Chapter 18. Dvd Menus, Slideshows, and the Map

Chapter 17 shows you how easy it is to convert a single iMovie project into a genuine DVD. But iDVD is capable of far more. You can use it, for example, to create a single disc that contains six of your greatest iMovie masterpieces. Or you can create a slideshow DVD, which happens to be one of the world’s greatest ways to display digital photos. (You can even incorporate movies into that slideshow.) And you’ll never know joy like that of designing your own navigation menus, complete with menus within menus.

This chapter shows you how, by doing a few more things in iDVD, you can gain far more power and freedom when you create your DVD menus.

Adding Movies

When you get right down to it, all iDVD really does is add window dressing—menus, buttons, and so on—to movies, photos, and music you create in other programs. Take movies, for example. As Chapter 14 makes clear, you can move an iMovie project into iDVD via the Media Browser. But that’s just one of the ways to add movies to your project. You can also:

  • Use the File→Import command.

  • Drag movies into the iDVD window from your desktop.

  • Choose movies from the Media Browser.

The following pages take you through these tasks.

The Import Command

iDVD’s File→Import command lets you embed video, pictures, audio, and background movies onto whatever menu screen you’re editing; see Figure 18-1.

When you choose File→Import→ Video, the Open File dialog box appears so you can navigate to a movie and select it. (You can’t select more than one movie at a time.) When you click Import, iDVD loads the movie and adds it to the “drawer” of media files on the right side of the screen (see Figure 18-3 for a close-up of the drawer in action).
Figure 18-1. When ...

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