burning homemade movies on dvd..?

Hi there, I'm sorry if this has been posted before, I Recently have just been getting into making movies/slideshows on my mac, and I have a family reunion coming up and so i wanted to show my movie at the reunion... (to be played on a dvd player) I had tried to burn the movie onto the dvd, but when I put it in any player it tells me its unable to read the disc.

I've looked around at some sites, and a lot of them say to use idvd to burn dvds. I tried looking for this program on my macbook, and was unable to find it - is this a program I have to buy?

If that is the case is there a different program I can use that I wouldn't have to pay for. If anyone can help me out that would be fantastic!

iDVD is part of the iLife suite, which comes packaged with new Macs.

You should be able to find it in your Applications folder. You might also try hitting Command+Space and typing iDVD in the Spotlight search field.

If it's missing, you may need to reinstall from your System Discs.

Aside from iDVD, what have you been using to burn your projects onto a disc in the past?

hi there,

I got my mac probably about 2 years ago, so it's not quite as new as you are probably thinking =P

I've tried burning them with itunes, and I had tried some demo things that i have found online, I don't remember what programs those were though

All Macs come with iLife and that's been true for quite a long time now. Yours would have definitely come with it. DVD Players require a very specific type of data, burnt in a specific way. That's where iDVD (or even Roxio's Toast) come in. Do a Spotlight search as mentioned above and see if you can find it. If not, you'll need to extract it from your System Discs.

alright, I will try when I get home from work and I'll let you know. thanks!

Alright, so I found the idvd... I have like 12 chapters... 50 minutes each. Is there a way to burn that onto one disc? Right now it's telling me I have to burn one chapter at a time. anyone now what i can do?

lauren122688 said:

Alright, so I found the idvd... I have like 12 chapters... 50 minutes each. Is there a way to burn that onto one disc? Right now it's telling me I have to burn one chapter at a time. anyone now what i can do?

Click to expand...

Well, I'm using iDVD from the '09 suite, so I'm not sure if yours is different or not. But basically, all I do is create a new project, click Media in the lower right corner and then import my movie files. Each file is a chapter.

How are your videos formatted?

uhh thats what i did before... do you have one of those theme things? It says my files are mp4, but i also have avi... so when you import it, the files are put on the right side right, then do you click and drag?

when i dragged the files, I get this message. "your project exceeds the max content duration. to burn your dvd change the encoder setting in thr project info window

To be quite honest, I haven't used iDVD all that extensively (I use Toast), so I'm not sure I'm your best resource for these kinds of questions. Hopefully someone else will jump in.

Meanwhile, you might want to give these tutorials a look:

Apple - iLife - Find out how to use iLife applications on the Mac.

do you have to pay for toast

lauren122688 said:

do you have to pay for toast

Click to expand...

Yep.

Roxio Toast 10 Titanium - CD & DVD Burning

But do take a moment to watch the video. iDVD is quite capable. Toast just does a lot more.

yeah I'm sure once i figure out idvd it will be easy... i think somehow i need to make the files smaller haha

does anyone else know what I can do?

alright, so now I got toast... i click the big red circle and get this error

"could not record the disc because of a mac os error"

Honestly though, your talking about putting 12x50min video "chapters" on a dvd - not going to happen (at least not and be of any decent quality, plus I don't think that iDVD can go that low on quality), most you'll get is 2-4 depending on how the video quality is set.

Also take a look - those DVD box sets that have, say 4, maybe 5 tv episodes on a single DVD are using dual layer DVDs and people who specialize in compression to get the best picture out with the space they have available.

Another question I have is - what exact version/model Macbook do you have? I ask because up until the late 2008 model, it's possible to get a Macbook with either a Combo Drive (DVD play/CD-R/CD-RW) or a Superdrive (supports burning a DVD) You can find out what you support by going to the Apple Menu -> About This Mac -> More Info -> Disc Burning will tell you what your system supports