Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iLife, Multimedia
iDVD - black sheep of the iLife suite
For me, iDVD has always been the redheaded stepchild of the iLife suite. While I've used Garageband to make songs, iPhoto to manage photos (until I got Aperture), iWeb to make websites, and iMovie to make movies, until recently I'd never once tried to use iDVD to put together a DVD project. I've spent the past week trying to put together a DVD of our first year in New Zealand to share with our family back in the States, and while the movie's turned out great, getting there has definitely not been half the fun.Creating the movie itself was somewhat of a chore. Because I haven't yet upgraded to iLife '09, I'm stuck with the much-maligned tinker-toy interface introduced in iMovie '08. I couldn't use iMovie HD instead, because it's not compatible with my hard disk-based camcorder. After several days of wrestling with iMovie '08 to get it to do what I wanted it to do, I finally had a 95-minute project ready.
At "professional quality" in iDVD, that 95-minute project left me with almost a third of the DVD unused, so I decided to add more content, including a slideshow with 300+ pictures and two more short movies in an "extras" menu.
This turned out to be my downfall. Suddenly, iDVD no longer wanted to co-operate with me.
First iDVD claimed I didn't have enough space on the disc, saying it needed 8 GB of space when only 5 GB was free. This resulted in several minutes of me alternately swearing and scratching my head, because neither of those numbers made sense -- the DVD was only 4.2 GB, and the amount of data I was asking it to hold was only 4.02. After about five minutes I realized it was talking about my hard drive and not the DVD -- it was late, I was tired, the sun was in my eyes, et cetera. After moving some stuff to my Firewire drive, including the iMovie project folder (that ominous sound you just heard is foreshadowing), I had more than enough room on my hard disk to complete the project.
Only now, iDVD threw up another error, saying it couldn't find the relevant media. It seems that iDVD isn't smart enough to dynamically look elsewhere for the content it needs. So rather than bother moving the iMovie projects folder back to my hard drive, I just pulled the rendered movies themselves from my Movies folder instead.
Then iDVD gave me another error - this time, I had too many minutes of content on the disc. Apparently, even if you're below the data limit, you can't go over the minute limit. Needless to say, this seems REALLY stupid, but whatever. I gave up on fitting everything I wanted on the disc, and got rid of the extra two movies. If people want to watch them so bad, they can find them on my MobileMe gallery, I said.
And that, right there, is exactly why iDVD bites. Making a 95-minute video only to have it languish on your hard drive because some stupid program doesn't know how to efficiently burn it onto a piece of plastic is so backward, it hurts. It's like trying to ice skate uphill.
And this is the program after years of improvement. I can only imagine what it must have been like to try to use iDVD 2.0. The horror.
As I write this, iDVD is finally doing its thing and burning the movie and slideshow to a disc. Because it's rendering in professional quality, it says it's going to take over five hours to burn the disc, so I will leave it to do its thing overnight as I sleep. But at this point, I fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning and come to find my MacBook Pro has thrown up yet another error message. "Burn failed" it'll say, and it may or may not give me a reason which may or may not make sense, and then I may or may not go full Godzilla on the Manawatu region of New Zealand. We'll see when I wake up.
Later...
I see a disc jutting out of the front of my MacBook Pro. So at least it's done.
No error messages on the screen. But does that mean the burn was actually successful? Time to check.
The burned DVD goes into my PlayStation 3, and I cross my fingers.
The DVD menu comes up. The first thing my wife and I notice, to our early morning chagrin, is the DVD audio is LOUD. For some unknown reason, the audio on the DVD has rendered so loud that we can only have the volume on the TV a couple ticks above zero.
The second thing I notice is the vibrancy of the color. The colors seem to "pop" a lot more on my TV's display when playing the DVD through the PS3 than they did on my MacBook Pro. Reds seem oversaturated, which leads to people kind of looking a bit sunburnt, but I'm willing to live with that.
Despite the LOUD audio and the slightly oversaturated color, I'm pleased with the results. If the process involved hadn't been so incredibly frustrating, this post might have been a paean to iDVD's virtues rather than a condemnation of its many annoyances.
Two things I have learned from this experience:
1. iMovie '08 is a terrible video editing tool. I'm getting iLife '09 or '10 before I try to do anything else with video on my MacBook Pro. The results I got for my movie were great, but I spent more time working around iMovie 08's limitations than I did actually editing the movie.
