[MacDV] New Computer

[Erick Camp]

While both machines should be capable of editing the video, you will 
probably find that the G4 iMac works best at doing the DVD side of the 
operation.  The video that you have created must be converted into 
MPEG-2 format.  As it is converted, it will also compress the size of 
the video footprint.  You will have no problem fitting a 30 minute 
video onto DVD using iDVD which should have shipped with both of your 
machines -- if not, Apple just announce a new product called iLife 
which includes the latest upgrades to iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie and iDVD 
for about $50.00 (U.S. dollars).  Due to the size of iDVD it is not a 
down-loadable product.  While iDVD will only write to internal DVD 
writers, AFAIK iDVD will produce a DVD image on disk that you can then 
use Toast to burn to an external DVD writer.  (Other may want to chime 
in at this point?)

With the new iMove3 (part of the above bundle in iLife) you can also 
now automatically add chapter points that iDVD recognizes.  This means 
that you can mark special points in the movie so that the DVD user has 
the option on the opening menu to "jump" to a scene and start playing 
the movie from that point.

Good luck.

Erick Camp
2 Penguins Studios

On Thursday, January 9, 2003, at 03:20 AM, Joyce Ranieri wrote:

> I want to take the old VHS & 8 mm video of my boys and put them on 
> dvds. I have a mini-dv camera, and have been able to get the footage 
> into the computer. As near as I can tell that's about as far as I can 
> go with my current equipment. I have a 600MHz iBook (G3) with a 20G 
> hard drive and 384 MB of ram, and an external dvd-r burner with Toast 
> Titanium. Is there any way I can make dvds with what I've got? I 
> played with 30-minutes of Christmas footage and ended up with a 6.8 gb 
> movie -- too big to burn in Toast. So the question is -- can this be 
> done with my current equipment?
>
> If not, I'm looking at a flat-panel iMac, 17" display, 80 GB hard 
> drive, built in SuperDrive. Will this do the job? When can Apple be 
> expected to release new computers again? Should I wait just a bit to 
> see what might come out soon? I've heard rumors that the 15" iMac will 
> be discontinued. I have no problem with waiting -- just a bit -- I 
> could spend that time putting the videos onto my external hard drive 
> and editing them in iMovie.
>
> Joyce