Directions for burning your iMovie onto a DVD
NOTE: Please use DVD-R's for your iDVD projects. This will ensure a greater likelihood that the finished DVD will play on most DVD players.
- Open your movie in iMovie and save your file.
- Choose File/Export...
- Click on the "iDVD" icon at the top of the window. Click on the Share button. (This will launch iDVD. If you are prompted that some of your files need to be rendered, click on the "Render and Proceed" button.)
- If you are asked to name your project, do so and save it to your desktop. NOTE: The default location for your iDVD file is in "Documents".
- On the left side of the iDVD window, you will see what your finished DVD front page will look like.
- On the right side there are a number of "themes" for your front page that you can choose from. Scroll down and click on the theme that you want.
NOTE: this tutorial assumes you select the "Lines" theme from the 5.0 Themes. The fastest theme to use is one with NO video and with only a single image, such as "Picture in Picture" from the Old Themes category. - You will see the name of your iMovie file in the iDVD theme. Click on the name twice and change it to "Play Movie".
- Click on "Lines" (or the name of whatever theme you have chosen) and change it to the title of your movie.
- Click on the "Menu" button to customize your menu duration and text styles.
- Click on the "Media" button to choose different images/video/sound for your front page. Any images from iPhoto will be visible in iDVD. You can click and drag on the image and drop it on a "Drop Zone" within your theme.
- Click the "Preview DVD Playback" button (the Play button) to see your menu and movie through the DVD player. Click on the "exit" button on the controls window to stop the preview.
- Most themes have an introduction that plays once before the menu looping process begins. If you want to deactivate this intro, uncheck the box in the lower left of the preview window.
- Choose File/Burn DVD... You will be prompted to insert a recordable DVD disk. Once you do, the burning will take place. When done, the DVD will be ejected and you will be given the option to burn another copy.
Adding Images from your Movie to your iDVD Theme
- Return to iMovie, and open the "Grab" utility (from the Finder, choose Go/Utilities/Grab).
- In "Grab", chooose Capture/Selection.
- Click and drag with your mouse, starting from the top left corner of the image you want to capture and moving down to the bottom right corner. The image will appear as a window called "Untitled1". Choose File/Save and save the file to your desktop. Close the file.
- Now drag that file from the desktop and drop it into one of your drop zones in iDVD.
To include chapters in your DVD:
To create chapters, you must go back to your iMovie project. There, you can mark the beginning of each chapter and name it.
- In iMovie, once all editing is complete, click on the "Chapters" button.
- Click on the clock icon to switch to timeline viewer mode.
- Place the playhead where you want your first chapter to start. Click on the "Add Marker" button in the Chapters area. You can edit the name of the chapter by typing the chapter title you want over the default name.
- Continue to move the playhead to where you want your chapter to start, add the marker and edit the chapter title.
- When you are done marking, save your file, and return to iDVD through the Share/Export... menu. (see directions above).
- In iDVD, you will see a new title on your front page called "scene selection". If you click on that, you will see a listing of your chapters