On Oct 26, 2004, at 9:03 AM, Stephen Jonke wrote:
These days pretty much any DVD player or burner can play either and pretty much any DVD burner can burn either. One difference to Mac users is that iDVD will not burn to DVD+R or DVD+RW, it only burns to DVD-R and DVD-RW. However I believe you can work around that by using the Hurz/Phurz hack which allows you to burn to a disk image, then burn the image to + media, but don't quote me on it.
The iDVD thing isn't as big a deal, though, once you find out what I found out - iDVD has major problems and can't be used for anything over about 30 minutes long or equivalent. It crashes during multiplex and burn, even when using the hack to write to a disk image. There is some black magic that I haven't figured out that allows to work once in a blue moon, but it mostly doesn't work and is extremely frustrating. I've given up on it for now and am waiting anxiously for Apple to come out with a fix, but I'm definitely not holding my breath. Eventually I'll probably decide to buy a copy of Toast and try their software. Not as slick, but maybe it actually works!
Steve
I just burnt a couple of hours of video onto a DVD using iDVD. I edited the video in iMovie 4 and handed it off to iDVD from within iMovie. It took five hours to burn the first DVD (I usually just get it started at night and go to bed), but after that, copies take only ten minutes each because iDVD only has to go through Step 4. You do have to make those copies during the same session as the original burn (after it spits out the first DVD and says "would you like to make additional copies?), because if you quit iDVD, you'll have to start all over again to make the next one and wait for those hours of encoding and compression.
The main thing to do to ensure a successful burn with iDVD is to have LOTS of room on both the hard drive containing OS-X and iDVD and the one containing the video (if you're using two drives like I do). Keep at least 20 gigs free on each drive, preferably much more. Yes, I know that the instructions for iDVD say something like "you need to have as much free space as the video is big," but it's wrong. You need much more than that. I was getting coasters until I read about the necessity for lots of empty hard drive space and bought bigger drives to get that additional room. Then everything was fine.
Also before burning a DVD run Disk Warrior through your drives, throw out the iDVD .plist in Preferences, run MacJanitor to make sure that the Mac doesn't go into its maintenance routines late at night while you're burning, and restart the computer. These last are just tips from other iDVD users that I do as additional insurance before starting the hours-long burn process.
Tom
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