2. Making a DVD is way more of a pain than just uploading a movie to my MobileMe site, which is what I think I'm going to do next year and from now on. Everyone I know who will actually want to watch our movies has a broadband connection, so it makes less sense for us to shell out money for blank DVD-Rs every year and go through the hassle of mailing them when we visit the States when we can just push a button to upload the thing to MobileMe instead and go do something else for a while.
I'm sure that's why every other aspect of iLife gained improvements in '09 and iDVD just gets stability updates. The agony of making a DVD just isn't worth the effort.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Tim said 1:09PM on 6-26-2009
I must admit I didn't read the entire article because right off the bat you admit to not having the latest version of iLife. Maybe this would have gone a lot better if you had upgraded. Then maybe I would be more inclined to listen to your whining.
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chrisdejabet said 1:28PM on 6-26-2009
As far as iDVD is concerned, there isn't a difference between iLife '08 and iLife '09. iDVD was not touched at all in the iLife suite update. Everything else was. And that, to me, is the greatest signal of iDVD being a red-headed stepchild at Apple.
And honestly, I think uploading a video to MobileMe or another service such as Vimeo, is the way to go these days. As long as the people you wish to share the video with have a high-speed internet connection.
Joseph said 5:56PM on 6-26-2009
reality is, this person would have been better off with DVD studio pro.
David L Good said 12:32PM on 6-29-2009
iDVD has always done well for me for most casual uses. DVD Studio Pro for everything else.
My gripes about iDVD
1 - It's difficult to alter the templates. You can change graphics and audio, but if, for example, you have an intro movie (or main menu movie) with an intro and outro you can't simply replace the menu movie. Doing so deletes the 'outro' segment. You also have to do a lot of tests and renders and retests and rerenders to make sure the 'intro' matches up with your new menu movie. This might be confusing to most, but if you've ever tried to do it you'll understand my frustration. I would simply be nice to have the ability to create a new template from nothing (not using an existing template) and to be able to insert a motion menu with intro/outro points (so that the main menu 'loops' between those two until someone selects a menu item -- in which case it plays the outro and then advances to the chosen item).
2 - Still images being used for the menu screen sometimes don't play back well. I guess it depends on the template you start out with, but I haven't figured out why sometimes they work (allowing people to select items over, say, 30 seconds) or why they sometimes don't work (sometimes the menu selections just flicker, like the menu is on a 1/2 second loop).
3 - "Professional" quality is something I stay away from now. Theoretically the image quality is supposed to be better, but I honestly haven't found anyone who could tell the difference. The bit rate is high enough, however, with "Professional" quality that some older players (such as the DVD player in the PlayStation 2) can not process the data fast enough. High quality delivers great quality and at a bit rate most all players have no problems. with.
Items 1 and 2 could be resolved with a custom template creation tool. That would be SWEET.
don said 1:13PM on 6-26-2009
Don't purchase iLife 09 for iMovie. It still sucks. I was so pissed at Apple for ruining iMovie that I refused to buy Final Cut. I now use Adobe Premiere Pro and love it. Integrates wonderfully with all of the other Adobe Apps.
Check it out.
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
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macserv said 12:18AM on 6-28-2009
While I certainly can't fault you for opting out of Apple's software based on your experiences, I can't let a recommendation of Premiere Pro stand when we're talking about iMovie users. If you're starting to grow beyond the basics, and iMovie is feeling constrictive, you're far better off picking up a copy of Final Cut Express for $199 than jumping all the way to Premiere Pro at $739. FCE really gives you a lot of power for two bills.
Premiere Elements is another option at $139, but it's really not in the same class as Final Cut Express if you're looking for a robust non-linear editor.
ryemac3 said 1:35PM on 6-26-2009
So you had a bad experience with iDVD your first time round and you've totally given up on it? I wonder how many people will read this article and never bother to try it because you (with your limited experience) has slammed it.
I for one have created some masterpieces using iDVD. You really should try and grow comfortable with a product before you go ahead and give it a crappy review. Sometimes you have to watch a movie twice or listen to a CD twice before you say "Yeh, this thing rocks."
And yes, you're right Making DVDs to send them out is a pain in the ass. I don't do it because it's also too damn expensive. I make the polished DVDs for myself and my wife, but everyone else in the family just gets to watch the one on the family website.
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Alex said 1:49PM on 6-26-2009
I'm sorry, but my experiences with iDVD are consistent with the authors... it is a painful and time consuming tool. If you get it to work the results can be nice, but in between you will go through anger, confusion, a whole lot of wasted time and less hair than you had when you started the project. The current iterations of iMovie and iDVD are not something Apple should be very proud of.
