iDVD Project archiving

[willrob]

After completing an iDVD project, the file is over 4G in size, which seems reasonable. If one looks inside (Show Contents) one can find all the pieces, including the audio and mpeg video files. Since everything is there, why does iDVD need to have the original dv clips in order to burn another copy of the disk? Archiving the project produces something over 20Gs, which is basically the same size as the project file and the orginal files if they were simply dumped into a folder together.

I know I can duplicate the disk later by using Disk Utility, but perhaps I'll want to change some aspect of the disk—add or deleat a clip—and archiving or saving everything seems the only recourse that will allow that.

[willrob]

A correction to my post. Upon closer inspection, Archiving produces a file that is larger (21.3 G) than the combined total of the project file (2.54 G) and its dv clips (9.61 G). That means the motion menue acounts for 9.5 G, which seems a bit extreme. I guess I'm associating the trm archive with what Stuffit does—producing a compact version of the pieces. But in this case, the result is actually larger.

[WiseWeasel]

I'd say the source DV files are really the only files you need to make backups of, as you may want to edit them again in iMovie or something in the future, to make another DVD. If you just want duplicates of the DVD you already made, that's easy to accomplish with Disk Utility, as you mentioned, but if you ever need to edit the video again, or use it as source for another project, it's crucial to keep backups of the original DV material, as converting from DVD format will lose significant quality. It's really not necessary to backup the entire iDVD project, as that would take up a lot more space, and it's not impossible to build that again in the future if you want it. If the content is important to you, it's definitely crucial to keep backups of the DV files, but the rest is expendable.