Lab Software Tips: iDVD
Apple's
iDVD software is provided for users who
want a quick and easy way to create professional looking DVD menus and/or
encode video onto DVD discs without having to
learn DVD Studio Pro. In order to successfully encode and burn a DVD project
with iDVD, you must save the project file in a specific location. If your
project file is saved in your Macintosh account on our server, you will not
be able to encode or burn your project. This document includes information
about how to set up your project to avoid problems.
This software is available on all Macintoshes
in the SCS
Labs and Hublets. It is part of the standard SCS software package
for Macintoshes and support is provided by consultants in labs with a large
concentration of Macintosh computers (Fine
Arts, King, Journalism, Young,
and
Computer Science). Apple
tutorials and support documents are also available.
It is important to save your project files
in the correct location before you begin to encode your video or burn your
DVD or you may experience serious problems during editing or burning, such
as extreme computer slowdown, a beachballing cursor, and hanging application
programs or system software. In addition, you may create these problems for
the users around you as well because transferring such large amounts of data
to the server takes up all the available network bandwidth, leaving none
for any other computer users.
Even if your video files are on a separate
drive, you still need to store your iDVD
somewhere other than in your Macintosh account. This is because iDVD uses large
amounts of scratch disk space to encode your video and create the files needed
to burn your DVD. These scratch files are created on the same volume as the
project files, so if your files are stored in your account, the software will
try to store the scratch files there as well.
When you launch iDVD, a new untitled project
is automatically created. You should immediately save this project on a personal
external hard drive, or on the Temporary_Storage Volume
of the lab computer you are using.
In the Save window, click the 
button
beside the name field to expand the window options and navigate to your preferred
storage location. This location should have a minimum of 5-10 GB free, depending
on the size of your project. If you are using Temporary_Storage and you do
not already have a personal folder created there, create one now and title
it with your name or login ID. Save your project file in this folder. The
media files you plan to use with your DVD project should be stored in the
same location.
Digital video files can often take up several
gigabytes of storage space, much more than the amount allotted to each user
account. Although we offer some storage space on the hard drive of each computer
in our lab, we strongly recommend that users purchase personal FireWire drives.
For more information, see Digital Video Storage options.