of video (for a single-layer disc), choose High Quality. If you want the best possible encoding quality for projects that are up to 2 hours (for a single-layer disc), choose Professional Quality. This option takes about twice as long as the High Quality option, so select it only if time is not an issue for you.

Use the Capacity meter in the Project Info window (choose Project > Project Info) to determine how many minutes of video your project contains.

NOTE: With the Best Performance setting, you can turn background encoding off by choosing Advanced > “Encode in Background.” The checkmark is removed to show it’s no longer selected. Turning off background encoding can help performance if your system seems sluggish.

And whilst checking these settings in iDVD Preferences, make sure that the settings for NTSC/PAL and DV/DV Widescreen are also what you want.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US

Not many here would agree with your assertions, which seem to be for Windows PCs.

That's totally incorrect. The home optical drives rely on pit depth created by the laser. The slower the disk is rotatiing the more time the laser has over any given location for it to do it's burning and produce deep, readable pits. Commercially produced DVDs are pressed so don't rely on speed.

We have had users time and again having problems while burning at high speed. When they reverted to the slow speed they produced "perfect" video DVD.

No offense, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about! Firstly, optical disc recorders do NOT create pits NOR pit depth, I can't imagine where you got that idea but definitely NOT from reading any factual information re the subject. Recording drives 'burn' (discolor and distort) a dye layer on a CD-R, DVD-R or BD-R to create the functional equivalent of a pit, the area that is not 'burnt' is the functional equivalent of the land; pits diffuse the light beam in a reader whereas the lands reflect the light, the lengths of which create the 3T - 11T bits that form encrypted data on the disc which in part form the basis of the Reed-Solomon Code for Error Detection/Error Correction on optical discs. Secondly, a stamped disc is made by way of a Glass Master which, by the way, is recorded in much the same manner as burning a recordable disc, except that material IS removed to form physical pits and lands vs optical pits and lands on a recordable disc, the standards for which were developed principally by Philips-Sony and ECMA. I have no doubt users may be having problems 'time and again', but those issues, more often than not, are most likely the result of drive/media compatibility because of poor grade media, out of date firmware in the burner or the reader in which it it is being played, or the fact the reader is often a set-top device, rather than a PC, which are known to be finicky re recorded media due too the fact there are no standards regarding the design and manufacture of recordable drives or disc readers. Only the media is manufactured to consistent standards which are enforced by Philips-Sony (and others now due to patents related to included technologies for DVD, BD, etc.) because they have a vested interest in same... namely a royalty stream from the manufacture of the media on which the content is distributed regardless if its stamped or recorded – and, its worth pointing out: ALL media is stamped, some of them are pre-recorded discs and some of them are recordable discs with a spiral pre-groove for the laser to follow as it 'burns' a pre-mastered image to the disc be it, audio (Red Book), data (Yellow Book) or any of the other Rainbow Book formats. Again, no offense, but you're disseminating information that does not quite sit square with the facts re optical discs: I'm certainly no expert on the subject, except that I've been working daily with recordable and pre-recorded optical discs for more than 20 years and produced, literally, millions in the course of business operations. I truly hope this has been somewhat helpful and generally informative, I didn't intend any remarks to be an affront. This is, certainly, an abridged overview of optical discs. There have been many books written about the subject matter of optical discs, among them handbooks by recognized experts in the field: Ken Pohlmann, E.W. Williams and Jim Taylor, formerly of Microsoft, which you can consult. The crux of it is this, burning slow may, at times, render a readable disc whereas burning at the prescribed speed usually renders a readable disc and one that will display lower error rates on a media analyzer. In closing, I should note there is no such thing as an "error free" disc that's why they incorporate EDC/ECC. Thx.

You're right. I misspoke about the pits. I should have posted this:

A recorder encodes (or burns) data onto a recordable CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, or BD-R disc (called a blank) by selectively heating parts of an organic dye layer with a laser.^{[citation needed]} This changes the reflectivity of the dye, thereby creating marks that can be read like the pits and lands on pressed discs. For recordable discs, the process is permanent and the media can be written to only once. While the reading laser is usually not stronger than 5 mW, the writing laser is considerably more powerful. The higher the writing speed, the less time a laser has to heat a point on the media, thus its power has to increase proportionally.

I have burned a lot of DVDs and Blu-ray's. I exclusively use Taiyo Yuden (JVC) DVD+R and Verbatim Blank Blu-ray's. I have done much experimentation at 12X, 8X and 4X.

I would occasionally get verify errors when burning at 12X, I had one error burning at 8X. Zero errors at 4X.

So far, I confirm that the slower the speed, the less artifacting, skipping, and dropouts.

The laser has to heat the disc so the burner changes the laser strength as it burns etc, so there's nothing to say it can't burn just as well at a faster speed. It really depends on the particular burner/firmware/disc combination as to which speed is best. To my way of thinking the only rule is there isn't a rule.