| When you want to create a DVD in a hurry, use the Magic iDVD feature that debuted in iDVD 6. Magic iDVD presents you with a single window containing a list of menu themes, a set of drop boxes for holding movies and photos, and a media browser for accessing your audio, photos, and movies. Choose a theme, then drag movies into the drop boxes. To create DVD slide shows, drag photos to the drop boxes. Drag an entire album from iPhoto or build a slide show one photo at a time by dragging individual photos into the same box. Want a music soundtrack for a slide show? Drag an audio track into the slide show's drop box. When you're done, preview your work by clicking the Preview button and using iDVD's standard preview features (page 287). Then click the Burn or Create Project buttons, and iDVD builds your project for you, even creating chapter submenus for movies containing DVD chapters (page 291). Magic iDVD may be all you need for many projects. And if you need to customize or enhance the DVD it creates, you can bring the rest of iDVD's authoring features to bear. Indeed, Magic iDVD is a great way to rough out a project that you plan to refine later. Here's how to make DVD magic. Magic iDVD versus OneStep DVD iDVD provides two ways to go from zero to DVD with very few steps. Which method should you use, and when? When to go OneStep. Use OneStep DVD when you want to burn just one movie to a DVD and you don't need navigation menus. When you use OneStep DVD, you don't have the opportunity to customize menu designsthere aren't any. As page 299 describes, OneStep DVD creates an autoplay, or kiosk-mode, DVD: the disc begins playback as soon as you insert it into a computer or DVD player. When to go Magic iDVD. Use Magic iDVD when you want navigation menus and more than one piece of content on your DVDfor example, a couple of movies and some slide shows. To Make a Magic iDVD Step 1. | Choose File > Magic iDVD. | Step 2. | (optional). Edit the DVD title. | Step 3. | Choose a theme for the DVD by clicking one of the theme thumbnails. (To access additional themes, use the pop-up menu above the row of thumbnails.) | | | Step 4. | To add video to the DVD, click the Movies button in the media browser, then drag one or more movies into the drop boxes.
Tips You can also drag movies directly from folders on your Mac's hard drive. (To have iDVD list movies from other folders in its media browser, use the Preferences command as described on page 290.) Need to add multiple movies? Simply Shift-click or 1-click on each one to select the movies, then drag them as a group, as shown on the opposite page. When you release the mouse button, each movie appears in its own drop box. | Step 5. | To add a slide show to the DVD, drag photos into the photos drop boxes. Each box represents a different slide show. Tips You can drag albums from iPhoto, or folders of photos from your hard drive or a CD. If you like to overwork, you can drag individual photos to a drop box, one at a time. You can also combine approaches. For example, you can drag an entire album to create a slide show, then drag individual photos to that slide show's drop box to add them to the show. And just as you can add multiple movies at once, you can create multiple slide shows at once. Shift-click or 1-click on each album in the Photos media browser, then drag the albums as a group. Each album becomes its own slide show. | Step 6. | (optional). To add music to a slide show, drag an audio file from the Audio media browser (or elsewhere on your hard drive) to the slide show.
A speaker icon appears on the slide show's thumbnail to indicate that it has a soundtrack. | Step 7. | Preview or finish up. Check your work. To preview the DVD, click the Preview button. When you exit preview mode, you return to the Magic iDVD window. Ready to bake. If you're happy with the job Magic iDVD has done, click the Burn button. iDVD creates a project containing your content, then immediately switches into burn mode. (For burning details, see pages 308311.) Further refinement. If you want to refine the projectfor example, to customize some menus or refine your slide showsclick the Create Project button. iDVD creates a project that you can customize using the techniques described throughout this chapter. |
Behind the Magic Here's a look at how Magic iDVD does its design. And remember, you aren't locked into its magical decisions. You can customize anything in the projects that Magic iDVD creates. Main title. The name you type into the DVD Title box becomes the title of your main menu. Submenus. Your DVD's main menu will contain buttons that link to submenus for playing the DVD's movies and slide shows. Chapter menus. Similarly, if you add a movie containing DVD chapter markers, you get a submenu for accessing those chapters. For themes that have separate chapter menu designs (as do all of the new iDVD themes), iDVD uses the chapter menu design for the chapter menu. Drop zones. iDVD automatically adds movies to the drop zones of whatever menu theme you choose. If your DVD contains only slide shows, iDVD uses photos from the slide shows for the drop zones. |
|