Matt Willmore introduces you to a the latest revision to Apple's iDVD. iDVD is the easiest way to make DVDs on any platform, and Matt will explain to you why.
At the Macworld keynote address on January 6, Steve Jobs unvieled iLife '04, which includes iDVD 4. With it, Steve touted new features in iDVD that would make it an even better way to make DVD's on your Mac. Having used the 3.0 release of iDVD, I was eager to find out if Jobs' claims regarding iDVD held any water. With the tutorial and the iDVD web site, you learn about many of the new features, including:
- 20+ new themes (still and animated)
- Improved media browser for adding music, photos, and movies to the DVD
- Enhanced slideshows with advanced transitions and looping
- DVD map that graphically displays the arrangement of items in your DVD project
- 2 hour capacity
- AutoPlay content
- Improved resource meter
- Ability to archive projects and edit without a SuperDrive present
My experience with iDVD started when a co-worker wanted a large volume of family pictures to be burned onto DVD's for each family member - there was too much data to store on a single CD, and he wanted a method that would allow the family members to view the files with their computers' DVD drives. Simple enough, but being the Mac zealot I am, that just wasn't enough for me. I asked him if he had considered doing more with the project - namely, making a real DVD out of it that anyone could view on their DVD player. I was looking for an excuse to try out iDVD, and he let me run with it.
Before he knew it, he not only had the images on the DVD for viewing as files, but also a full-blown production DVD that he could play anywhere with submenus and slideshows and everything. He wanted it low-key, so there weren't any animated menus or background tracks, but the results were nonetheless impressive (for both of us).
After having worked on this project, I was excited when Jobs announced iDVD 4 and all its cool new features. There were some issues that I had noticed with iDVD (namely, speed) that I wanted to reevaluate in the 4.0 release, as well as test out the new features. Here's what I found.
New Themes
The new themes are...wow. Some are more low-key, which is good for many situations (like my buddy's photos). However, when you're ready to bring out the big guns, there are some simply amazing themes that you can use. My favorite right now is Fish One, complete with rotating slideshow (or movie), bubbles and a yellow tang gliding through the water. (Bubbles from Finding Nemo, anyone?) There are other very nice themes, including Marquee, Montage and the Transparent series. Uncheck the option to show the Apple watermark and they'll never believe you did it in-house. Don't worry, though, all the themes from previous versions of iDVD are there as well.
Improved Media Browser
Many of the requests Apple received for improvements in iDVD concerned the media browser. In earlier versions of iDVD, the ability to add music and photos existed but in limited fashion. Support for external media is now greatly improved. You can select playlists to play behind videos or slide shows. You can select albums from iPhoto, including smart albums, updated dynamically based on image criteria. You can also add songs you've composed in GarageBand, but only by exporting the song to AAC and adding the song via the audio (iTunes) list in iDVD.
Slideshow Looping
iDVD now has the ability to loop. This is a great tool for kiosks and trade shows where you want a continually looping series of pictures. Again, this is something brought over from DVD Studio Pro (in essence, the ability to loop DVD's in the first place was a feature first found in DVD Studio Pro). To enable slideshow looping, simply check "Loop slideshow" in the setup window for the slideshow.
Transitions
Transitions have improved twofold in iDVD 4. First, slide shows can now have some stunning transitions similar to what you would find in the screen saver or Keynote, including Cube (Keynote/Fast User Switching), Mosaic (Keynote) and Droplet (ripple effect). You can also set the direction of transitions that support direction. Also, transitions between chapters of a movie are now enabled, making for a smooth movement as the chapters progress in a movie. Movie chapters can be imported from iMovie, Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express projects.
DVD Map
The DVD map is something that DVD Studio Pro has as a means to visualize the organization of your project; iDVD now has it, too. In the main iDVD window you'll see a new button between the traditional "Motion" and "Preview" buttons. Click that and you will see a visual of your project. You can click-drag in the map to scroll around (as well as use the scroll bars); and double-clicking an element in the map will take you to that map. In addition, some things (such as AutoPlay content) can be modified from the map.
