Importing/compressing Mini DV (recorded on LP) onto iMovie

[klapin]

Do you know why importing a mini DV tape (recorded on LP) would take up so many gigabytes? I'm trying to take a 60 minute recording of our play and make it into a dvd, but it is like 12 gigs when imported into iMovie (too much for 1 dvd).

Any ideas?

Should I compress the imported footage, and if so, how?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Peel]

Don't worry, it will all be fine in the end, though you will use more disc space in the interim.

The DV compression format takes about 250MB /minute (4 min/GB). DVD's, however, use MPEG2 compression, which produces a much smaller file size, though it is arguably also less editable. This is fine for DVDs as it is a delivery system, not an editing platform.

When you finish editing your video and transfer it to iDVD to burn to a disc, it will be transcoded to MPEG2, and you will be able to fit your 1 hour video comfortably on a single DVD -R disc.