Alan G said 4:43PM on 6-26-2009
I have to agree with Alex. I have tried many versions of iDVD (including '09) and have been met with the same things... error, too much time spent getting it just right and way too much time for it to burn.
I love the rest of the suite, but iDVD is a horrible horrible product in my opinion.
Zews said 3:05AM on 6-29-2009
@Alan G
iDVD in iLife 09 is the same as in iLife 08!
And iDVD is a great product in my opinion. I regularly use it to make DVD's for friends. I still use iMovie HD for simple stuff, and FCE for more complex work.
PSM said 1:24PM on 6-26-2009
I'm not sure if I've tried to make a DVD with iLife 09 yet (probably not), but iDVD has always been a buggy POS in every version. I don't get it. It seems so much simpler than the other apps, and yet it's an embarrassment of instability, and all the other apps work fine.
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macserv said 12:29AM on 6-28-2009
For that, you can blame the mountain of code necessary to make iDVD comply with the unbelievably arcane and byzantine DVD specification. Very few companies, upon getting their app to the point where gets the job done and burns your video to a DVD-R with minimalistic menus, are willing to go much further beyond that. To see what I mean, just compare the output of iDVD with what you get from any other consumer-level tool, especially one that's as easy as iDVD.
When you try to build as much flair, style, and flexibility (fully themed motion menus, drop zones, customization) into a consumer-level authoring tool as Apple has with iDVD, debugging it becomes an absolute NIGHTMARE. It definitely needs polishing, but it always seems to get the shaft in that regard compared to many of Apple's other products.
Tyler R. said 1:29PM on 6-26-2009
iMovie '09 is better than '08, but Apple didn't update iDVD at all it still sucks. I usually end up burning DVDs in Toast. It doesn't have the same fancy DVD menus, but it is much easier to use.
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GLaDOS said 4:05PM on 6-26-2009
i second toast, amazing app
James Donevan said 1:40PM on 6-26-2009
What a pointless effort. Is this the best TUAW can do? Bloggers thinking it merits writing about their efforts using outdated software. An embarrassment for all concerned.
We're falling back to the bad old days wherein bloggers view TUAW as their personal diary and mistakenly think readers are interested.
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Michael Rose said 9:45PM on 6-29-2009
James:
a) iDVD is unchanged across the '08 and '09 versions, so your criticism is moot unless you're referring to the iMovie portions of the post.
b) Many of our readers use legacy versions of the iLife suite and other apps. It's not obligatory for Chris to be running the latest version before he can share his experience.
Chris Brightwell said 1:42PM on 6-26-2009
I've never had any trouble with iDVD. The problem of "minute" capacity vs "storage" capacity is largely due to the need to convert that slideshow to a video file or to a series of menus (I forget how iDVD does it, exactly).
iDVD isn't the slickest DVD creation tool out there, but it's the _easiest_. If you want complete control over every aspect of the creation process, check out DVD Studio Pro. Just prepared for a *steep* learning curve.
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Jack said 1:51PM on 6-26-2009
The time limit on a DVD has to do with the format the video is encoded in - MPEG2. Since iDVD is simple, the bit rate cannot be changed and thus, due to the limited space, you are limited to 120 minutes of good-quality video. It's sorta like the old-fashioned Audio CD - you are limited to 80 minutes and no more.
iDVD may make videos with 120 minutes and still have space left over. This extra space is usually filled with extra features such as extra audio tracks (for the videos), sub titles, etc, or (in the case of a slideshow) photos that can be copied to the hard drive. Then again, I'm going on features that I had when I last used iDVD - iDVD '05. Haven't really played around with it since.
Compared to many other consumer DVD authoring applications, iDVD is actually pretty tame. It is extremely simple and, if you know how to work with it, quick to use.
Also - watch your hard drive space. I hate it when I have less than 20 GB left. It pains me to see it on my own drives and pains me to see it on anybody else's.
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Adam said 1:54PM on 6-26-2009
Do yourself a favor and forget iMovie all together. Get yourself a copy of Final Cut Express. Much better editing system.
-Adam
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astrosaurus said 1:55PM on 6-26-2009
I've only messed with iDVD like once or twice and I had a pretty painful experience with it. I don't remember the specifics I just recall never wanting to make a DVD again unless it were a data disc.
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