AutoPlay
A nice feature new to iDVD 4 is the ability to autoplay content when the DVD loads up. Not all themes have it, but you can add it to any theme via the DVD Map. The FBI warning you see when you play a commercial DVD is essentially the same as AutoPlay content in iDVD; you can add something to the DVD project that will play for the title screen comes up with all the options. If the content is closely tied in to the theme, it can really enhance the audience's experience. When selecting a theme, you can see if it has AutoPlay content already assigned to it by checking for the AutoPlay watermark on the thumbnail (see the red arrow).
Improved Resource Meter
You'll find that the resource meter in iDVD 4 is much more specific than you would find in version 3. Now, you can see specific numbers for each DVD element, including DVD capacity (formerly the circular progress bar in iDVD 3, motion menus, tracks (audio - up to 99), and menus (up to 99).
Archive Project
iDVD 4 also brings the ability to archive your project. Why is this important? First of all, it directly eliminates the need for a SuperDrive on the Mac you wanted to use iDVD with. Now, no SuperDrive is required. The idea behind this feature is that you can move the DVD project between multiple machines - say your G5 at home and your iBook on the road. The Archive Project command, accessible from the File menu, neatly packages your project together for easy portability. When you're at a machine with a SuperDrive, load up the project and burn it. Please note, however, that this does not eliminate the requirement for an actual SuperDrive; Apple has not embraced 3rd party burners as of yet, and there's not much hope of it happening in the near future. This feature does, however, eliminate the need for a SuperDrive just to open the application.
Caveats
As much as I like iDVD, it's not perfect. There is one glaring problem that it has faced since version 1, and seems to be even worse at today: speed. Unless you have a very recent system (read: G5), iDVD will be sluggish at best for you. I tested iDVD 4 on my personal machine, a 17" PowerBook G4, running at 1.0 GHz with 512MB RAM and OS X 10.3.2. I also made sure that any other processor intensive apps were closed (iTunes encoding, Microsoft Word just sitting there, etc.). From the second I started iDVD, it was slow and the responses were delayed. The startup time does not seem to have changed at all between versions 3 and 4. There was very little I could do in iDVD that didn't suffer from lack of speed. At times the speed was so bad that previews of motion themes would stutter uncontrollably, far past any reasonable performance to review the theme. I was able to maneuver settings around and modify this and that, but the performance was still appalling. I know that iDVD is an intensive program for OS X, but I've never seen an app struggle so hard to keep up with the user.
Conclusion
For the most part, iDVD is an essential part of any Mac's system. With some practice and patience, almost anyone can create professional, amazing-looking DVD's that will have everyone thinking you paid a fortune to have the DVD produced. The issue of speed is not one large enough to discourage the purchase of iLife, but it is very distracting to the user, especially when he/she may be in a creative flow that gets continually interrupted by the sheer sluggishness of the program. My recommendation? Buy it right now, load it up, grab some coffee and by the time you come back it'll be ready and waiting for you to construct your first audience-astounding creation.
Matt Willmore is a founding partner of MacZealots.com. Matt is also a Resident Assistant at Owen Hall and does Mac support at ECN, and is active in PUMUG. He can be reached at .
Reader Comments (44)
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#1) On January 23, 2004 1:56 PM
I have a DPG5 and iDVD4 stalls on stage4. After reading a lot of forum messages, a lot of people are experiencing the same thing. Which makes iDVD4 pretty worthless at the moment
#2) On January 23, 2004 2:17 PM
I can attest to this.
I have been unable to use iDVD with my brand new DP G5 1.8. Its completely worthless.
I am very disapporinted that someone didn’t try this out before it left 1 Infinite Loop.
I put this up there with the iTunes drive destroyer bug.
#3) On January 23, 2004 6:06 PM
I have a G4 867/DP and iDVD 4 “feels” much faster than iDVD 3 when moving around the interface and applying new themes. It doesn’t have that lag I was getting everytime I clicked on a new theme, or pressed the preview button. It’s almost as snappy a normal application : )
(G4/867Mhz Dual processor, 1GB Ram, 10.3.2)
I have not worked on a project or burned anything yet, so I cannot comment on the stage 4 issue.
