Toast vs. iMovie/iDVD which is better for Mac?

[HowardNeedsHelp]

Is Toast or iMovie/iDVD better for editing, making menus and burning DVDs on Power PC Mac?
Is there a way to insert a "play all" button in a menu with multiple short films?
Is there a way to edit video to put the people in the original video in a new background in either Toast or iMovie/iDVD?
Which version of Toast is best?
Which version of iMovie/iDVD is best?

[Frobozz]

I don't think it is fair to claim which is best over all. Each is better at some things than the others and the same can be true of different versions of the same app. Clearly iMovie is best for editing because Toast and iDVD don't edit video (although you can mark segments to trim out of a video using Toast). As for DVD authoring, Toast forgoes motion menus but provides Dolby Digital audio encoding which iDVD lacks. iDVD has a much superior DVD slide show feature. Toast has a continuous play setting so each video will play without returning to the menu. You also can use your own pictures for the menu background in Toast (if that is what you were asking).

Oh, and Toast isn't just a video DVD application so even if you never used it to make a video DVD you might love having it for other purposes.

Toast 10 is definitely the best version of Toast unless you aren't running OS !0.5.x or you have a great need for DivX encoding. In either of those cases then Toast 9 is needed.

I am much more familiar with Toast than with iDVD. It probably sounds like I think Toast is better but there are times when iDVD is perfect for what I need to please a client.

I like both iMovie HD and the new iMovie in iLife 09. They are very different and I was slow to like the new iMovie. But more and more the new version is my preference.

[rumplestiltskin]

I'll chime in with a few comments:

I'm not a fan of the new iMovie, perhaps because I learned using the older, time-line-based, versions and recently switched to Final Cut simply because of the somewhat obtuse interface in the new iMovie.

Toast's video encoding isn't as high-quality as what I get using iDVD. However, if I have files that are already encoded properly (so Toast doesn't have to re-encode and only author), Toast is fine. In fact, I usually "save as disc image" in iDVD and then use Toast to burn as many discs as I need. (I must admit I don't burn many DVDs any more as I've moved to electronic distribution of my videos.)

As Frobozz says, Toast does a lot more than just burn video DVDs and is a valuable tool.

[HowardNeedsHelp]

Thanks.
Is there a way to insert a "play all" button in a menu with multiple short films in Toast or iDVD?
Is there a way to edit video to put the people in the original video in a new background in either Toast or iMovie/iDVD?

[Frobozz]

Thanks.
Is there a way to insert a "play all" button in a menu with multiple short films in Toast or iDVD?

In Toast you can choose continuous play so that titles automatically continue playing one to the next without going to a menu. There is no way to add that as a button unless you made your first title a short movie that you call "Play All", in which case it would appear as a button. However, clicking any of the titles in the menu will have the same effect of initiating continuous play starting with whatever title is clicked. I know iDVD has a repeat play mode when there is one title but I couldn't find a way to have it continuously play multiple titles.

Is there a way to edit video to put the people in the original video in a new background in either Toast or iMovie/iDVD?

I don't understand the question. Are you wanting to do something like masking out content from one video and layering it atop another video (similar to what people do with photo editing applications)? That's a video editing function so it can't be done with Toast or iDVD, and I'm pretty sure that iMovie isn't capable of it either.

[terryj]

Thanks.
Is there a way to insert a "play all" button in a menu with multiple short films in Toast or iDVD?

Frobozz answered this , but this kind of thing is usually reserved for the higher NLE and Authoring apps
such as DVDStudio Pro.

Is there a way to edit video to put the people in the original video in a new background in either Toast or iMovie/iDVD?

That would be done with Greenscreening and only a top flight NLE like FCP can do that.

[HowardNeedsHelp]

Thanks to all of you offering wisdom. This is very helpful!
My next question is about editing video in a zoom in kind of way--- for example, I would like to zoom in to get a close up of a the face of the person speaking instead of the entire body shot. Is there a way to do this in iMovie or Toast or which software (less expensive prefered) would do that?
Thanks!

[rumplestiltskin]

Toast isn't used to edit videos (except the trimming it can do at the start and end of the title.

The "zoom" function you want is available with a plugin for iMovieHD (that's iMovie v6.0.x). Check out www.geethree.com and also google this (imovie zoom plugin). You'll get visual artifacts simply because you're asking for a small portion of the image to be enlarged. There might be some add'l filters that might clean it up a bit but, basically, the quality will never be better than what you started with.

