Want to make some of my first DVDs...

[Caitlyn]

Hey guys.
Ok, so, I have about an hour's worth of video that I taped on my friend's Sony digital camera. The video is on my computer as MPEG files. What I want to do is put these movies onto a DVD that will play on most DVD players so we can watch it on our television. So, what is the best way of going about making a DVD like this? Should I just use Toast? Or should I use something like iMovie because it'll be guranteed to work? Do I have to convert anything? Any help is appreciated as I am a complete newbie in the ways of making DVD movies, etc.

Thanks so much!
-Cait

 

[thejadedmonkey]

1. Open iDVD up.
2. Drag the movie file into iDVD. Just put it somewhere in the big open window. iDVD will automatically add it to the DVD and do the converting, etc.
3.Burn.

no need for iMovie if you've already got the footage how you want it, although iMovie can help to clean it up. Toast might work too, but that's how I would do it.

P.S. I see some places you say movie, in other places you say movies. If you have more than one movie file, just drag all of them into iDVD, or if you want them to play sequentially throw them into iMovie and combine them into one.. there might be an easier way to do that on iDVD, I just don't know though.

 

[Caitlyn]

Awesome! Thanks so much for the reply/help. The movie format is good though right? I don't have to convert it or anything?

 

[Texas04]

It needs to be Mpeg-2, but if you drag it into iDVD, iDVD it will convert it all for you, you dont have to worry about it . Welcome to the world of iLife .

 

[nsutt22]

It needs to be Mpeg-2, but if you drag it into iDVD, iDVD it will convert it all for you, you dont have to worry about it . Welcome to the world of iLife .

I think Mpeg-4 works but not sure...

 

[jive]

I don't want to make a new topic so I'm going to ask here - why does it take so long to convert? I had 90 minutes of avi and it took around 4 hours to convert and then about 20 minutes or so to burn. Why does it take so long? I have a 17" iMac with 2Gb ram...

 

[rand()]

I don't want to make a new topic so I'm going to ask here - why does it take so long to convert? I had 90 minutes of avi and it took around 4 hours to convert and then about 20 minutes or so to burn. Why does it take so long? I have a 17" iMac with 2Gb ram...

It's simply a complex process. The calculation to do MPEG compression is very processor expensive - it's not a RAM limitation, it's a processor one.

The stand-alone DVD burners they sell typically come with hardware MPEG compressors, which are chips specifically designed for MPEG compression. Macs don't generally have a hardware compressor built into them, so they must do the compression in software, which is slower.

Also, depending on the AVI you pulled the video from, the Mac has to decompress, convert, and then re-compress the video. It's simply a lot of work, and only gets faster with more / faster processors.

Hope that clarifies things,
-rand()

 

[AviationFan]

It's simply a complex process. [...] It's simply a lot of work, and only gets faster with more / faster processors.

The time this takes also depends on the quality you expect the result to have. Sloppy algorithms may be much faster, but I usually care more about the quality, and thus schedule my tasks such that the long encoding runs can be done overnight.

- Martin