Apple iDVD 6 User Manual

iDVD

Getting Started

Get to know the iDVD window and controls and learn how to create your own DVD

1 Contents

Chapter 1	3	Welcome to iDVD
	3	Using This Document
	4	What’s New in iDVD 6
	5	Anatomy of a DVD
	6	Finding Out More
Chapter 2	7	iDVD Tutorial
	7	What You’ll Learn
	7	Before You Begin
	8	Step One: Locate the Movies, Photos, and Audio Files to Use in the Tutorial
	10	Step Two: Create a New Project
	12	Step Three: Choose a Theme for Your DVD
	13	Step Four: Add a Movie and Scene Selection Menu
	16	Step Five: Add a Slideshow
	20	Step Six: Change the Look of Text on Menus
	22	Step Seven: Customize the Main Menu
	25	Step Eight: Change the Look of Buttons
	26	Step Nine: Organize Your Project in Map View
	30	Step Ten: Burn Your DVD
Chapter 3	35	iDVD at a Glance
	36	iDVD Window
	37	Themes Pane
	38	Menu Pane
	39	Buttons Pane
	40	Media Pane
	43	Project Info Window
	44	Drop Zone Editor
	45	Slideshow Editor
	46	Map View

2

Welcome to iDVD	1

This document teaches you how to use the basic features of iDVD, and tells you about the new features in iDVD 6.

You can use iDVD to create DVDs that contain your own movies, slideshows, and music, along with professionally designed and easy-to-navigate DVD menus, just like Hollywood DVDs. Discs burned using iDVD can be played in most DVD players, including computers with DVD drives and most set-top DVD players.

Using This Document

This document is organized into three chapters. You can use the chapters in the order that suits you, but the following order is recommended:

ÂChapter 1, “Welcome to iDVD”: Gives a brief description of the major new features in this version of iDVD, tells you where you can find more information about iDVD, and provides a brief introduction to some terminology you’ll need to know.

ÂChapter 2, “iDVD Tutorial”: Takes you through one path to creating a DVD. Following the steps in the tutorial with your own media is a great way to get your feet wet and learn your way around the basic features of iDVD, so you can confidently explore from there. The tutorial also provides tips on other things you can try, and how to find more information. Specific goals of the tutorial are listed at the beginning of Chapter 2.

ÂChapter 3,“iDVD at a Glance”: Shows you the controls in the iDVD window and tells you what they do. These pages will familiarize you with what each part of the iDVD window is used for. Looking through them will make it easier for you to follow the steps in the tutorial in Chapter 2. You can also use the chapter as a quick reference while you create your own iDVD projects.

3

What’s New in iDVD 6

iDVD 6 adds many new features that make DVD creation faster and easier, with more professional results than ever.

ÂMagic iDVD: Choose a theme, select your movies and photos, and iDVD creates a complete DVD project for you. Magic iDVD projects include a main menu with buttons for your movies and slideshows and scene selection menus for movies with chapters. Drop zones are filled automatically with your content. You can burn the DVD or continue editing it like any other iDVD project.

ÂWidescreen all the way: Now you can author widescreen DVDs with widescreen themes, menus, movies, and slideshows. And with its new, resizable window, iDVD makes it even easier for you to work in widescreen projects.

ÂNext-generation iDVD themes: New, Apple-designed themes showcase both standard and widescreen projects. Each new theme family includes a coordinating main menu, chapter or scene selection menus, and extras.

ÂFill drop zones automatically: Add your videos and photos to all the drop zones of a DVD menu with just one click. The new drop zone editor is easier to use and makes short work of filling the drop zones on a menu.

ÂFlexible DVD menu and button editing: Now you can design DVD menus and buttons exactly the way you want. Adjust the volume of the background audio and make it fade in and out. Choose from more button styles, customize the button highlight color, and set the in and out points for motion buttons. Go ahead and mix button styles on a menu if you'd like—you're the creative force behind your DVD.

ÂImproved slideshows: Slideshows have never looked so good. Now your slideshows can include titles and comments, and one slideshow can hold thousands of slides. You can create slideshows from iPhoto books and import Keynote slides to make a professional presentation DVD.

