iMovie to iDVD problem

[BLDun]

I have an old VHS tape that I imported into imovies. When I try to send to iDVD to burn it keeps giving me problems. Sometimes I get a warning that the preferences are matched up somehow and sometimes it tells me that it exceeds the allowable limit of size, and sometimes the ball spins for quite a while and when it's done I have an icon on the desktop but when I try to open it it asks if I want to open an existing project and when I click yes it take me to that one and when I click it . . . . well you get the picture, we just go in circles. As you can tell I am new to this whole imovie and idvd project so can someon walk me through the process? I have a G5 dual 1.8 gHz and am running imovie 5. Thanks for any help.

[kiwi-in-uk]

Instead of sending it directly to iDVD, try saving it as a Quicktime movie (e.g. to the desktop) then start a new iDVD project and drag the movie from the desktop to the project.

[LethalWolfe]

How long is the video you are trying to move over to iDVD?


Lethal

[BLDun]

It is about 75 minutes in length

[LethalWolfe]

Hm. 75 min should be no problem at all. I'd try kiwi-in-uk's suggestion and see if that does the trick.


Lethal

[BLDun]

I did that but now I get a message saying it is too large to fit a dvd. Do I need to compress it and if so how do I do that? I want to be able to play this on a regular dvd player

[yankeefan24]

I did that but now I get a message saying it is too large to fit a dvd. Do I need to compress it and if so how do I do that? I want to be able to play this on a regular dvd player

you do need to compress it. it can take a long time.

[Sharewaredemon]

What version of iDVD are you using?

[kiwi-in-uk]

Try using the "best quality" setting in iDVD preferences

[nbs2]

Try using the "best quality" setting in iDVD preferences
At the risk of contributing nothing, I second this suggestion. It took what would have been a 6.2GB project and squeezed it to 3.8.

[rjphoto]

Try using the "best quality" setting in iDVD preferences

I always get confused with the "best quality" vs. "best performance" settings.

Doesn't one let you have more video on the DVD? Which one?

What are the time limits (length of video) in iDVD now ("best quality" vs. "best performance")?

I'm still using ver. 5.0.1.

Does ver. 6 make a big difference as far as this goes?

[Applespider]

Best Quality (1hr) v Best Performance (2hr) probably aren't the best names for the two settings.

If you use best quality, then iDVD 'divides' the DVD into a number of equally sized data 'segments' and can start background encoding the assets to fit each of those spaces. For this reason, it's usually quicker than using Best Performance.

if you use best performance, iDVD waits until you've completed your DVD project, then analyses how much data it needs on the DVD and calculates what the optimal size for each 'segment' is. This means that it can take slightly longer - 4.5hours against 3 hours on my 1.25Ghz G4 Powerbook for 45 minutes of video plus 3 animated menus

Apparently, best quality is actually the data rate that DVD players expect to get whereas Best Performance can have too much data for some DVD players to be able to decode. Having said that, I've had two instances where Best Quality has caused glitches around transitions/audio on some DVD players so I've switched to using Best Performance

[kiwi-in-uk]

Exactly, I use "best quality" so that it does background encoding. This means that I can see what's happening to capacity.

[cr2sh]

When bringing in the footage to begin with.. is it best to import video as DV or as MPEG or is there something better?

Do any import options reduce the amount of time it takes later to compress/encode?