making a 2 hour long DVD. can iDVD do it or what?

[cb911]

hi,

i've just got the Clone Wars episodes and commentaries for each episode and now i want to burn them to a DVD, but i've found out the iDVD will only do a 60 minute DVD with the settings i have it on now, i've also found out that you can set it to do a 90 minute DVD?

but that's still too short. i think the total running time would be about 2 hours, that's for two seasons, not including the commentaries, which would bring it to a total of 4 hours running time (i think). but the actual file size of all that content is only 1.88GB, easily able to fit onto a DVD.

so, how can i get all that onto a DVD with menus so i can play it in a DVD player, or DVD Player.app? if anyone could help me out with this, that would be really great.

 

[Veldek]

What version of iDVD do you use? I think the newest version that comes with iLife '04 is capable of making 2-hour DVDs, but I'm not sure as I don't have it.

 

[cb911]

i've got iDVD 3.0.1. that's the latest, right?

and it would be good if i could get 4 hours of footage in.

i figure that it should be possible some how, because all the files are only 1.88GB, so i just need to make a menu for it somehow so that i can get to the different episodes from a DVD player.

does anyone know any that would meet my needs for this?

 

[Veldek]

Hmm, sorry, but the latest version is 4.0.1 AFAIK. So you have to buy iLife '04 or DVD studio pro (perhaps overkill), if you want to do a 2-hour DVD, unless there are some freeware apps that I'm unaware of.

 

[cb911]

ah damn. you're right about it being 4.0.1.

but still, only 2 hours isn't worth it for me... i'd probably be better off getting Director, that does that kind of thing, right? and since i'm getting into motion graphics i guess it'd be good to know Director... hhmmm... might try that out.

also, on a similar subject... i'm just putting together a basic home movie in iMovie, i want to burn it on a CD, 700MB. so i'm thinking of using MPEG-4 audio and video compression, that's pretty good, right? but i need a kind of size calculator so i know what settings to use so i can make it 700MB. any know of an app that can do that?

 

[Savage Henry]

You might want to try this thread. It had some juicy wodges of info and opinions on the iDVD capacity

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/60104/

 

[cb911]

lol. yeah, some juicy wodges of info, and übergeek and MattG goin at it.

and about that MPEG-4 size calculator... i'm actually after a 3ivx size calculator now. i've got 3ivx, so i'll try that, but i'm just guessing the settings for now trying to get it to as close to 700MB as i can.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Alternative to DVD

You can always encode a quicktime and enjoy it on your Mac. With quicktime, you can store several hours of material on a DVD to play on your Mac. Sure it doesn't work on a DVD player but you can still see it in full screen mode with Quicktime Pro. Quicktime is a great inexpensive alternative if you have hundreds of hours that you want to archive. I couldn't afford the time and cost to burn everything I want to archive to DVD. Scrubbing thru video is quicker too and you select the quality vs disk space with the encoding options that makes sense for you.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

It may only take up 1.88GB (for 4 hours) on the crappy quality you have it in, but DVDs are encoded in MPEG2 which will take up a lot more space (unfortunately you'll still have to put up with the original quality). You may first have to convert the files for iDVD to recognise. You could always burn a data DVD in the Finder of it for computers to play it as a QuickTime file though.

The latest version is 4 but I haven't managed to burn anything right on it yet - it seems very glitchy - even with the latest update patch.

 

[cb911]

yeah, i know that DVDs are encoded in MPEG2, so i'm trying to find a way to keep the unmodified .mov files and just make a front end for them that contains the menu. but i guess that's kind of pointless because i won't be able to play it on a DVD player anyway... oh well.