Review: iDVD ‘08—burn, baby, burn

Posted by Dennis Sellers Sep 6, 2007 at 11:07am

Of all the components of ‘iLife ‘08, iDVD has probably changed the least. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as it was a fine product before. Now it’s faster (especially in regards to theme switching), has some minor interface tweaks and new themes.

iDVD ‘08 adds 10 new themes, bringing the total to 150 (some from earlier versions have to be downloaded, but they’re free). Using them remains as easy as ever: choose a theme, then drag and drop your videos and photos onto the drop zones. The new iDVD themes come in both widescreen (16:9) and standard (4:3) formats; you can switch from one to the other at any time. Each theme includes a family of coordinated screens, including Main Menu, Chapters Menu, and Extras Menu for content-like slideshows. You can customize your themes to your liking.

iDVD ’08 gives you a range of options for customizing your menu screens, as well as cleaning up and streamlining the user interface. You can edit drop zones, choose from an expanded button library, and use built-in alignment guides that pop up automatically to help you center any canvas object or align it with other objects. A new interface allows you to see your project and the drop zone editor at the same time, which makes it easier to add, edit, or delete the photos and videos in your drop zones. With the expanded button library, you can choose from an interesting variety of shapes and sizes. Plus, you can edit buttons, titles, and text using context-sensitive floating palettes.

iDVD still retains a two-hour limit to how much media you can put onto a standard single-sized DVD, but now the software provides another encoding option: “Professional Quality.” The new professional-quality option in iDVD uses advanced encoding technology to, according to Apple, “maintain the highest possible quality for DVDs that are near or at the disc’s capacity.” A built-in capacity meter helps you evaluate which quality level to select.

What’s more, iDVD now allows you to use higher quality photos in your slideshows. You can also combine video clips and photos in your slideshow presentations. iDVD ‘08 works with all the new video formats and devices supported by iMovie ’08. Using the iLife Media Browser, you can drag any video clip or movie from iMovie into your iDVD project.

On the downside, iDVD’s chapter marker feature hasn’t changed, which is a bit of a bummer especially since you can no longer create chapter markers in iMovie. You can add chapter markers, but only at fixed time intervals.

There’s also a problem in that iDVD ‘08 may quit unexpectedly when opened. If iDVD ‘08 is closed immediately after the startup screen when the application is opened for the first time, opening the application a second time may cause it to unexpectedly quit. To resolve the issue:

° In Finder, drag the following folder and file from your home directory to the trash (where the tilde (~) represents your home directory): 

~/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Installed Themes and
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.idvd

° Reopen iDVD ‘08, create a new project and wait for the Updating themes progress bar to complete before quitting the application again. You only need to do this once.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs seems to think that the future of video sharing is online, not burning DVDs. However, there are lots of us who still like distributing DVDs of family events, sports events and more. iDVD is the best tool for the job unless you’re creating commercial grade products. For that you’ll need Apple’s DVD Studio Pro.

Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10.

iLife ’08 is now available for a suggested retail price of US$79 through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. The iLife ’08 suite of applications will be included with all new Macs beginning today. .Mac is available as a subscription-based service for $99.95 per year for individuals and $179.95 (US) for a Family Pack which includes one master account and four sub accounts.

iLife ’08 requires Mac OS 10.4.9 or later, a Mac computer with an Intel processor, a PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4, QuickTime 7.2 or later, a DVD drive for installation and 3GB of available disk space. iPhoto print services are available in the US, Canada, Japan and select European countries. A .Mac account is recommended for iWeb.

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