#4) On February 2, 2004 6:24 AM
I experienced the same loop on stage 4 (multiplexing) with iDVD4 on my MDD G4 but then managed to get things working by doing the following: In the energy saver control panel make sure “put the computer to sleep when incative…” is set to NONE and “put the monitor to sleep…” in set to NONE and make sure “Put the hard drive to sleep…” is NOT ticked. I did this after 2 failed attempts, and since then have burnt 3 DVD’s without any problems. Another tip is to open up the “Activity Monitor” utility and have it in the background when burning. This way you can monitor the CPU & Hard drive activity during the whole process (I’m sure they’ll bring back the progress bar in a future release!). Also taking a peek at the green activity light on your burner can help reassure!
#5) On February 2, 2004 8:07 PM
Lee -
Thanks for the tip on avoiding coasters - that’s a topic I hadn’t seen mentioned on Apple’s discussion boards yet. I think this Friday that, along with a new article, I want to append my iDVD article with information regarding the multiple problems people have been having with burning. Again, thanks for the tip.
#6) On February 19, 2004 8:50 AM
iDVD4 is toast on my g5, yes I can fuss with it and burn every 4th or 5th try but it is pixulated.
Went back to idvd3 which has no problems working with imovie4. You can restore idvd from the restore disk. Just remember to delete the idvd.pkg from the recipet folder
#7) On February 28, 2004 1:40 PM
Yup. iDVD 4.0 with a G5 blows. Big time. I bought a dual G5 with a big plasma display so I could make movies of my new baby boy.
Was doing just dandy until the iLife upgrade, and now nothing.
And Apple keeps telling me there’s nothing wrong.
Thank God I’m not alone, but no one will help me restore my iDVD 3.0! I can’t find “iDVD” anywhere on my restore disc.
#8) On March 1, 2004 12:22 PM
How do I export themes from idvd 4 to use in DVD studio pro 2?
Is this even possible?
#9) On March 3, 2004 8:05 PM
Sorry to say but iDVD 4.01 (and iLife) is running fine on my Dual G5. I had pixelation and drop out initially but finally figured out it was one of my non-Apple memory chips. All-in-One Memory replaced my defective chip (found using Mac Diagnostics) and everything is working as advertised. I couldn’t be happier. Its definitely faster than 3.0.
#10) On March 15, 2004 11:12 PM
I have a Powerbook G4 1 Ghz 1 Mb L3 cache 512 MB ram with a faulty latch I have 10.3.2 iLife including iDVD v4.0.1.
I have 29 GB of free hard disk space.
I can burn successfully idvd from desktop finder to backup files but cannot get iDVD 4 to burn projects at all. The iMovie project is 86 minutes.
I just get the usual power calibration area error (0 * 73, 0 * 03.)
I have made drink coasters
Any suggestions I have used multiple of brands of DVDs available here in Australia.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Kind regards,
John G. Hooper - Australia
jghooper@hockey.net.au
#11) On March 15, 2004 11:25 PM
The problem is probably due to a faulty or dirty DVD drive. Try compressed air to clean it out, or if you’re really daring, open the DVD drive and wipe the lens clean. (Yes, this will void every single warranty ever.) This has been reported on the Apple discussion boards before (just search for “idvd calibration”.
http://discussions.info.apple.com
#12) On March 20, 2004 4:51 PM
As above I am not a happy camper. Brand new DPG51.8. Unable to burn disks. Hangs at step 4. Encoding step 3 also takes forever considering the specs of the machine. Step 4 ran 5 hours without completion before I cancelled it. PC 1.7 with XP does a better job with good results. The disk’s wont burn but I’m certainly burning over this purchase!
#13) On April 2, 2004 8:45 AM
I’m VERY happy with Idvd4. Especially the fact that one can have 99 menu’s and sub-menu’s in a slideshow is a gift. Now you don’t have to put all your pictures in 6 files of 99 slides.
