Coen, Thanks so much for the detailed info on iDvd versus iMovie. I now have a better understanding of the differences. I attempted to create in iMovie and found it challenging and have since created a few slide shows with music, titles etc in iDvd with much more success. Im assuming that at least for the time being I can continue creating slideshows and as mentioned in my earlier question add videos and subsequently burn to Dvd"s using iDvd........?
Just be aware that you might run into limitations the way you're doing things. For example, I'm not sure that it's possible to include video clips in a slideshow made in iDVD (in fact, I'm fairly certain it's not possible).
The beauty (and possibly downfall) of these iLife apps is that they are each designed to do one thing, and to do that one thing extremely well. Of course, in addition to each program's "one thing" they are all robust enough to know a few other tricks, and there is some overlap. As you've discovered, iDVD, iPhoto, and iMovie all know how to do slide shows. But you have to understand that each one will do a slide show in the context of what it knows how to do best.
For example, iDVD is primarily a DVD "authoring" tool. Its intent is to let you take a bunch of completed videos, that you've already made in iMovie, and burn them to a DVD using a beautiful theme, animations, and so on. Its focus is on
finished videos. It is capable of making slide shows "on the side" as a convenience to the user, but slide shows are not its primary job. When it creates a slide show, it's really quickly generating a
finished video of all the selected photos, on the fly. But iDVD does not give you much in the way of options for editing this video -- that's not its job. (And since it is always creating these on the fly, it has no concept of saving the finished video to disk, and thus it takes a long, long time to keep rendering slide shows every time you burn the DVD again).
Similarly, iPhoto is primarily a photo management tool. It is excellent at managing large collections of
photos, letting you pick smaller collections of them, and making slideshows. It is also capable of playing video clips that come from your camera. However, it is not particularly strong at anything related to moving video or a timeline, since its primary focus is still
photos -- and as such its photo slideshow options are very good, but still fairly basic. It treats slideshows as a simple list of photos to display one after the other. It doesn't create video clips of them, it just displays them. It knows how to do a few tricks like pans and zooms for the "Ken Burns" effect and fading transitions, but it does them on-the-fly, and does not give you fine-tuned frame-by-frame control over time -- that would be a
video, and that's not its job.
iMovie is primarily a
video editing tool, and it does this purpose very well. It does not handle photos -- that's not its job -- but it approximates this by turning each photo into a short video clip of the still image. It is thus capable of creating a slideshow out of your photos, by turning the collection of photos into a set of
video clips on the timeline. If you want fine control over the pans and zooms, and transitions and titles and effects, this is where to do it, because this is iMovie's specialty. If you wanted to add other video clips to your slides, like from your VHS tapes, iMovie is the tool that understands how to work with multiple video clips and arrange them to make an exact, frame-accurate video. That is its job! You'll find, however, that putting photos in a slide show is a bit more work in iMovie -- and that's because, again, you're actually working with video clips.
I hope that makes sense. Any one of those programs knows how to do simple slideshows, and it is your preference as to which you like best. But when you start getting fancy, you need to pick the tool best suited for the task. In your case, mixing video footage with photos, I think iMovie will be the only one that knows how to handle both. Then once you've got exactly what you want from iMovie, create the finished video and send it to iDVD, which knows how to take it from there and burn a nice DVD out of it.
