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General discussion

iDVD encoded once, do I have to encode again?

Jul 24, 2007 5:22AM PDT

I am running iDVD 6 on Mac OSX. I have already encoded and burnt my iDVD project (best quality onto a Dual layer DVD). I have come back to this and want to burn another DVD. Do I have to rencode the movies everytime I do this, or are the encoded files stored somewhere? It doesn't seem to remember encoding them before and hate to sit through this long process again.

Thanks!!

Discussion is locked

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Maybe yes.
Jul 24, 2007 5:51AM PDT

If you closed out iDVD after burning the first disc... even if you saved... then you will need to render the disc again. Once rendered you can burn a thousand DVDs in a row if you want. But as soon as you close the program again? Boom, the encoding is gone.

Instead of burning a disc when you open your project back up... chose create disc image instead. iDVD will render and encode the disc as if it was intending to burn a DVD, but the program will save a disc image to your hard drive instead. Once this disc image is created, you can use the Disc Utility found in your Applications > Utilities folder to burn copies of your disc image to DVD when ever you want to.

good luck

grim

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perfect
Jul 24, 2007 6:01AM PDT

perfect! That is just what I wanted to know. I figured there was a way to make this less painful. Thanks!

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Background encoding
Jul 24, 2007 6:48PM PDT

You *can* use Disk Utility to copy the final DVD disk, but using disk images is s better option

When you are working in iDVD you can save time by making sure the 'Enable background encoding' option is turned on in the Preferences. This means what it says - iDVD will start to encode your video while you are working with the program. Then, when you hit the 'Burn' button the time to produce the disk image(I always use this option) will be reduced somewhat. It's handy to have this turned on if you'll be away from the machine but are not yet ready to burn the final project.

You can check the status of the DVD 'assets' by looking at the the Project Info window.

There is a downside - with this turned on iDVD can be a bit sluggish when you are using it to create the DVD. Even on a dual core iMac this can be a pain at times, but you can always turn it off(best to save, quit iDVD and reopen it each time you change this option.

iDVD is a very cool program - Windows has nothing like it as far as I know(well, at least not built into the OS) and it's well worth looking around to see what you can do when you move away from the 'out of the box' options.

I particularly like the auto-play movies - you can put a very professional looking front end onto your DVD (e.g. a spoof of the copyright notice, forthcoming attractions or whatever) with this

Have fun!

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Good info... one more fact/option about iDVD
Jul 25, 2007 1:31AM PDT

For those who use iDVD...

If you back up your original iDVD project onto an external HD you might want to keep this in mind.

iLife uses several programs (iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes) as storage libraries. This is where all the clips, movies, pictures, and music that are part of your iDVD projects are kept. Now if you save the iDVD project on an external hard drive and later try to open it on a different mac then all your movies components will be gone. Why? because you left the storage libraries on the old computer.

If by some chance, you want to save the whole project for editing on a different computer... then when you save to an external HD, choose the Archive option from the file menu. This will take all the parts of your iDVD project and store copies of them in your project file. Warning... this will make your iDVD file much bigger and it takes longer than a regular Save. Once you are done working on a different computer and want to take the project back home then make sure you Archive the project again.

I found this out while working on projects at home and at school. Still, having a large, self powered (USB or FireWire) external HD makes working on several different computers during the course of a project so much easier that I highly recommend getting a portable HD to everyone.

cheers

grim