iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

2017-07-07 02:10:07

16.3. Adding Movies

When you get right down to it, all iDVD really does is add window dressingmenus, buttons , and so onto movies, music, and photos created in other programs.

Take movies, for example. You already know that you can transfer an iMovie project into iDVD by sharing your iMovie (that's what Chapter 15's all about). But that's just the beginning of the ways you can add movies to your iDVD projects. You can also:

Use the File Import command.

Drag movies into the iDVD window from the desktop.

Choose movies from the Media palette.

Drag clips or entire movies directly in from iMoviea new feature in iLife '06.

The following pages take you through these additional methods .

16.3.1. The Import Command

iDVD's File Import command lets you install video, audio, pictures, and background movies onto whatever menu screen youre editing; see Figure 16-3.

Figure 16-3. When you choose File Import Video, the Open File dialog box appears, so that you can navigate to a movie and select it. (You cant select more than one movie to import at a time.) When you click Open , iDVD loads the movie and adds it to the current menu screen.

16.3.2. The Finder

Another great way to install a movie into an iDVD menu screen is to drag it there, either right off the desktop or from an open folder window. Figure 16-4 tells all.

16.3.3. The Movies Media Pane

Dragging files in from the Finder is great, but it assumes that you know where your movies are. Fortunately, if you're a little fuzzy on where you've stored all your movie files, iDVD can help.

Click the Media button, and then click the Movies button at the top (see Figure 16-5).

The Movies pane opens, showing a list of folders at the top. At the outset, this list contains your Movies folder, iPhoto library folder (because digital still cameras all take digital movies these days), and iTunes folder (because it often contains podcasts and other video material).

Click one of these icons to see every digital movie and iMovie project that iDVD can find inside (even if they're in folders in that folder, a nice new iDVD 6 feature). See the box below for some tips on navigating the list. (If you have movies somewhere else on your hard drive, see "Listing more movie folders," below).

Figure 16-4. Here's a very quick way to install a movie into one of your menu screens: In the Finder, position the window that contains the movie so that you can see it and the iDVD menu screen at the same time. Then just drag the movies onto the displayed menu and drop them there. (You can even drag iMovie project icons, like the ones with the star icons shown herea change in iMovie 6.)

GEM IN THE ROUGH

Useful Pane Tricks

The following tricks and tips may help when using any of the sources (Movies, Audio, or Photos) in the Media pane.

Play it . If you double-click a movie or sound, it plays. (You can also click it once and then click the button at the bottom of the pane.) Click once anywhere to stop the playback. Use as needed to jog your memory.

Search . If you've got a seething mass of media to root through, click in the Search box below the list and type a few letters of the name of the movie, picture, or song you want. As you type, iDVD hides all entries except those whose names match. Capitalization doesn't matter, but you can search through only one folder, album, or playlist at a time. (Restore the entire list by clicking the little X at the right end of the Search box.)

Select more than one . You can highlight more than one movie, picture, or song at a time, and therefore save time by dragging them all onto the screen at once. Exactly as in the Finder, you can click the first entry, then Shift-click the last to select an entire group . Or you can -click random thumbnails to select a nonadjacent set.

Note: You may ask: "Where are the TV shows and movies that I bought from the iTunes Music Store? What if I want to burn them to disc?" They're not there in the Movies pane, and they won't be on your DVD. iDVD and iTunes do not allow you to use commercial iTunes Music Store videos in your iDVD projects the way you can with your purchased iTunes audio tracks. The reason: a little something called copyright law.

Figure 16-5. At the top of the palette, you see a list of all the QuickTime movies and iMovie project icons in your Home folder, or other folders you've told iDVD to search. When you click one of these folders, you see its contents in the pane, exhibited as thumbnail images. Drag your selection into the menu screen to make it part of your DVD-in-waiting.

16.3.3.1. Listing more movie folders

iDVD starts out displaying the movies in your Movies, iTunes, and iPhoto folders. But if you store movies in other folders, you can teach iDVD to list the contents of additional movie folders. To do so, drag new folders from the Finder to the list in the Movies pane. Alternatively choose iDVD Preferences ( -comma), click the Movies button, and follow the steps in Figure 16-6. Repeat for as many folders as you want to add.

16.3.4. Clips and Movies from iMovie

When you export a movie from iMovie to iDVD, as described in the previous chapter, iMovie creates a brand-new iDVD project. iMovie offers no obvious way to install a second or third movie into an existing iDVD project. That's a shame, because most homemade DVDs are not, in fact, 90-minute opuses, complete with character development and a satisfying narrative arc. (In fact, an hour and a half of anybody's home movies is about 80 minutes too long.) Most of the time, people want to fill a DVD with several of their finished iMovie projects. They want each button on the DVD's main menu to represent a complete movie .

There is a way to add more iMovies to a DVD, though; see Figure 16-7.

Figure 16-6. Choose iDVD Preferences. Click Movies, then click the Add button. Navigate to the folder you want iDVD to search. Click it, and then click Open. iDVD adds the new folder to the list. To remove a file from the list, select it and click Remove. Thats the only way you can remove folders from the list (short of trashing your iDVD preferences file).

Figure 16-7. After saving your iMovie project (right), you can drag it onto an iDVD menu screen (left) using the icon in the title bar as a handle. The trick is to hold down the mouse button momentarily until the icon darkens before you begin to drag. Alternatively, you can drag individual clips from iMovie (either the Movie Track or the Clips pane) into iDVD.

16.3.5. Movies with Chapters

You already know from the previous chapter that if you export a movie directly from iMovie, any chapter markers you've added automatically turn into buttons in iDVD.

But what happens if you drag an iMovie movie, itself containing chapter markers, into iDVD as described above?

Unless you've changed the iMovie settings, iDVD automatically turns those chapter markers into buttons, just as though you'd exported the movie from iMovie. They wind up on a menu screen of their owna submenu . And, unless your movie is the first one to be dragged onto a new menu screen, the Play Movie and Scene Selection buttons are put into their own submenu, below the current screen. (If it a movie is the first and only movie on that menu screen, though, iDVD 6 skips the whole submenu thing and adds the Play Movie and Scene Selection buttons directly.)

Unfortunately, you've now created a fairly complex menu structure. To jump to a certain scene in your dragged-in iMovie, your audience has to navigate through three different pages of buttonsfrom the initial menu to the submenu, and then from the submenu to the chapter menu.

For that reason, you might not always want iMovie to turn your chapter markers into buttonsat least not without asking your permission.

Choose iDVD Preferences. On the Movies tab, you have three choices under "When importing movies":

Automatically create chapter marker submenu . This is the factory setting. When you drag an iMovie project into iDVD, it turns into a folder-icon button. Your audience must click that button with the remote control to get to a second screen, where they can either play the movie or access its scene-selection menu. (See the following section for more on navigating "folder" menus in iDVD.)

Never create chapter marker submenu . If you choose this option, dragging an iMovie movie into a menu screen creates a single movie button, with no submenu screens. Clicking that button with the remote control makes the movie play immediately.

Your audience no longer has the option of navigating your movie by viewing a page full of scene markers.

Tip: Even though your viewers won't see individual icons for these scenes, they can still jump to them using the Next Chapter or Previous Chapter buttons on their remote controls.

Ask each time . When you drag a chapter-filled movie onto a menu screen, iMovie says: "Do you want to add chapter markers for this movie?" Click Yes (if you want to create the nested-menus effect described three paragraphs ago), or No (if you want the invisible chapter-markers effect described two paragraphs ago).