I’ve had one problem with burning in phase 4.Probably due to inserting the blanc DVD before starting iDVD.After reading the help file about burning DVD’s i’ve had no problems on my Imac 17”.
#14) On April 15, 2004 7:56 PM
iDVD4 stalls definitely on stage 4. Since I’ve installed it, I never succeeded burning a DVD. But my SuperDrive works nice with other application such as Roxio’s. Funny
#15) On May 7, 2004 11:35 PM
I can’t get a single idvd burn completed with my dp 1.8 g5. Its kind of refreshing to hear that this isn’t just my machine. Apple needs to get this corrected quickly.
#16) On May 18, 2004 2:32 AM
G4 Sawtooth-Dual 1GHz Powerlogix Processor-1.5 GB of RAM-Radeon 8500-Firmtek SATA HD controller-Miglia TV/DVR Card-Plextor PX 708UF firewire superdrive.
Yes, I have noticed iDVD is slow, but it still works. I NEVER and I Repeat NEVER burn a DVD directly from an Apple App—except for iTunes. I found a hack for external firewire dvd burner at this site —> http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=23370&start=50&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= . I always make a disk image (.dmg) first, then mount it using utilities in roxio toast 6.0.x. I then open DVD player to see how the project compiled. If every thing plays OK, I then drag the mounted disk into toast in the ‘DATA’ section and burn it as a ‘UDF’ (Universal Disk Format). Toast is a much more stable for burning since it’s specialty is burning and supports my plextor firewire superdrive. I use ritek/ridata G04 media found at Meritline.com and haven’t had a coaster except for my mistakes. This method also works when ripping DVDs—make your disk image, mount it, and burn it in toast as data/UDF format. Works Every Time. -J.S.
#17) On May 21, 2004 6:43 PM
FYI, the fish in your MacZealot iDVD theme is a Butterfly fish, not a Tang (specifically a Semilavartus Butterfly).
#18) On June 4, 2004 11:18 AM
Anyone still having a problem with iDVD4 and a G5, download the update (4.0.1) - cures the problem.
#19) On June 4, 2004 2:18 PM
Yes, I am still having the problem with 4.0.1. I have burned a box of Apple Brand DVD’s on my new DP-G5. Only single projects work, trying to do anything useful causes failed burns and pixelation.
#20) On June 18, 2004 1:12 AM
Alos very frustrated. Unable to burn any iDVD (4.01) projects….I click the burn icon, it opens and “glows”, then closes down. Running 10.3.4 on Dual 1 Ghz g4 w/ 1.5 Gig SDRAM, plenty of hard disk space. Can someone tell me how to get back to iDVD 3 (if they find this works). Thanks!
#21) On June 28, 2004 5:50 AM
iDVD is pretty good for a consumer authoring Dvd program.
I had the same problem as posted above: hanging on step 4, with iDvd 2.0. But I think the super drive in the machine I tried was corrupt.
It’s weird that Apple don’t support other dvd writers. After all, DVD writers are just data writers. All the encoding takes place outside of the writer.
It would be nice to see the progress bar being a little more informative. When you burn, it just turns to a candy bar, so you’ll never know how long it will take.
Can I make custom themes, or do I need to get DVD studio pro? The themes provided is no use to me, I usually delete the background and paste in a black tiff image. :)
/Thomas
#22) On July 18, 2004 11:14 AM
Hi Guys,
I’m a little confused with the output of my iDVD burn… I put in a DVD-RW and it burned the disc without any problems, but quite slowly - it took 2 hrs on my 1.5GHz powerbook…
Thing is, it works fine on my Mac DVD player, and any Windows machine DVD player. It just doesn’t work on my consumer DVD players - I’ve tried it on a Toshiba and an Aiwa machiine. The players simply don’t see the DVD as having any content. Any ideas on what is going wrong?
#23) On August 9, 2004 4:44 PM
idvd 4.0.1 sucks! plain and simple. Apple needs to fix this fast! The ones I have been able to burn are either not recognized or if they are have skips in vid and audio…one dvd worked, was recognized, and the sound was distorted. Played it several times nonetheless. The next time I tried to load it it was unrecognizablle??? Seems like almost everyone is having problems of one kind or the other.
