ultimate iDVD 4 easter egg!

[bnemesis]

i know that these forums are not for posting anything "illegal", but this is just too good, if you havent tried it yet.

You uncompress two files to your home directory. After that, if you have a mac with idvd 4 and no superdrive you can burn to an external drive OR save your project as an .img file.

I dont know the legality of the files, or how exactly they work, and I not telling where I got them. But I will say that IT WORKS PERFECTLY! My ibook has no superdrive, but yet i have an idvd project dumping to an image RIGHT NOW!

[redAPPLE]

just for the sake of curiosity, which files??

[blaster_boy]

If you can't even drop a hint about the name of where you got them, I'm so not getting interested in this.

Well, maybe I will...

So - any hints ? :D

[EDIT] Ok, a Google on 'iDvd external drive' finds it easely enough....

[Doraemon]

But you do know what an easter egg in computers is, bnemesis?

[JackRipper]

But you do know what an easter egg in computers is, bnemesis?

Obviously not.

[JamesDPS]

But you do know what an easter egg in computers is, bnemesis?

Now now, I'm sure it's not a "crack" -- it's got to be an intentional gift that they just don't advertise! :)

Personally, the most useful easter egg of all time has to be the whole 30-second forward skip on TiVo. Changes TV forever!

[BillyBunter]

It's bee known about in the iDVD suuport group for a while. Why all the secrecy?
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=23370

[jxyama]

dang!!! just for confirmation, this means i can burn regular DVD player playable DVD (confused yet?) with iDVD on an external? (everyone keeps on talking about burning an image...)

so if i went out and picked up a FW DVD-R drive, i can use iDVD as if i had a superdrive??

been itching to buy some worthwhile toy... this might do it for me... :D

[Horrortaxi]

That's not an easter egg. Sounds more like a hack to me.

[SilentPanda]

It works... I've been using it for about a week or so... it's nice... although it looks sorta silly to have two randomly named files in my home directory.

[bnemesis]

Obviously not.

An easter egg in computer jargon is a hidden surprise or functionality that isnt advertised.
A crack is a piece of code that unlocks software that needs to be purchased to gain full funtionality.

The two files that you put in your home directory are 4k each. Not big enough to create the window that you get that prompts you to choose an external drive or if you want to save and an .img.

This seems like something those rascally apple engineers put in there on purpose.

[jeremy.king]

Funny...this was posted two weeks ago and not a single reply.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=63869

[jxyama]

alright, so the natural question now is...

who's got a recommendation on ext. DVD writer i should purchase? :D

lacie one looks nice - esp. with the full version of toast included. (i don't have toast.)

[markjones05]

Im confused, what exactly does this enable you to do?

[jeremy.king]

Im confused, what exactly does this enable you to do?

Burn to an external DVD writer using iDVD. enjoy!

[OutThere]

Ultimate iDVD 4 Easter Egg
London - March 25, 2004
A team of researchers from around the globe met in London to day to hunt down easter eggs in iLife '04. After six hours in the so-called "Situation Room", it was determined that the there was a massive easter egg contained in Apple's iDVD software. The group of researchers stumbled out from behind the locked doors of the room, and declared that they had determined that "iDVD burns DVDs". This revelation has sent Apple Computer's stock soaring to a record high of 300.034 USD per share.

[bnemesis]

If this is and "official" easter egg (ie. one that the iDVD team added with Apple's support, not one that some engineers snuck in), I can see why.

Wouldn't Apple want to extend the feature-set of thier iLife products if they were planning on charging $49? i think that they wanted to add burning to external drives as an idvd 4 feature however, it would become a nightmare for tech support. Numerous different drives and firewire chipsets. ARGH!
BUT, if burning to an external drive was added as an easter egg, then Apple wouldnt have to support it officially! Everyone wins.

[dbauer]

This was announced by Steve Jobs himself in the MacWorld San Francisco keynote. He said that iDVD would be able to install and projects could be created on Macs without SuperDrives in iDVD 4. This was for people who wanted to create on certain machines and then send all their projects to one mac that was eqiupped with a DVD burner. You just can't burn from within iDVD.

[szark]

This was also posted on MacBytes (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=63888) two weeks ago.

