Compressing an iDVD project

[tigrr]

I have a 2 hr/21 min video (done in iMovie 5) which I've made and completed an iDVD 5 project of. It's ready to be burnt to a blank DVD, but it tells me that I need a dual layer DVD, which I think is a waste since the project is only around 4.7GB.

I've been told that Toast's "Fit to DVD" function will allow for this, by burning a saved disc-image file from iDVD. The result is apparently a slightly lower quality video, but one that'll fit the DVD. I assume since a standard DVD will take 2 hours, that with 2 hours, 20 minutes I won't notice much change in quality, will I?

Before I fork out the cash, I was wondering if there are other ways I can achieve the same thing, for less or even free?

[terryj]

Re quantumizing a DVD project for Free?
Next, you'll want world peace in 24 hours.....


No is the short answer to your question.
Whether Toast 8 or DVD2ONEX, the best
re-quantum ( ie. shrink) dvd content tools
for the mac cost cash unfortunately.

IDVD is correct in stating that 260mins of footage
(2hrs20min) is a Dual layer, as Standard layers are
4.37GB of space. 4.7 Gb exceeds that by a small,
but significant, margin.

Either way, using Toast or DVD2ONEX, the principle will be the same:
Save a mountable disc image from iDVD, and then you'll use
this in either program to re-quantum to the smaller size.
Your video will degrade some, and if it is fast moving video
(think fight scenes, car chases, etc) those areas, along with your
black areas, will be highly squeezed and may result in some blockiness.

[tigrr]

Thanks.
I'll look into getting Toast. Although I already have several free CD-burner applications and don't need another one that "disk spanning" feature sounds pretty useful as well.
Toast 8 is $ 100 at Roxio's website for a downloadable version. I don't mind having to download it instead of getting a boxed/physical CD version, but do you know of anywhere it can be gotten cheaper? eBay auctions usually sell for around the same price because sellers charge extra for shipping to make up for their losses.

About the file-size again...
I let my Powerbook G4 make an iDVD disc image throughout last night, but for some reason, when I woke up and checked it out the size had increased to around 7 or 8GB as far as I could remember. I had the iDVD preference set for "Quality" instead of "Performance".
Did something go wrong somewhere?

I've deleted that disc image file now and have just started making a new one to see if that one needs less space.

[Case]

Do you know of anywhere it can be gotten cheaper?

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic344259.html

[Frobozz]

Roxio's Popcorn 3 also does this and costs less than Toast.

[KeepItSimple]

$54.99 after $20 rebate at Amazon.com.
Free Shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/Roxio-Toast-8-Titanium-Mac/dp/B000LP6JKY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8...1020362&sr=8-1

[MacDSL]

You're forgetting that the project in iMovie is compressed video. The iDVD Application, takes that video and converts it to DVD format (also a compressed video, but different) and burns it. You can't think that a 4.7G iMovie project will translate to a 4.7G DVD. They are compressed at different rates. What you can think, is that just like a commercial DVD, 2.5 hours of video will be about 7G-8G of DVD Disk space. iDVD does not allow you to tweak the bitrate/compression enough to fit 2.5 hours of video on anything less than a Dual-Layer DVD. Toast and some others (even free ones) can allow you to adjust the compression/bitrate so achieve this. Of course, as you lower the bitrate/increase the compression the quality suffers more and more.

Let's say you have some bad handheld VHS Camera footage that's terrible, and you bring it into iMovie, even though it's terrible and the project is 4G it's 2 hours long. iDVD will still put it on nothing less than a DUal-Layer DVD. Why? iDVD does not know that the footage is terrible and will not suffer quality if it's compressed more. It just sets it up at a certain bitrate and burns it to DVD. 2 Hours, is still 2 Hours to iDVD....The two settings in iDVD do tweak the bitrate, but that's it, you only have 2 bitrate choices.

Hope this helps...

[tigrr]

I finally took the plunge and bought Toast 8.

So after some trial and error I think I figured out how to burn the .IMG disk image I made from iDVD into a single-layered DVD:

1) In Toast's main window (on the left hand side) I clicked on the "VIDEO_TS folder" under the "Video" icon.

2) Next I dragged the .IMG disk image file over to the main part of the window

3) the "Use fit-to-DVD video compression" button on the left side was turned on

4) Finally I pressed the big red button on the bottom right hand side, which started the process of burning the DVD (this took ages -probably around 30 minutes or so).

