[G4] iDVD and burning DVD's

[Steve Goldstein]

At 10:27 PM -0500 12/26/03, S Austen wrote:
>Is the only way to get iDVD, to buy iLife, which includes iPhoto, 
>iMovie, and iTunes that are already part of Jaguar?

I think the answer is "yes." 

>Is it worth the $49.00 or is there a better (cheaper ?) way to burn DVD's?


Depends.  For about twice the price, you can get the full-featured 
Toast 6 Titanium, but that is mainly for burning data discs, both CDs 
and DVDs (I tried a VCD and was not pleased with the results).  BUT . 
. . if you want to burn movies from a digital camera to DVD, using 
iMovie to edit and compose your movie, then iDVD is the cheapest way 
that I am aware of to burn it on a Mac.

The encoding takes a long time, BTW, and a 1-hour movie takes close 
to 20 GB of disc space (I checked my HD, and a movie that was almost 
60 minutes takes up just under 16 GB, but, as I recall, it required 
even more space during the encoding process).

The results were unbelievable.  It seemed like studio-quality video 
when played on our TV.  Be cautioned that along the way, the 
intermediate products, both video and sound, were often so distorted 
that I thought that I had blundered.  I don't really understand why 
(maybe my 800 MHz processor and is too underpowered to be rendering 
things properly on the fly?), but again, the final product was 
outstanding.

The documentation (iMovie -> iDVD-> finished DVD disc), BTW, is 
TERRIBLE-to-non-existent.

Good luck,

Steve