ÂEnhanced map view editing: Now you can reorganize even the largest DVD project with a simple drag and drop. Drag and drop DVD menu icons in map view to move elements from one menu to another. You can even delete a section of the DVD project and the menus reconnect automatically. Map view alerts identify potential problems with your DVD before you burn it to a disc.

ÂMultiple drive support: If you have multiple disc burning drives, iDVD now lets you pick the drive you want to use to burn a DVD.

For the latest news and information about iDVD 6, go to the iDVD website at

www.apple.com/ilife/iDVD.

4	Chapter 1 Welcome to iDVD

Anatomy of a DVD

If you’ve ever viewed a professionally produced DVD, then you’re familiar with the basic concept of a DVD.

A DVD can contain a variety of content:

ÂMovies and video clips

ÂPhotographs and other still images

ÂDocuments or other files that can be copied onto another computer

The process of creating a DVD consists of gathering all the content you want to show your viewers, and then designing a way for them to get access to it.

Menus

The first thing you see on your television or computer screen when you insert a DVD into an optical drive or DVD player is called the main menu. And when you create your own DVD, that menu is the first thing you’ll build.

The menu can be a simple black screen with the contents of the DVD listed, or it can have still or moving background images with clickable text or graphic buttons, as in the example below.

Buttons

Navigation

When you click a button on a DVD menu, something happens: A movie or song starts to play, a slideshow appears, or you see another menu (called a submenu). A submenu is simply another way to lead your viewers to more content. You can have many submenus on your DVD.

When you design your own menus, you’ll add buttons that take the viewer wherever you want them to go.

Chapter 1 Welcome to iDVD	5

Themes

The overall look of a DVD menu and its buttons is called a theme. The theme is defined by the colors and graphical elements used in the menu, the font style and size of text, the button shape, and much more.

The professional quality themes provided in iDVD are simple to use and easy to customize. If you make changes to a theme that you want to use again, you can save the modified theme as a favorite and use it for other projects.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to create your first DVD.

Did You Know?—Quickly Creating a DVD

The choice is yours in iDVD 6. If you don’t have the time to spend creating a DVD, you can choose one of the quick DVD features built into iDVD 6.

Use the OneStep DVD method to create a DVD directly from your DV camcorder. This is useful if you want to transfer your unedited video footage from your camcorder to a disc that plays automatically and doesn’t include menus.

For a quick DVD with a professional menu that includes buttons, take a step up from OneStep DVD and create a Magic iDVD. When you open iDVD, just click “Create a Magic iDVD.”Then choose a theme and select the media and music you want in your DVD. That’s it! iDVD builds your DVD and burns it to the DVD disc format of your choice.

For more information about OneStep DVD and Magic iDVD, see iDVD Help.

Finding Out More

Your computer comes with a built-in help system for iDVD. When iDVD is open, you can choose Help > iDVD Help in the menu bar. When iDVD Help opens, you can type a word or phrase in the search field at the top of the page or click one of the topic areas to find out information about a certain topic.

You’ll find links to other helpful resources on the main iDVD Help page, such as a Hot Tips website and the Apple Support website.

For the latest news and information about iDVD 6, go to the iDVD website at

www.apple.com/ilife/idvd.

6	Chapter 1 Welcome to iDVD

iDVD Tutorial	2

This tutorial takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a simple iDVD project using your own movies, photos, and music.

When you’re done with the tutorial, you will have a complete project ready to burn on a DVD.

What You’ll Learn

If you follow all the steps in this tutorial, you will build an iDVD project that includes a movie, a main menu, a menu to let viewers go directly to a specific scene, and a slideshow. You’ll also learn to do the following:

ÂStart an iDVD project.

ÂBring media from your other iLife applications into an iDVD project.

ÂCustomize the iDVD menus.

ÂMake and customize slideshows.

ÂUse map view for efficient editing.

ÂBurn a DVD.

ÂPlay a DVD.

As you go through the tutorial, look for the “Did You Know?” boxes that point out more things you can do, as well as how to find more information.

Before You Begin

To make it easier to do the tasks in this tutorial, print the document before you start.

In many tasks shown in this lesson and in iDVD Help, you need to choose menu commands, which look like this:

Choose Edit > Copy.

7

The first term after Choose is the name of a menu in the iDVD menu bar. The next term (or terms) are the items you choose from that menu.

