iDVD Question

[Go4EVA!]

I am a Mac newbie with a strong interest in photography apps. I recently created an iPhoto slideshow, exported it to iDVD, and successfully burned it off - so far, so good.

My problem/question is that I noticed a HUGE reduction in image quality on the final DVD product. My original photos were shot with a digital SLR camera at max resolution -- approx 5-7MB per image. The slideshow looks great in iPhoto, but looks really lousy on the burned DVD. Am I doing something wrong? Is there some way to adjust the resolution in iDVD, or is this just the nature of the beast? Is there a "better" Mac application that will allow me to produce high-quality DVDs?

Thanks much!

 

[qwerty2k]

Hi,

I believe in the project settings of idvd you set the quality, most likely its at the lowest (as it is by default) then there is 'best' and then 'professional' so i would just select either of them and they should look tonnes better.

 

[Go4EVA!]

Thanks for the quick reply -- but I must confess that I'm having problems finding the *project settings* you describe.

I probably should have mentioned that I'm a Mac newbie with a computer that is a couple years old (it was given to me) -- so I'm using iDVD 5.0 Will that make a difference?

(I'm in the market for a new Mac, but waiting for Black Friday and/or Christmas sales, if any....)

 

[macbookairman]

i can't tell you exactly how to get to the settings, but i know it is something like this....

Menu item (not sure which one), just try all of them in the menu bar at the top.
Below on of those menu items is "Project Info" i think. From there you can switch between Professional Quality, High, and Good.

 

[John Doe 57]

I HATE iDVD!!!!

I filmed my school track team this year and imported the videos into iDVD in m4v video format.

All the videos, once burned, were slow and had many errors in them. I was very displeased. I could not get any answers to why it happened. The worst part was - I didn't back up any of my footage.

 

[Go4EVA!]

Any suggestions on "other" software packages that are better?

 

[macbookairman]

did you try changing the quality? i have my quality set to the best available, and i have no problems with quality whatsoever. I use iDVD quite regularly as well.

 

[Go4EVA!]

To be honest, I tried really hard to follow your advice. I scanned every menu option I could find, and I think my version (5.0) must be "old," because I've been unable to locate the "Professional Quality, High, and Good" resolution choices that you described.

I'm still motivated to learn, and I'm not giving up on iDVD just yet, because I did find one menu that said something like "use original photo file" (or something like that), and I haven't had a chance to try that option yet...

 

[theBB]

The pictures on any DVD is limited to 720x480, which I presume is much lower resolution than your actual photos. Add to that the consumer grade compression algorithm, it would be very difficult to get much better quality beyond what iDVD calls "Best Quality" (as opposed to Best Performance.) Using Ken Burns effect will make pictures look worse as well.

 

[Go4EVA!]

Wow, 720x480 seems pretty small. My original images are in the 2600x4000 range, so that's a pretty dramatic loss.

I did find the best quality / best performance toggle switch under the iDVD preferences menu -- I'll give that a try as it seems to have defaulted to "best performance" on my first attempt.

I also found another selection option which says "always add original slideshow photos to DVD-ROM." But I'm not sure what this option does.....

Thanks for the advice.