Duplicating a DVD

Unfortunately, iDVD takes nearly as long to burn a second DVD as it does to build and burn the first. When you need to burn multiple copies of your work, you’ll wish you had a faster way.

You do. Using the Mac OS X program called Disk Utility, you can convert the first DVD into a disk image: a file on your hard drive that perfectly replicates the contents of a disk. Whenever you need a copy of the original, you can use either Disk Utility or the disc-burning program known as Roxio Toast to burn a new DVD based on the disk image you made.

Here’s how to go about it.

Phase 1: Create a Disk Image

The following steps use the Disk Utility program to copy your new DVD to a disk image. Insert the master DVD into your Mac, and then proceed like this:

  1. Insert your DVD. Then open Disk Utility.

    Disk Utility sits at this moment in your Applications Utilities folder. (In versions of Mac OS X before Panther 10.3, it was called Disk Copy. The steps generally follow the outline presented here.)

    The window shown at top in Figure 22-10 appears, listing all of your drives. (For most people, that means one hard drive and one DVD burner.)

    First, click your DVD’s name, as shown at left. When you click New Image, the Save As sheet lets you specify where and how to save your new image. Type a name for the disk image. Select DVD/CD Master as your Image Format, leave Encryption set to none, and save the result to your desktop.

    Figure 22-10. First, click your DVD’s name, as shown at left. When you click New Image, the Save As sheet lets you specify where and how to save your new image. Type a name for the disk image. Select DVD/CD Master as your Image Format, leave Encryption set ...

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