#24) On September 18, 2004 7:01 PM
Im runnin a G4 iBook 1.2 GHz/768mb RAM and it burns fine in like an hour and a half.
#25) On October 25, 2004 11:26 AM
My boyfriend are in the midst of a project with a friday deadline - and we are having idvd4 ANGST! We share a g4 dual processor with all the bells and whistles. We’ve burned short projects (say 2 minutes) with no problem - but this current project is a huge 22 minutes…(no time at all) and it seems like our burning gets hung up on stage four. We’ve let it run for hours (at most 4) and end up getting frustrated and canceling it. As far as I can tell we are doing everything right - though we aren’t using the idvd templates
we’ve put in our own quick time files in place of them - our own audio…not sure why a project would take this long…any suggestions?
#26) On October 25, 2004 3:21 PM
I have the same problem — Power Calibraton Area Error (0X73,0X03). I just got this G5 2.0 in the states and moved to Europe where it is not under warrantee - I’d have to pay for repairs. Any other suggestions beside Apple DVDs or blowing air in there (I haven’t tried to fix yet).
#27) On November 25, 2004 5:22 PM
Does apple just want you to buy there stuff. When I had Ivd on 10.1 it worked fine. Then I cut a feature and I am on a deadline and cant burn dvd. It says four gigs the project is 3. I have the panther that is what they suggested I bought the 10.3 and all I see is blue candy stripes and I have cancelled to dvd burnings. These cost money can anyone give me a suggestion.
#28) On December 18, 2004 6:20 AM
After failing to burn (stuck on stage 4) on i-dvd 4.01, we got toast 6. That burns OK but when we click and drag the i-dvd project, the menu (map) doesn’t transfer. Any suggestions?
#29) On December 25, 2004 12:06 AM
Okay so its December and I have a DPG5 processor trying to run iDVD and it appears I am experiencing the same difficulties as those who complained in March. Has anyone found Apple support providing any solutions to this issue? It seems some sites are saying burning just takes forever but don’t stop iDVD let it play out the time even if that is days. Does this make sense?
#30) On December 30, 2004 4:34 PM
I am new to the Apple. I build PC’s. I now love Apple.
I have an iMac 17”, G5 1.8 Ghz, 512 mb, 160 GB, superdrive, running OS 10.3.7 and iDVD 4.0.1
I transfered DV movie of my Graduation and edited it in iMovie, transfered it in iDVD. I have it just perfect. I have tried to burn it to DVD using the apple DVD-R that cost me $20 for 5.
Stuck in Stage 4. I let it run for 12 hours without anything running. The activity monitor shows the CPU is workig and the RAM and Hard Drive is doing something.
I need help! I used up all my money on this Mac.
#31) On January 8, 2005 1:09 AM
I have burnt many succesful disc using most versions of idvd. But after instaling the 4.0.1 update to idvd4 it now hangs during multiplexing.
I fixed it by deleting idvd 4.0.1 and reinstalling idvd4 - ie dont do the update
#32) On January 10, 2005 1:59 AM
New G5 with idvd works fine for video but the audio on the slideshows dips with the transitions. Am I doing something wrong?
#33) On January 16, 2005 1:40 AM
Can anyone figure out how to link serveral sideshows in iDVD to get around the 99 photo limit?
#34) On January 20, 2005 9:12 AM
I’M NOT ALONE!
Left my G4 powerbook for 36hrs ‘hanging there on stage 4! - with no change I gave up and am trying to reduce the amount of effects put in durring iMovie.
Apple suport knew jack-shit when I questioned the ‘hanging’ during stage 4 (multiplexing).
Am I right in assuming that it’s iDVD 4.0.1 that’s the problem & that I can solve it with either ‘Toast’ or reinstalling iDVD 4.0 ?
#35) On January 28, 2005 4:42 AM
Problem Solved
Stage - 4 Hanging on!