[jxyama]

This was announced by Steve Jobs himself in the MacWorld San Francisco keynote. He said that iDVD would be able to install and projects could be created on Macs without SuperDrives in iDVD 4. This was for people who wanted to create on certain machines and then send all their projects to one mac that was eqiupped with a DVD burner. You just can't burn from within iDVD.

but "this" lets non-SuperDrive equipped Macs to burn DVDs using iDVD as if external drive was a SuperDrive. what jobs said is exactly what you wrote - that iDVD can be used to make projects on non-SuperDrive equipped Macs and then moved over to a Mac that is SuperDrive equipped to burn the DVD. nothing about using an external or burning an image...

this has always been the case with iDVD - no burning without the SuperDrive. it used to be that you didn't get iDVD and couldn't use it unless you had a SuperDrive equipped Mac. now, with this hack, there's one less incentive to get SuperDrive. my guess would be that they will close this hole with the next iDVD and may start selling their own ext. DVD burner that works with iDVD. i highly doubt they will officially support this hack.

this is a hack, no doubt, it's just like dual monitoring hack in iBook. a feature that's been "hidden" (or crippled) by apple for the sake of marketing/product differentiation.

i sure hope apple won't close this because i might buy a DVD burner now... but i'd also like to be able to use iDVD in the future... (yeah, i know, i'm greedy, i want the best of both. :D)

[busasa]

so where is that home folder locates at exactly anyways....... I can't seem to find that exact location.

[tomf87]

so where is that home folder locates at exactly anyways....... I can't seem to find that exact location.

From the Finder, hit Shift+Apple+H

[iBaller]

If I burn a .img with iDVD will it be smaller then saving my iDVD project as an Archive? Also, is there anyway to "reset" iDVD so it doesn't require those files in the home folder to burn?

[osprey76]

This is decidedly not an announced feature. Also, I highly doubt Apple will sell external DVD burners, they've been out of the commodity attachment business for a while. Of course, that is unless they come up with some twist on DVD burning that I don't see. Like the iSight has several features you won't find on other webcams.

What makes the most sense from what I've read is this is a backdoor for easy testing for Apple. If you're doing testing on DVD-R drivers for your whole line of supported burners, it'd get old removing your internal optical drive all of the time. This lets you just change out your FireWire enclosure to test another drive.

[redAPPLE]

there is one advantage i see here. i could edit my movies then save them for later burning.

will try this out now.

[redAPPLE]

sorry guys, but i am too lazy to create a new thread. but i got a quick question, i got a 4x superdrive. if i use a 2x dvd-r, would this work.

i can't make my superdrive to burn...

[stoid]

sorry guys, but i am too lazy to create a new thread. but i got a quick question, i got a 4x superdrive. if i use a 2x dvd-r, would this work.

i can't make my superdrive to burn...

Make sure you set, in your DVD burning prefs, to only burn at 2x otherwise you'll get a coaster.

[redAPPLE]

Make sure you set, in your DVD burning prefs, to only burn at 2x otherwise you'll get a coaster.

thanks for the advice.

[redAPPLE]

Update! So the "hack" worked. now i am "stuck" with 2 folders after the "burn".an .img file was created with the video_ts and the audio_ts folders.

if i want to burn this to a dvd in a later date (i have a superdrive (internal) and i only want to archive my movie), how can i do this with iDvd or better yet in dvd studio pro?

any help would be appreciated.

[WinterMute]

I'm not sure you can burn with iDVD or DVDSP from a VIDEO_TS folder, I use Toast for that, any good burning utility should do, but toast 6 works well. I archive DVD projects like that all the time.

If you need to be able to edit you DVD's later you can't create a VIDEO_TS folder, you need to use the "Archive Project" option from DVDSP, or simply store the MPEG2 and audio files (muxed if using iDVD)and the graphics stuff along with the DVDSP file. This is much more economical with space than storing 2 hours of DV-stream and render files from a FCP project.

You can also save an iDVD project by unchecking the "delete rendered assets" (I think...) from the iDVD preferences, apparently this saves the converted video/audio as part of the iDVD file, and you won't need to re-render when you burn, although I have never tried this.

You can always recover your video and audio from the VIDEO_TS folder using DVDX 1 to 1 or suchlike, but its time consuming and a pain.

[redAPPLE]

If you need to be able to edit you DVD's later you can't create a VIDEO_TS folder, you need to use the "Archive Project" option from DVDSP, or simply store the MPEG2 and audio files (muxed if using iDVD)and the graphics stuff along with the DVDSP file. This is much more economical with space than storing 2 hours of DV-stream and render files from a FCP project.


"archive project" option? could you please elaborate on this... where do i find this? sorry but i am still a dvdsp newbie, so a "step by step" woudl be appreciated. thanks.