Burn iMovie to DVD

How to create a video-DVD? (Macs without iDVD)

Glad you got it working.

Remember, Apple removed the ability to set chapter markers with iMovie 10. If you want to set chapter markers, (and most do) you will need to use an earlier version of iMovie. My personal favorite is iMovie HD 06. It is very DVD friendly.

I notice that the drop down Share pane on version 9 offers iDVD as one of the share options, but NOT on version 10! What were the developers thinking?

Apple does not like optical media, despite the fact that most movies are distributed on optical discs.

In fairness, Apple's Final Cut Pro does support burning of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Although, not to the same level of sophistication that iDVD is capable of.

I don't have a question only want to fully agree with the comments and hope the developers read these. BRING BACK IDVD and an iMovie version that will access it

It is very easy to burn a DVD using iMovie 10 and iDVD. Create a movie in iMovie, share it to your desktop, and drag the movie into the iDVD project window. In iDVD set up your theme and title page, and add chapter markers if you want. Then save the iDVD project as a disk image from the iDVD file menu. After the rendering is done, burn your DVD from the disk image. If you want to make duplicate disks, you can burn again and again from the disk image without having to go through the rendering process.

Personally, I think it is better to share the iMovie project to a movie first, then drag it into iDVD, rather than using the direct share to iDVD option that some of the older iMovie versions had. iMovie is designed to render its projects into movies -- to stitch together all the clips, photos, audio, and editing that make up the iMovie project. That is what happens when you share out a project to your desktop as a movie file. But when you direct share an iMovie project to iDVD that means that iDVD has to do the complicated rendering that iMovie would do, and I would trust iMovie rather than iDVD to do that.

Best,

Rich

Hi Rich,

Thanks so much for your reply. I confirm that I have done exactly as you suggest. The problem since I upgraded software to version Serria 10.12.1 is that once IDVD tries to encode the movie it freezes up after running for about a minute to a minute and a half. I.E. the burn wheel stops and the computer wheel starts and that is it until I force quit IDVD. I did a movie of a holiday to New Zealand in May this year on the previous software and had no problem with IDVD. That movie was very similar in size to this current one I am trying to burn. This one is rather important as it was a movie I did of the Ford Model T national rally and there are around 130 participants requiring a copy. So here I sit with the project complete but not able to burn a Master copy. Any other ideas and thanks again for your communication.

Regards

Eric

Hi, Liz,

As you probably know, it is normal for the burn wheel to stop for awhile during burning. Not to worry because the burn process is still going on. When you say that the computer wheel starts, are you talking about the spinning beach ball or the wheel that looks like a gear? If it's the latter, the burn is still going. Either way, be sure to wait for a considerable time, like two hours, before force quitting, as the burn process may still continue.

Assuming that you already have done the waiting thing, and the project still hangs up, the next thing I would check is to make sure you have enough hard drive disk space to complete the burn and for iDVD to operate properly. You should have at least 25GB of free space.

Next I would start by comparing the format, settings, and duration (should be under 2 hours) of the problem movie with the one that successfully burned. If there are differences, that might give you a clue as to what is happening.

Possibly the problem might be because your movie is very high def. iDVD was designed to burn movies with 480 resolution and .dv format, and possibly the high def has caused a hang up. You could try converting your movie to .dv and/or sharing out at a lower resolution and see if that works.

Another thing, check your DVD project to make sure everything is in order. Check your settings from the iDVD Project menu. In the DVD View menu check Show TV Safe Area and make sure that all of your titles, buttons, etc. are inside the TV safe area. If they are outside, that can sometimes cause burn problems.

When burning, use good quality -R discs (Maxell, Verbatim) and burn at 4x speed.

Hope this helps,

-- Rich

Hi Rich,

It's Eric again. ( the computer is registered in my wife's name that is why the name Liz comes up)

Thanks for that additional information which gives me something to work on. The wheel I refer to is the beach ball.

Does not IDVD convert the movie to the 480 resolution as in the raw state in iMovie the movie is 16.7GB however in IDVD when I choose either high or professional quality it reduces it to under 4GB which of course will fit a standard DVD. If iDVD does not reduce the HD because that is what it was shot in can you advise me where I go to to reduce the quality and do I do that before moving the movie to movies?

Thanks again for your help.

Eric

Liz and Eric Forshaw

If you put a high def 1080 movie into iDVD it will render it at standard 480. My thought was to share it from iMovie at a lower res so that iDVD could handle it easier. When you share from iMovie you will get a pop-up box that gives you options to share at different resolutions. (I am assuming that you are using iMovie 10.1.3.) Choose the lowest resolution available (probably 540) and share out at that. Then drag it into iDVD and see if it will burn.

There also may be some corruption in the movie coming out of iMovie that is causing iDVD to hang up. Hopefully re-sharing might cure that. If you can find the point in the movie where iDVD hangs up, perhaps you could edit out that part and see if that cures it.