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Is it possible to eventually make and burn movies w/o a superdrive?

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Brigadeer

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I have lot of home movies that I made with a Sony digitial camcorder, digital Hi-8 film. Anyhow, I just got a great deal and purchased the entry level MacBook which does NOT have a DVD burner on it.

I'm pretty sure I will be able to figure out how to connect my camcorder to my MacBook and then get the movies onto iMovie or whatever Apple program you use for movies. My question is this:

Since my MacBook doesn't have a DVD burner on it, is there any way to create movies using my MacBook and Apple programs, but get them over to another computer to burn them? Will I somehow be able to create the movies on the MacBook, get an ISO file, and then move them to a external hard drive to then burn on my Windows desktop?

Would I have to purchase an external DVD-burner for my MacBook? Is that possible. I mean, can you just plug and play a DVD-burner using USB 2.0 into a MacBook? What are my option here if any on actually burning the moveis that I produce on my MacBook??? Thanks!
 
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if you can get the movie on the computer, you can edit it all you want. As long as you have iMovie or whatever editing software you can do it, then like you said, just move it to the pc and burn it.
 
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Brigadeer

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Thanks for the reply. So really all your saying is, iMovie or whatever editing software I will use (it will be iMovie) eventually converts the movie to a DVD friendly ISO file anyway right before you hit the button to actually begin the burning process? If so, then instead of hitting that button to burn, I simply save the file, and get it to my Windows desktop and burn the movie with Nero, which is what I have?

What would be the better course of action, getting an external hard drive and doing exactly as I noted above, or simply purchasing an external DVD-burner and just burn the movies via my MacBook? Thanks for all responses!

Also, are external DVD-burners very expensive? I know I can get like a 60 Gb external hard drive for under $100. Is that possible with an external DVD-R burner?
 
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You can definitely use iMovie and make a movie that can be moved to a PC. iDVD though poses a bit of a problem, because it-s so closed in what it outputs (iDVD project or direct burn-to-disc). I'm not on my mac right now, but check the export options iDVD has. Maybe soem Image or so is there.

You could of course use Toast to make a DVD image, or use toast and make a VCD instead of a DVD, which is no problem on a normal Drive.
 
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Brigadeer said:
Thanks for the reply. So really all your saying is, iMovie or whatever editing software I will use (it will be iMovie) eventually converts the movie to a DVD friendly ISO file anyway right before you hit the button to actually begin the burning process? If so, then instead of hitting that button to burn, I simply save the file, and get it to my Windows desktop and burn the movie with Nero, which is what I have?

What would be the better course of action, getting an external hard drive and doing exactly as I noted above, or simply purchasing an external DVD-burner and just burn the movies via my MacBook? Thanks for all responses!

iMovie doesn't burn anything, it only sends stuff to iDVD. You cannot simply port a iMovie project file to Windows.
 
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Brigadeer

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yogi said:
You can definitely use iMovie and make a movie that can be moved to a PC. iDVD though poses a bit of a problem, because it-s so closed in what it outputs (iDVD project or direct burn-to-disc). I'm not on my mac right now, but check the export options iDVD has. Maybe soem Image or so is there.

You could of course use Toast to make a DVD image, or use toast and make a VCD instead of a DVD, which is no problem on a normal Drive.

I just got my MacBook the other day. Which program comes with it I wonder, iMovie or iDVD? Do both programs essentially do the same thing?

Sorry for asking so many questions, I'm just trying to figure out the easiest way to do this.

Edit- Well, I see that iMovie comes as part of the iLife 06 suite, which comes standard on the MacBook, so I am set there and would be using iMovie for sure.

Soooooooooo I guess I am back to this question. Would it be better to save the file to some external memory and burn on my desktop, or to purchase an external DVD burner to be able to complete the process?
 
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Brigadeer

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yogi said:
iMovie doesn't burn anything, it only sends stuff to iDVD. You cannot simply port a iMovie project file to Windows.

Ahhhh I see. So that being the case. I get my movie done using iMovie, and it sends it over to iDVD, and I don't have a DVD burner, what do I do?

Sorry for asking what I'm sure seems to be very redundant questions to you. I think I have a good idea of what to do up to the point that my edited movie is sitting in iDVD burn. Past that, I don't know what to do given that my MacBook doesn't have a DVD-burner.
 

dtravis7


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You can always purchase an External DVD/RW drive and plug it into either the USB 2.0 or Firewire port and do your burning that way. Otherwise you can not burn DVD's on a CD/RW drive and the files will be to large anyway for a CD Blank.
 
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I just looked in iDVD 06 and it can export as a disk image. I'm not sure what kind as I don't have a project to test export with but you should be able to take that image to any computer with a DVD burner and be good. Or if you know someone with a Mac with a super drive, you can put your iDVD project file on it and burn it from there.

And just to clarify the difference between iMovie and iDVD, iMovie is for editing together all your footage into a movie, while iDVD is for making the menu structure to play the difference movies and slideshows or whatever you want to put on a DVD and then actually burning the DVD itself.
 
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Brigadeer

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This is a little excerpt I read off of the product description of iDVD:

"With support for a wide variety of DVD media formats — including DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD+R DL — iDVD 6 teams up with a compatible Apple SuperDrive or third-party DVD burner to offer you more media options than ever. You heard right: iDVD lets you burn using compatible third-party DVD burners.

iDVD even lets you archive projects as disc images. Saved this way, your projects are extremely portable and take up less space, and are read-only. What’s more, they’re already encoded, so you can quickly burn them to DVD whenever you have a free moment or a burner handy."

