Tip : Use iDVD to Present and Backup your Movies

October 26, 2009 in Tips by David John

It has never been easier to capture your own video content. Gone are the days of recording footage on to mini-dv tape and then waited an hour to capture the hour of video to your home computer via firewire cable.

Now video is almost instant, we can record on our Phones (iPhone 3Gs) we can record it on our digital compact cameras, on our Digital SLR cameras (read our top tips) and for unbelievable ease of use you can even capture High Definition video using the brilliant Flip video devices (read how).

Strangely though the more video I seem to create the less DVD video discs I seem to burn. There are a growing number of reasons for the demise of DVD. The fact they don’t support HD is one reason but more likely is the reality that we can produce a single video file that can be displayed on devices such as the AppleTV or be shared immediately online via the likes of YouTube.

My big fear is the lack of backup of  these video memories and recently  in a moment of utter stupidity I managed to lose three family videos from 2001. As a result I have started to back my family films up using Apple’s own iDVD software. Such backup disks can not only be viewed on a traditional DVD player but using the technique below I am also able to back up a data version of the original video file.

Step 1

First load iDVD and create a new project. On first load your screen should look a little like the image below (depending on what version of iDVD you are running). You will notice the Apple Logo appears on the bottom of the main screen.

My first quick tip is to remove this Apple branding from your menus. Click on the iDVD menu on the top left of your screen and select ‘Preferences‘ The following screen will appear.

Now un-tick the “Show Apple Watermark” option. This will remove the Apple logo from your DVD menus in this project and any subsequent project you create.

Step 2

Now drag your movie file onto the main iDVD window, you can also drag it  onto the drop zones so a clip appears in the menu graphics of your DVD. (See the screen shot below).

This means when the DVD is played on a DVD player the viewer clicks on “Horse Riding” to watch the full feature . You can also see the benefit of including the video into the Drop Zone area as you can see a little clip of the horse riding film in the menu.

You can now further edit the DVD content by changing the text or adding more films to the menu.

Step 3

Now you have created a DVD video of your film it is time to also back up the all important data files of the film so that if your hard drive fails you can easily access the master files by loading the DVD disk into your computer.

Click on the “Advanced” menu and select “Edit DVD Contents”

A window will appear into which you can add folders or files. Given the massive compression offered my the mp4 format you should be able to back up a large number of video files on a single DVD.

Once you have added all the necessary content, all you have to do is insert a DVD disk and click the burn option. The DVD will play on a traditional DVD player but when you insert it in a computer as well as being able to watch the DVD there will be a contents folder in which you can directly access your video data files. Easy.