Looked at all the forums concerning this ‘Hanging’ problem & I’ve managed to solve mine! (this time anyhow!)
1. opened iDVD project
2. delete encoded do-da’s
3. save iDVD project
4. copy project to public folder
5. Go to system prefs - create new account/user
6. Restart computer log-in as new user
7. open iDVD project & BURN AWAY!
(20 min. film - loads of effects[4GB] took 40mins. to
run through stages 1-4, but subsequent multiple
burns only
took 10 mins.)
8. Then I archived the project.
9. Move iDVD archive from public back to original folder
10. delete original iDVD project.
One question has resulted:
I now have in iMovie a folder each of the titled movies with the shared folder containing the Archived iDVD project. As an Archived project it’s 6GB’s!!!
How do I back that up?!?!?!
a DVD is only 4GB?
Anyhow thanks to those who got me to this happy ending!
I’ve just ordered iLife 5. Now… lets rock!!
#36) On January 28, 2005 9:27 AM
Help someone! I reformatted my iBook, but I cannot find iDVD installer!!! no GarageBand, no iDVD…
sob..sob
I cannot find the restore discs said in the apple support page. I search the discs that came with the iBook. No iDVD!
Help me! SOS
#37) On January 29, 2005 4:35 PM
I struggled for hours trying to get my iDVD project to burn and it kept getting stuck at step 4. I saw Alan Cory’s post above and I followed steps 1 - 3 with success! If you run into this problem, just delete endcoded assets, save the project, close and re-start iDVD and it just might burn!
#38) On February 23, 2005 3:40 AM
I’m using iDVD 3 on a G4 1.4DP, it will finish the burning but the DVD is completely useless. It mounts on the screen but you can’t play it, not even on a real DVD player. Anybody out there who can help me!
#39) On March 17, 2005 3:11 PM
I’m trying to burn a author a DVD on DVD Studio Pro…but when I build & format the DVD it spits it out and it gives me the Power calibration area (0x73,0x03)
I’m using an external burner via firewire…I’m using an iMac G5
Please let me know what to do! thanks—-:)
#40) On March 30, 2005 9:29 PM
I made a wedding dvd and it burnt fine.
A phew weeks later i am trying to burn that same project and i dvd says put in a blank dvd so i put one in and i spits it out and says put in a blank dvd and so on and so on i still cant burn it…
can some one help me…
Its the most frustrating thing as i need it to be burnt for client soon…
#41) On May 31, 2005 4:58 PM
I had the “power calibration area” error in iDVD 5.0.1 last night, made two coasters and was ready to take the file to my office G5. I made a disk image directly from the iDVD menu and saved it to an external drive for transfer. Just for the heck of it, I threw another DVD-R into the drive and used the Disk Utility to burn the content to the same brand of DVD that iDVD made coasters out of. The disk image burned perfectly.
It seems to be an error in iDVD istead of the hardware. I was using the exact same drive, media and OS for Disk Utility as I was for iDVD. It’s an extra step but well worth the effort in case you are stuck with a box of DVD-Rs that is giving iDVD fits. BTW, the media I was using was Memorex DVD-R Printable (Part #3202 4743) just in case it is an issue with a certain type of media.
#42) On June 23, 2005 11:11 PM
Alan Cory & Brian thanks! that did it! Now to see if the finished disk will play in a commercial DVD player.
As far as the continually spitting the disk out thing. This happened to me to, until I noticed that it has to be a DVD-R not a DVD+R or any other combination. Apparently Apple only supports -R (or did at the time I was trying to burn mine) for iDVD. The +Rs work fine for iPhoto and data DVDs.
#43) On July 25, 2005 2:16 AM
Gavin -
This is strange indeed. I know that iDVD 5 supports DVD+R, but theoretically NONE of the iLife ‘04 apps should be able to burn to a +R disc at all; that was a new feature of iLife ‘05.
#44) On October 24, 2005 11:41 AM
Could you please tell me what “deleting encoded do-da’s” means? That is, HOW do I find out what is “encoded” and what isn’t? I would SO like to get this project burned and finished.
Thanks.