iMovie '09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual

Chapter 16. iDVD Basics

iDVD—the program, the legend—turns iMovie movies and iPhoto slideshows into Hollywood-style DVDs that people can watch on TV sets. iDVD lets you design DVDs’ main menu screens, add playback controls, and otherwise dress up iMovie movies, resulting in dynamic, interactive DVDs that look amazingly professional. iDVD handles the technology; you control the style.

Not only are there lots of pro-style features and effects, but you can even burn widescreen DVDs—that is, ones with wide, rectangular, cinematic proportions that fit today’s plasma and LCD digital TV screens.

The software requirement is iDVD. The hardware requirement is a DVD recorder, inside, or connected to, your Mac.

Why iDVD?

Don’t look now, but Apple thinks that the era of the DVD has passed. iDVD ’09, according to Steve Jobs, is "for people who still want to make DVDs.” (His subtext: “Those losers!”) The real action, he believes, is on the Internet.

But don’t tell that to the 120 million U.S. families who don’t have high-speed Internet access—or any Internet access at all—and therefore can’t see online video. These people aren’t on YouTube. They can’t see your .Mac gallery. They almost certainly have DVD players, though. And producing your movies on DVD offers a wealth of benefits: They’re small, light, and easy to mail. DVDs can last a long time—a century, if you believe the manufacturers—if you stick to brand-name blanks like Verbatim and Imation, and keep the burned discs in a cool, dry place.