some digital movie help...

[krossfyter]

okay im not versed in the ways of small time video making so dont laugh or flame me. but my friend is going to buy an imac and he can only afford the low end one. one of the things he wants to do is make some videos since his a theater arts grad student etc. etc. heres my quedstion... he wants to save them to get them to dvd but the low end imac does not have dvd burning capapilites. so can he just burn them on a cd and then take that cd to a puter that had dvd burn and do that there? does this work or how else could one go about this?

[irmongoose]

Weeelll... it would be wise to just get the Superdrive one.. saves alot of hassle, but if your friend is that concerned about his money...

He can burn his movie onto his CD as a MPEG2 file, just export from iMovie as 'iDVD ready'. Then, he can take that file, dump it onto a Mac with a Superdrive, and then drag the file to iDVD and work on his project.


Did that make sense??




irmongoose

[iGav]

Also depends on the size of the MPEG 2 file, if it's larger than the capacity of the CD he'll be in trouble, and then you have to look at stuffing that file to reduce size even more....... Even then it'll probably still be too big to fit on a CD.....

I agree with irmongoose, it'd be much less hassle to buy the one with the super drive, he can also then archive his work onto DVD, DV will fill the iMacs HD with no trouble at all...

[krossfyter]

alright thank for the help.

so would a 2 to 4 minute video be to big of a movie file size for a regular 700mb cd?

im going to try and convince him to go for that dvd one but you know.

[arn]

Originally posted by krossfyter
alright thank for the help.

so would a 2 to 4 minute video be to big of a movie file size for a regular 700mb cd?

im going to try and convince him to go for that dvd one but you know.

I have a 3minute 56 second MPEG 2 file here for iDVD that is 854megs.

so, this would NOT fit on a CD.... and it's a standard file format... so there's no hedging.

Why not the Superdrive'd eMac? ($1499)

If he doesn't get a Superdrive, he's going to waste far more time than is worth the $200 difference between the iMac and the Superdrive'd eMac. Copying to CD is not a very good option... especially if he wants to do it regularly.

arn

[solvs]

Originally posted by arn


Why not the Superdrive'd eMac? ($1499)



That's what I was thinking.

If he has to have a FP iMac w/out the superdrive, he can always get an external firewire hard drive (or external case and cheap drive) if he has access to another Mac with a DVD burner, or network the 2 computers. But with the extra cost and hassle he might as well swing for the extra money. The eMac with superdrive is only $1500, plus you get a bigger hard drive, a faster CPU, and more memory (though I recommend for DV work, buy more RAM from a reputable seller. Much easier to upgrade on the eMac, too).

They can always spring for Roxio's Toast and make Video CDs, but the quality is much worse.

And why waste the CDs when you can have DVDs?

[bidge]

With the full version of stuffit you could separate the MPEG2 files into pieces so that they would then go onto a couple of CD's. I have been working on a project and I just copied it onto my iPod took it to a friends and burnt it to DVD.

If I was him I'd get the Bottom-line iMac and an iPod as together they are a very good solution and then for the same amount extra he can listen to music as well as burn DVD's at his mates house.

The 5GB for $299 is almost exactly the same size as a DVD. The other thing he will have to think about is software. If he gets an external he can't use iDVD (correct me if I'm wrong please somebody)

700Mhz CDRW iMac + 5GB iPod
= 1299 + 299
= 1598

201 cheaper than getting a FP with a superdrive
50 more than superdrive emac. If he wants to burn a DVD once a week go with superdrive emac otherwise use his friends. All depends on how good his 'friend is'

[pcsteed]

I put six minutes of video on a CD and still had room to spare using MPEG 4. However this was done using final cut pro, I don't know if I movie has MPEG 4. Have you thought about reducing the size of the picture?

[irmongoose]

Originally posted by pcsteed
I put six minutes of video on a CD and still had room to spare using MPEG 4. However this was done using final cut pro, I don't know if I movie has MPEG 4. Have you thought about reducing the size of the picture?

Woah dude, can you see how old this thread is? The last post before yours was August 23rd! What's the point of reviving such an old thread??



irmongoose