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iMovie, iDVD or iPhoto???

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I've only had my iMac for a few weeks and today is the first time that I've had the time to play around with iMovie, iDVD and iPhoto and, although I'm not a huge fan of iPhoto (long time Photoshop user) I really like the way they all integrate with each other and the results they produce.

However I'm a little confused as to which program or programs I should use to produce the following.

I want to produce a DVD that will play back on my TV's DVD player and that has a menu system (I like some of the themes that come with iDVD) that contains links to various photo slideshows. i.e. you put the DVD in the drive and in brings up an animated menu which allows you to select which slideshow you want to view.

Each slideshow I want to have background music. For this particular DVD it just needs to be background music (no sync required) but in the future I will also want to be able to sync up transitions/slide changes to beats in the music.

Maybe it's just because my coffee hasn't kicked in but many of these programs seem to offer similar features but I don't think there is one program that can do the whole thing in one go and I'm not sure which combination of programs will produce the best results or the best way of doing it.

Any help/advice/tips greatly appreciated.
 

Del


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The software you mentioned above is more than adequate for your needs
 
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Use iMovie to create the Movie (Background music, fade scenes in/out, roll credits, sound effects, etc.)... Then Export it to iDVD, to create the Menu, Sub Menu, etc... and burn it to a DVD.
 
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I made a DVD that played on a conventional DVD player that contained menus, soundtrack, slideshow, and a movie. Here is how I used each of those programs:

iPhoto
I used iPhoto to house all of my pictures that I used for my slideshow and movie. With iPhoto, I was able to organize my photos into different albums and folders and quickly choose which pictures were going to be included in my DVD.

iMovie
I used iMovie to create the project. This is where most of the work was performed. In iMovie, I imported all of my images, videos, and music. I imported those items using iPhoto and iTunes. I used templates that were housed in iMovie to create a slideshow with various transitions and inlayed a nice soundtrack to play in the background.

iDVD
I used this program to complete the project. This program creates the menus that you find on conventional DVD's and possesses templates that you can use to create the overall environment of the DVD. I imported my project from iMovie and placed into the template in iDVD. I also created the beginning Menu with a background, created a submenu that housed my slideshow and movie, and created another submenu that housed the 'credits.' This program was also used to burn the project onto a recordable DVD.
 
OP
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Cheers all and VanillaEps for your detailed reply. I'll give it all a whirl!

I did have a bit of a play before reading this and kind of got what I wanted but I'll try it the way it's listed here as that sounds better than what I did.
 
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I used the online tutorials found on the Apple site to get a grasp on each of the programs.
 

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