iLife '04: The Missing Manual

What You’re in For

In Chapter 21, you can read about using iDVD manually, in which you can integrate movies, still pictures, and sound in very flexible ways. But especially at first, most people take the simplest approach: create the movie in iMovie, and then hand it off to iDVD.

That’s what this chapter is all about. It will guide you through the five broad steps of using iMovie and iDVD together:

1. Prepare your audio, video, and pictures.

   In addition to movies, iDVD can incorporate all kinds of other files—like audio and graphics files—into your shows. iDVD doesn’t, however, offer any way to create or edit these files. You must prepare them in other programs first.

2. Insert chapter markers.

   In a commercial Hollywood DVD, you can jump around the movie without rewinding or fast-forwarding, thanks to the movie’s scene menu or chapter menu. It’s basically a screenful of bookmarks for certain scenes in the movie. You can create one of these useful menus right in iMovie by indicating which spots you want to turn into scene markers.

3. Hand off to iDVD.

   The beauty of iMovie 4 and iDVD 4 is that they’re tied together behind the scenes. The former can hand off movies to the latter, automatically creating menu buttons in the process.

4. Design the menu screen.

   A DVD menu is a menu screen, usually containing buttons that you click with the remote control. One button, called Play, starts playing the movie. Another, called Scene Selection, might take you to a second menu screen full of individual “chapter” ...