Also: The zoom function is built into Final Cut (Express and Pro). It can be configured quite granularly (start, end, %, speed, etc.).

[HowardNeedsHelp]

Great tip about plugins for iMovie, etc..!!! Thanks

[HowardNeedsHelp]

Regarding the creation of custom menu backgrounds and custom free drag buttons into new positions. This is easy to do in iDVD.
Can custom menu backgrounds be inserted into Toast 10 and can the buttons be arranged any way and size I want? IF possible, How easy or difficult is this to do on Mac?

After the DVD is burned on Toast 10, do all the menu buttons light up in the order they were created by pushing the right arrow on the dvd player remote? I have found this is a problem with dvds burned from iDVD.

[rumplestiltskin]

re: Toast custom menus - fuggedaboutit. Barking up the wrong tree.

I was re-reading the earlier posts and there is an iMovie plugin for greenscreen from GeeThree I believe - one of the Slick plugins - but I'm sure it's not as configurable nor effective as what FCP can accomplish.

Here's another compositing plugin for iMovie:
http://www.imovieplugins.com/plugs/chromamovie.html
They recommend trying it before buying it.

Note these are for iMovieHD (v6), not the newer iMovie.

[HowardNeedsHelp]

I am working in iMovie HD 6.0.3 So all this information is great!!!!

The only problem with iMovie is that some menu buttons to the right or left can only be selected by pushing the up or down arrow button on the standard DVD player remote Other buttons on the right or left can be selected with the right or left arrow buttons as one would expect. The difference confuses people I am trying to get to use my DVDs. Any fix for that?

Also, about distributing my final DVD projects over the web and skipping the burning disks all together, do you have any specs or formating suggestions about converting from my original dv files? If it was downloaded, the video would have to look good on a screen in a conference room big enough for 25 people sitting at the conference tables to see. Is that realistic or is internet distribution more for small screen apps like iphones?

[rumplestiltskin]

I haven't done much with iDVD for a long time and usually only had one title so I can't help you with that.

As for distribution over the Internet: H264 is the way to go. You can do this directly from iMovie, if you wish. DV is 640 pixels wide so keep it there; it will look fine.

You might want to try a different encoding scheme than what iMovie will do when you tell it to go to an iPod (640x). If so, there are many apps (Handbrake, MPEG Streamclip, Video Monkey, etc.) that will handle this. You'd just need to drop the reference movie that's inside the iMovie project file. Control-click on the project file and "show contents". Look inside the Media folder for the reference movie and simply drop it into any of the apps I mentioned (but don't -move- the file out of the project!). That reference file contains all the edited footage including transition, effects, etc. This saves you the trouble of having to export from the iMovie project. iMovie must not have the file open when you do this.

I tend to use about 1000kbps for 30fps video and 128kb or 160kb for the audio (no more than 160 or it won't play in an AppleTV or an iPod); unless you have fantastic audio equipment on the playing end of this, it's a waste of bandwidth anyway.

If you need a good way of playing the downloaded videos and don't have a means to connect a computer to a projector, an iPod, AppleTV or a WD TV Media Player work great. Do a search up here for the WD player; we've had a few threads extolling its virtues.

[havema-1]

IMO Toast 7.1.3 is the last version that correctly handles interlacing in iMovie projects, i.e. it correctly honors the playback settings of the input iMovie reference .mov (which carries iMovie chapter's to Toast, BTW). And even then you must manually save the input reference .mov's playback setting from the iMovie's default deinterlaced blend mode to interlaced:

So even in Toast 7.1.3 the user must copy the *.mov from *.iMovieProject/Shared Movies/iDVD/ package, open it with QT Player Pro, choose Window/Show Movie Properties/Video track/Visual Settings/ and set High Quality ONLY playback.

On the other hand, later Toast versions like v10 deinterlace iMovie's input reference .mov files even if playback setting is set to High Quality -- if in addition the scaled size is set to 720x576, then interlacing is preserved but then the aspect ratio slightly distorted.

YMMV but this is how it seems to be with standard definition 4:3 PAL projects. Please correct me if I'm missing something.

And besides, I find it irritating that some apps stubbornly honor the _playback_ setting of the input file!

Regarding iDVD vs Toast MPEG2 encoding quality I prefer Toast (not to mention that iDVD's huge PCM audio starve long videos the bandwidth they really would need while Toast supports compressed AC3 audio). But on the other hand you have more control over menus with iDVD so I have used iDVD with my 65 minute iMovie projects.