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iDVD 7 Questions

Tallest Skil

Tallest Skil

macrumors P6
Original poster
Aug 13, 2006
16,044
4
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
Okay, so I'm trying to make a compilation... disk... in iDVD and I'm running into some problems.

1. iDVD doesn't like more than six videos on each chapter menu. (Why? That's stupid.) I chose "Temporarily Disable" on the limit popup, allowing me to create more, but when I copy additional movie templates in, it makes them larger than the rest and the Inspector sliders for size and whatnot don't match up anymore, so I can't reliably make them the same size. Why does it do this and can I disable it entirely? Why should there be a limit on number of chapters?
2. They're not really chapters, they're individual movies. I'm just paginating them on chapter pages... and I can't figure out how to add a button down by the "back to main menu" button to go to the next page of videos.
3. Once I'm done setting all of the media, windows, and whatnot, can one export to a universal disk menu/playing format instead of burning straight to a DVD?

I ask the last one because... this is for a Blu-ray disk. I wanted to compile a lot of standardish-definition stuff and put it all on one Blu-ray disk. Is saving the completed thing as a VIDEO_TS file correct? Does Blu-ray use VIDEO_TS or does it have its own filesystem?

Any help is appreciated. I'd really like to know why iDVD thinks it can limit me in my videos per page.

Thanks, anyone!

Addendum: Also, in the Cinema theme, I want the main title on each page to include lowercase letters, but it autoformats to all caps. Can this not happen?
 
I must say... I always choose the worst times to post my threads. Either because of location and time zones or time alone, they don't get much exposure and I have to double post to get them seen again. I apologize.

Recap:
How can I raise the linkable button limit on an iDVD screen?

Why can't I seem to add a button to go to the next page of "chapters"?

Does Blu-ray use VIDEO_TS, and if so, can I simply export this project to a VIDEO_TS when I'm done and then burn it to a BD-R instead of a DVD?

The Cinema theme formats the page titles to all caps. How can I get it to accept lowercase letters?

Thanks, everyone.
 
How long are the clips?

While they maybe 2.1GB as compressed MPEG 4's or AVI's, when it gets converted to DVD format (MPEG 2) the size increases dramatically because of higher mb/s rate used with MPEG 2.
 
yeah, im having problems w/ idvd too, except my problem is that idvd just won't start period. right when i click the icon a dialog box pops up saying that idvd has unexpectedly quit...but never even started!:confused: help plz:)
 
Well I know you are asking about iDVD, but I thought I would throw in some comparison info on Toast here too when it comes to .avi compilations.

If you use Toast's DVD-Video ability, you can load up quite a few .avi files that will be converted and presented with a design of your choosing for the main menu, and links forward to (and back from) additional .avis will be automatically created six or eight per page depending on the design chosen. I have had up to about 20 per disk on a single layer disk that work fine. In the end, the presentation works and looks like a collection of "chapter selection" pages in iDVD.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Really? They're about 42 minutes each.
Click to expand...

Ah, there's your problem. iDVD has 2 quality settings.

Dealing with a 4 GB DVD, I'm pretty sure that the "best" setting gets you about 60 minutes of video and the other setting give you about 90 minutes.

With DVD studio Pro I can do whatever quality level I want, and even then I tend to stick to 140 minutes as my max. I've done 180 before, but it starts to look pretty terrble.

You're talking about 240 minutes of video. With iDVD you'll need to makes sure you have the quality setting lowered (in the program preferences), and you're still talking about making 3 DVDs here, not one.
 
Small White Car said:
Ah, there's your problem. iDVD has 2 quality settings.

Dealing with a 4 GB DVD, I'm pretty sure that the "best" setting gets you about 60 minutes of video and the other setting give you about 90 minutes.

With DVD studio Pro I can do whatever quality level I want, and even then I tend to stick to 140 minutes as my max. I've done 180 before, but it starts to look pretty terrble.

You're talking about 240 minutes of video. With iDVD you'll need to makes sure you have the quality setting lowered (in the program preferences), and you're still talking about making 3 DVDs here, not one.
Click to expand...

Well, yeah, but that all ties in with my second question. Or one of them. Whichever one. I want to put three seasons of a TV show onto one Blu-ray disk. I figured I could get all the data and menus compiled in iDVD and then burn the final project to a BD-R (with Toast, et. al.) even though the size was too large for a formal iDVD project.

I didn't think the settings to change quality mattered very much in light of the fact that I'll have either 25 or 50 gigabytes with which to play.

For what it's worth, the content amounts to three seasons. Episodes are 42±1 minutes long, and the seasons contain 22, 24, and 24 episodes, respectively. On my computer, that'd fit on a single layer BD-R, but if you say they're reencoded for the disk, I'll just go with a dual-layer if the content won't fit.

Also, then, my final question: Is VIDEO_TS used by Blu-ray, or is its filestructure completely different? I could just save to a VIDEO_TS file and burn that outside of iDVD if that's the case.

Thanks again for everyone's help.
 
I know nothing about Blu-Ray production except for this:

It's still impossible to make Blu-Ray disks using DVD Studio Pro, no matter what other software you may own. Final Cut users that need Blu-Ray disks are currently buying Adobe Encore.

So although I know nothing about Blu-Ray and very little about iDVD, I would find it quite odd if iDVD has this feature when DVD Studio Pro does not.
 
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