convert huge .dv file to something dvd watchable

hey guys, so i had a family function videotaped by a friend, who is very good with artistic direction and editing and whatnot, but does not know much about computers and file formats. he produced a 30 minute long, 7-some gigabyte file in the .dv format, which i, as well, know little about. i would like to have a dvd with all of this video on it, but it clearly will not fit in the state it is (i can only fit 4.7gb on a dvd, i think) and i dont think the dvd player will recognize the format, either. how do i convert this file to something watchable and preferrably smaller? thanks, much appreciated!

-J

If it's going to end up on DVD then you want to convert it to .mpg2 format. This will drastically reduce the file size and retain quality. I'm pretty sure you can use iMovie to export to .mpg2. Just import the .dv video into iMovie (it may take a while!) and play around with the export settings until you are happy with quality to size ratio.

Create a new iDVD project in standard 4:3 aspect ratio. Drag the .dv file onto the screen.

That is a simplistic answer, so go review the Apple iDVD tutorials.

If I'm wrong, and iDVD doesn't recognize the .dv file, then bring it into iMovie and export from there. The current iMovie 09 is suppose to let you send it straight to iDVD.

You can't think of the size in mega/giga bytes when talking about converting from one format into a DVD presentation. The reason is that DVDs use Mpeg2 files, so what ever you have gets re-encoded. At least when using iDVD, which as far as I know can't use Mpeg files as a source. So that 7GB file will be changed and compressed into something small enough to fit your 4.7GB disc. In fact, iDVD is supports about 2 hours of material on a 4.7GB disc.