What You Need

To complete all the parts of this tutorial, you need the following:

ÂA movie, preferably one with chapter markers

You can use any iMovie HD format, including DV, MPEG-4, iSight, and 16:9 widescreen movies.

You can add chapter markers to your movie in iMovie HD, or you can add chapter markers at set intervals in iDVD. To set them in iDVD, select a movie and choose Advanced > “Create Chapter Markers for Movie”. Type a value in the chapter marker interval box and click OK.

ÂImages for a slideshow in your iPhoto library

ÂAudio files in your iTunes library

ÂA computer with a SuperDrive

(This is not required if you will not burn your project on a DVD.)

If you have video but no photos, or photos but no video, you can still use this tutorial. Your final results will be different, but you will still have a project that you can burn to a disc. Experiment a little and have fun.

Undoing Changes

As you’re designing your DVD, you’ll naturally fine-tune and change things many times. You can undo any unsaved changes by choosing Edit > Undo. You can do this as many times as necessary, stepping back through the edits you’ve made one by one. You can always delete saved text and other design elements, or revise your project by making other design choices.

Step One: Locate the Movies, Photos, and Audio Files to Use in the Tutorial

Before you start your project, take a few minutes to identify the movies, photos, and audio files you want to use in your project and make sure they are in the right format for iDVD. These items are automatically in the proper format:

ÂMovies created in iMovie HD

ÂMusic files in your iTunes library

ÂPhotos in your iPhoto library

If you have other files that you’re not sure about, look for “file formats” in iDVD Help for more information.

8	Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial

If you’ve added songs and photos to the libraries in iTunes and iPhoto, you can access them in the Media pane of iDVD, shown below. If you have audio and image files in folders outside of iTunes and iPhoto, you can drag those folders into the list of photos or audio files in the Media pane after you open a project in iDVD.

Movies that are stored in the Movies folder on your hard disk appear automatically in the Media pane. You can also drag movies you keep in other folders on your hard disk to the movies list.

Did You Know?—Adding Other Movie Folders to the Media Pane

In iDVD preferences, you can specify folders you want iDVD to monitor. Movies stored in these folders are automatically added to the movies list in the Media pane. For instructions on how to do this, go to iDVD Help and search for “add media.”

Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial	9

Step Two: Create a New Project

With your music, movies, and photos ready for use and in locations where you can easily access them, you’re ready to get started.

To start a new iDVD project:

ÂIf iDVD isn’t open, double-click the iDVD application icon in the Dock. If this is the first time iDVD has been opened, click the “Create a New Project” button in the dialog.

ÂIf the opening dialog isn’t showing, choose File > New. Select a location where you want to store your new project, and click Create.

If the iDVD window opens with an animated menu and music, click the Motion button, shown below, to stop the animation and sound.

Motion button

Note: If you created a Magic iMovie and selected the checkbox to send your movie to iDVD, then you already have an open iDVD project that contains Play Movie and Scene Selection buttons. Follow the instructions in the next section to choose a theme for your DVD, then read through the information until you get to “Step Six: Change the Look of Text on Menus” on page 20.

10	Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial

Set the Encoding Quality

iDVD encodes your project’s information before it burns it to a disc. Encoding takes some time when you burn your DVD, so you may want to consider setting an iDVD preference to let iDVD encode in the background as you work on your movie.

To set the encoding quality:

mChoose iDVD > Preferences and click Defaults. Then choose one of the encoder settings.

If you choose Best Performance, you can also select the “Enable background encoding” checkbox. This lets you work on your project while the files are being encoded in the background. This makes the most of your computer’s resources, and saves time when you are ready to burn your DVD. This is useful if you have 60 minutes or less of video, or when you want faster results.

If you want the best quality possible (or have more than 60 minutes of video), choose Best Quality. When you are ready to burn your project to a disc, iDVD evaluates the amount of video and chooses the best quality setting possible, filling the entire disc, if appropriate. The DVD will take longer to burn, but will be optimized for quality.

The quality of your DVD ultimately depends on the quality of your source material. Lower resolution movies, such as QuickTime movies downloaded from the Internet, or VHS video, will not give as good results as video taken with a DV or HDV video camera and edited in video-editing software such as iMovie HD, Final Cut Express, or Final Cut Pro.

