iDVD has come a prospicient way since its early mean solar day , when it was a DVD - authoring coating with static menus , staid themes , and limited burning capacity ( both in terms of the amount of TV and the drive and medium to which it could write ) . Apple has made a lot of progress in the version that followed , and while the late , iDVD 6 , does n’t add a large number of feature article , it remain a worthy update as part of the newly bring out iLife ’ 06 suite . ( Read a full reappraisal of iDVD 6 here . )
Wider is better
One of the best new features is iDVD ’s ability to source widescreen DVDs . With so many DV camcorders volunteer 16:9 shooting mode ( and with the prices coming down on the HD camcorder which natively use that aspect ratio ) , being able to create videodisc that will play across the entire picture on widescreen HDTVs is a big summation .
I create a widescreen videodisk with a 43 - moment TV episode in DivX format . Encoding it to MPEG-2 in iDVD 6 took 61 minutes ( including the audio ) on my dual-2.3 GHz Power Mac G5 , quite hefty for heavy transcoding duty . The results were a bit blocky , but that was the result of fumble up an already - compress Indian file . Unlike the new version of iMovie , you ca n’t have more than one project open at the same sentence in iDVD .
The new widescreen setting lets you import , encode , and burn 16:9 aspect proportion footage , which will occupy every inch of new widescreen telly .
Thematic attack
iDVD 6 sum 10 new menu themes , designed for both widescreen ( 16:9 ) and received ( 4:3 ) view ratio — traveling , Pass Through , Road Trip , Reflection ( in black or ashen ) , Mirror , Full Frame , Shelves , Watercolor , and Brushstroke ( in order of appearance ) . All 10 of them admit subpages for main , chapter , and supererogatory menus .
One decent touch is that themes are now installed in ~/Library / program Support / iDVD , instead of in the iDVD parcel — old themes are moved there , as well . This dramatically reduces the file sizing of the iDVD app down to around 75 MB , instead of more than 1 sarin .
you’re able to move the themes to another location — a second private road or extraneous driving force — and specify the locating in the modern battery-acid of iDVD ’s preferences .
iDVD 6 wisely lets you relocate hefty themes to another hard drive , bring through space on your startup driving .
Each theme also has built - in fall zones for comprise still and video content into your DVD ’s motion bill of fare . you may place items yourself , or let the unexampled autofill function add items to the drop zone . As with iPhoto ’s book , you’re able to begin with autofill and then rearrange as you see set .
cliff zone are squeamish for adding a more pro - plane look to your DVDs , but it would be unspoilt if you had more control over them . The Reflection idea , for example , has eight drop zones — if you do n’t add content to all of them , you ’ll see grayish boxes floating by for each unfilled zona . Also , preview playback of musical theme with lots of dip zones was quite slow even on a fast organisation .
Where the deception happens
iDVD 5 included a OneStep DVD function to quick enchant footage from a DV camcorder and burn it to a spare vanilla extract DVD — a wasteyard - and - combust approach shot for those with small time or longanimity to create a DVD with flair . With iDVD 6 , Apple adds Magic iDVD , which bring home the bacon a simple interface for find fault the idea , picture , and photos ( plus sound recording for slideshows ) you want ; iDVD does the relaxation .
Magic iDVD is a nice path to make a fast , custom videodisc with cool menu and the similar , but you do n’t get any command over DVD expression proportion , slideshow timing , and other particular .
Tons of slides
utter of slideshows , iDVD 6 now let you have up to 9,801 images in a slideshow — rather of 99 in late version . If you tote up RAW icon , they show up as JPEGs — but you’re able to include the RAW files ( as well as other pictures ) as DVD - ROM content .
There are 13 dissimilar slide transitions , but you could only pick one for each slideshow . you may also add music to a slideshow , but unfortunately song do n’t pass off out when the slideshow ends .
Burning desire
For the first metre , iDVD can now bite to external videodisk burners . With iDVD 5 , Apple add the ability to make a disc image , which you could then burn up to DVD using Apple ’s Disk Utility or Roxio ’s Toast .
iDVD now sees outside burners as it does internal SuperDrives , which save the extra gradation of creating a disc image , and finally remove Apple ’s artificial burning restriction . This is particularly honest news for people who still have Combo Drives inside their Macs , since it means they do n’t want to purchase a new SuperDrive - equipped Mac or upgrade to the $ 499 DVD Studio Pro to burn a videodisc .