Anyway, the DVD played fine afterwards, both on the Mac and in a regular stand-alone DVD player.
The only minor cosmetic problem is that the DVD showed up with a silly filename on my Mac desktop. I didn't think DVDs had names on them, but rather something generic, but this one does.
Is there a way to change this, or is the reason that I've done the whole burning thing slightly incorrectly?

[tigrr]

iDVD does not allow you to tweak the bitrate/compression enough to fit 2.5 hours of video on anything less than a Dual-Layer DVD. Toast and some others (even free ones) can allow you to adjust the compression/bitrate so achieve this. Of course, as you lower the bitrate/increase the compression the quality suffers more and more.

So does Toast compress the already compressed iDVD video, or does it first uncompress the iDVD video to its full size, then do a more effective compression?

I would think that the latter method would be the best and most proper way to do it.

[Frobozz]

To burn an iDVD disc image in Toast it is easiest to use the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.

Toast does not "compress" the video because it does not re-encode it. Instead, the terminology is that It "requantizes" the video. I can't explain it but you can look in the Glossary (upper left corner of this page) and read the definition of Quantisation and Quantize Matrix which will leave you as confused as I am. What I understand is one should get better video quality requantizing the 2-1/2 hour iDVD disc image than one would get if iDVD had been able to lower its bit rate enough to fit the single-layer disc in the first place.

Had Toast uncompressed the iDVD video you would have needed a huge amount of available hard drive space and the process would have taken hours.

Now that you have Toast you don't need iDVD unless you want its menus and its very cool slide show capability. Unlike iDVD, Toast can fit 2-1/2 hours and more to a single-layer DVD because Toast creates Dolby Digital audio instead of iDVD's PCM audio. The Dolby Digital audio is very compressed so that leaves more room for video on the disc, whereas PCM audio is uncompressed and takes up much more space.

My opinion is that iDVD is great for videos up to 90 minutes in length on a single-layer disc. Longer than that I prefer Toast because the video doesn't need to be compressed as much as it does with iDVD.

Of course, if one wants the awesome iDVD menus then one must use iDVD because Toast has very basic menus.

By the way, there is no difference between Toast 8 and Popcorn 3 in relation to any of my above comments.

[SERBIAN]

please delete this...I missunderstood the original question..

[kevinwshilts]

I have read the discussion several times now and I just have one question.

In iDVD 7, you cannot even make a disk image ".img" file that is over 2 hours, so how is it that you folks are taking an iDVD project of 2+ hours and burning it in Toast or other programs?

Thanks

[terryj]

Creating Disc Image in iDVD
for more than 2 hours of content, set iDVD to the "High Quality"
setting, and it will make a disc image file that is over two hours.

[AugSasso]

I have a Mac G4. I edited my movies on IMovie and burned them in IDVD. there were movies of my concerts. Anywhere from 35 minutes to 45 minutes. November I burned an IMoivie. 9 Gigs, 35 minutes. Burned on IDVD no problem. Used the 4.7 Gig dvd. Took about 4 or 5 hours to burn.
Now I upgraded to IDVD 8 and IMovie 7.
I cut a movie. 48 minutes. 10.33 Gig. Can't burn this thing to save my life.
Takes about 8 hours on 1 mac to burn and then it quits. On another mac it takes 33 hours to burn??
What the hell is going on?
Email me at augiesasso@yahoo.com

[terryj]

welcome to iLife 08, land of the complicated and
where Apple changed most things for the worst.

I've been having to look at iLife 08 recently due
to a couple of people asking if the problem was
their MacBooks that were causing the exact same thing:
Slow to compress and burn a project to iDVD,
than the previous iLife 06 setup on a G5 iMac.

From as near as I can tell...it has to do with the way the project is saved
and then converted to DVD. One of the people saved the iMovie
as an .mp4 in h.264 they were working on, and then pulled that
from the Media Browser into iDVD and then built the project and burn.

I plan on Tuesday to test just pulling the complete iMovie project
into iDVD and burning that without using Media Browser,
something you used to could just do in iLife 06.

Also, look at the Quality Setting in iDVD 8.
I've read Best Performance gets faster burn times
over Best Quality.

[gspanos@comcast.net]

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro with the the extra RAM and processing speed. Using iMovie 6 and iDVD 8 I can encode a 100-minute project in about 4 hours. The same length projects using iDVD 6 and iMovie 6 were taking about 12 hours with my desktop iMac G4. In addition, converting vob to dv using MPEGStreamclip and creating .mov clips from .dv files is much faster.

Obviously, the extra RAM and processing speed help explain this, but it also has something to do with Leopard. Before upgrading to Leopard, projects on the iMac G4 with iDVD 5 and iMovie 5 would take about 8 hours.