Did You Know?—Starting a Project

There are other ways to begin a new iDVD project:

ÂClick the iDVD button in iMovie HD to open an iDVD project that contains your movie. Use this method when you want to make a DVD that has links to the movie you have just created on its main menu.

ÂStarting in iMovie HD, use the Magic iMovie feature to automatically transfer autogenerated movies to an iDVD project.

ÂIn iPhoto, send slideshows directly to iDVD to create a project with slideshow buttons.

Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial	11

Step Three: Choose a Theme for Your DVD

A theme is a menu design that defines how your DVD looks to viewers. The theme is made up of the background image or movie that appears on your DVD menu, along with the button style, fonts, sizes, and locations of titles and button labels. A theme family is a collection of menu designs that work together, providing a unified appearance to submenus.

You can use one of the themes that come with iDVD, or you can customize and create your own theme. In this tutorial, you will learn how to select an existing iDVD theme and customize it.

Note: Use the theme specified in the tutorial so you can follow along easily. If you choose another theme, you may not be able to follow the steps in order. After you finish the tutorial, you can use what you’ve learned to choose a different theme and make other changes before you burn your DVD.

To choose the theme for your DVD menu:

1Click the Themes button at the bottom of the iDVD window. The Themes pane opens on the right side of the iDVD window.

2Move the scroller up and down to see the themes.

Themes that contain animation and music have a motion icon that looks like the Motion button in the bottom-right corner of the theme thumbnail.

3Click the pop-up menu and choose 4.0 Themes, and then scroll down until you see Fish.

4Click the triangle next to the theme, then click Fish One to select it for your project.

This theme has a motion background, indicated by the small motion icon in the bottom-right corner. Some themes also contain an autoplay movie, a short movie that plays before the main DVD menu appears. Themes with an autoplay movie have an autoplay icon in the upper-left corner of the theme thumbnail.

Motion icon

12	Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial

Step Four: Add a Movie and Scene Selection Menu

After you choose your theme, you can add movies and other content to your iDVD project. In this step, you’ll add a movie that contains chapter markers, so that viewers have the option of jumping to a scene when they watch your DVD, just like a Hollywood-style DVD.

When you drag a movie with chapter markers to a menu, iDVD recognizes the chapter markers and automatically creates “scene selection menus” with buttons that link to each of the chapters.

To add a movie with chapter markers: 1 Click the Media button.

2 Click the Movies button at the top of the Media pane, shown below.

3Select the Movies folder. Thumbnail pictures of the movies in the folder are shown in the bottom part of the pane.

4Drag a movie with chapter markers from the movies list to the menu background on the left side of the iDVD window.

In the Fish One menu, the menu background is everything you see in the menu: the picture frame, gravel, and fish movie.

Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial	13

Important: If dotted lines appear in the picture frame when you drag your movie, move the mouse pointer until the dotted lines disappear and then drop the movie. Dotted lines indicate a drop zone, a special area of a menu. Movies added to a drop zone become part of the menu background, rather than featured movies on the DVD.

When you add a movie with chapter markers, the DVD menu title changes to the name of the movie and iDVD automatically creates two buttons on the menu. In the illustration above, you see a Play Movie button, so the viewer can play the entire movie, and a Scene Selection button that links to the scene selection menu.

For movies with no chapter markers, the title does not change, and only one button appears, labeled with the name of the movie you added. The drop zone contains the text “Drop Zone 1.”

You can easily change the title and the text on the buttons. In this example, you’ll change the title to “Vacations.”

To change the title text:

m Double-click the title and type Vacations in its place.

14	Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial

The scene selection menu is a submenu with a button on the main menu that links to it. Double-click the button now to take a look at it. Notice that the menu used the theme Fish Two, which was designed to be used as a chapter menu for the Fish One theme. Each button on the scene selection menu shown below has an image that matches a frame in the scene it links to.

Back button

Each submenu contains a Back button (it looks like an arrow in the illustration above), to indicate where the viewer is in the hierarchy of menus. If your movie has more chapters than can fit on a single scene selection menu, you will also see a Forward button so viewers can navigate to the next scene selection menu.

Chapter 2 iDVD Tutorial	15