Compressing with iDVD

I created a movie project with iMovie and then "shared" it with iDVD to burn it to a DVD. Well, I kept getting the message that the project was too large and I needed a dual layer disk. I kept editing the project and then re-shared/updated it in iDVD. The original project was about 120 minutes (which the single layer DVD says it can hold). I had to edit the project down to about 55 minutes in order for it to burn. Is this standard? What software can I use on top of iDVD to make the compression tighter so that I can burn my 120 min project onto a single layer DVD? My roomie mentioned a program that is Windows exclusive so I am looking for MAC software that can do the job.

Am I doing something wrong? Also, it took a ton of time to decode the project (about an hour). I have a iMac G5 with 1.5 GB of RAM and plenty of hard drive storage. Is that length of time standard?

Thanks!

In iDVD>Preferences>General are your encoder settings on Best Performance? If so, change it to Best Quality. I had the same issue last week and that did the trick for me. I found the help on the Apple discussion boards. There are a lot of helpful people there too...

And it took more time than that to decode my 115 minute project. I'm pretty sure it's normal, although I don't have as much RAM as you.

WasabiTaylor said:

In iDVD>Preferences>General are your encoder settings on Best Performance? If so, change it to Best Quality. I had the same issue last week and that did the trick for me. I found the help on the Apple discussion boards. There are a lot of helpful people there too...

And it took more time than that to decode my 115 minute project. I'm pretty sure it's normal, although I don't have as much RAM as you.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I will check it out when I get home. I think I already chopped up the project, but maybe I can salvage it.

When you did change the setting did you notice a visual difference once you played back the end product on your DVD player (as in - was the quality still decent)?

The quality seems to still be quite good. Although, I can't really say for sure because not only was it my first project but the recording is of a school talent show, so the lighting and things of that sort aren't all that great to begin with. Either way, it did the job for me.