If I am reading the above correctly, I can simply save the project, and then burn it later using a third party DVD-burner. Here is the question. Can I take that saved iDVD file, transport it via a portable hard drive, and then burn it on my desktop using a program like Nero, or will the iDVD still be the ONLY program that can actually burn the movie (i.e.- You can save the movie, and even burn it using a third party DVD-burner, but in the end, it will still have to be burned using iDVD?)?
 
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Once you have created a disk image, it will be, byte for byte, exactly what goes onto the DVD disk. So yes, you can burn it with whatever you want :)
 
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Brigadeer

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Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply. That said, I happened to post this same question in another forum earlier this afternoon, and this is the response I got:

"Short answer - no you won't be able to burn it on the PC. Not because iDVD is the only programme that can burn disk images, but because a disk image is a Mac OS specific format. FWIW, you can burn them using e.g. Disk Utility or Toast if you want, but you will need to hook up a third party burner first."

So, I am getting conflicting answers. One says you can save the image, not problem, it's just a DVD image and will burn anywhere on any OS and on any burner software. The other is stating that although you can save the disk image, that image somehow is unique to OS/X and will only be able to be burned on the MacBook.

Any experts have the definitive answer?
 

dtravis7


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Your best bet would get an external DVD/RW and burn on the Mac, but there is a way to convert Mac Images to ISO's. Then Nero could burn them on the PC. I would rather do it all on the Mac but it's up to you. Will try to find the command to convert. Its a command in the terminal. Will get back to you. I have done it a few times but it's been a couple of years.
 
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Brigadeer said:
Any experts have the definitive answer?

As soon as I get my mac back, I'll have a play, but I the images iDVD produces are DVD disc images - the only stage missing is actually putting it on the disc. The format it produces is exactly the same as the image it would put on a real disc. My recommendation if you're not convinced is to just try it. At worst you'll waste a little time and a single blank disk :)
 
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Brigadeer

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cazabam said:
As soon as I get my mac back, I'll have a play, but I the images iDVD produces are DVD disc images - the only stage missing is actually putting it on the disc. The format it produces is exactly the same as the image it would put on a real disc. My recommendation if you're not convinced is to just try it. At worst you'll waste a little time and a single blank disk :)


The problem is, I need to buy a new portable hard drive, and I don't want to go out and buy one if this process doesn't work. I would rather do the portable hard drive thing, moving the image to my desktop to burn than purchasing an external DVD-burner as I can see multiple uses for the external hard drive.
 
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"The problem is, I need to buy a new portable hard drive, and I don't want to go out and buy one if this process doesn't work.

I understand that. However, if you generate, for example, a small slideshow in iPhoto and export it via iDVD, it should only be a hundred megabytes or so. This can quite easily be transferred on to another machine either over the network, or on a CD-R. You can then try burning this image and see if it works. If it does, go ahead and get the external hard drive.

On the other hand, if this is just one of many uses for the external drive, why not get one anyway? They aren't much more than the bare drives these days so it might be worth investing for backup purposes. If the disk image trick works, then it's a bonus :)
 
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JamminJonah

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yogi said:
iMovie doesn't burn anything, it only sends stuff to iDVD. You cannot simply port a iMovie project file to Windows.

If you edit a movie in iMovie couldn't you
File > Share
Quicktime
dropdown > Full Quality DV
(it will compress into a Quicktime File)

and then burn that Quicktime file as data onto Cd and then put it in the PC and then burn it do a DVD if the PC has a burner (depending on file size)?

takes a while to compress but it's faster than burning on the G5 we have at work
 
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and then burn that Quicktime file as data onto Cd and then put it in the PC and then burn it do a DVD if the PC has a burner (depending on file size)?

If you do that you'd incurr the full reencoding time on the mac and then on the PC as well. Also, you would lose quality, regardless of the Quicktime setting. Also, if you had mastered it with menus or similar, they would be missing. The best thing really is to transfer the disk image.
 

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If you make an image on the Mac that is either .DMG or .IMG, you can in the Terminal convert it to an .ISO and burn it on the PC. I had not done this in maybe 2 years so wanted to be sure before I posted.

If the image on the Mac is a .IMG (which is what iDvd makes) do this in the Termnial.

1. Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities).
2. Type "hdiutil convert" (without quotes) and then a space.
3. Drag whatever the image is into the Terminal window.
4. Type "-format UDTO -o isoimage.iso" (without quotes) and then press return.
5. It's done when it says "created: isoimage.iso.cdr" and then prints one more line.
6. isoimage.cdr is in your home folder.
7. Just do a Rename and take off the .cdr it puts on the end and leave it as just .iso. It will ask if you want it cdr or iso, just say iso. Then you can network copy the .iso to your PC and Nero or Roxio will burn it. This works as I just tried it to refresh my memory and be sure it worked.

If you want to convert a .DMG image to an .ISO it's the basic same thing.

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/savefile.iso

Replace /path/to/filename.dmg with the path and name of the existing .DMG file, and replace /path/to/savefile.iso with the desired path and name for the converted image.


Hope this might help. It's saved me in the past as I have to work with Windows and sometimes use the Mac do make my image and need windows to read and burn it for the customer.
 
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Brigadeer

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Thanks for all the info man, I am going to try this out this weekend. I have a 1 Gb thumbdrive, so I will work with one of my shorter movies and see if this works.
 

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