Apple iMovie writing big file to regular 4-gig DVD

December 6, 2005 8:53 PM

i have a 58-minute video in iMovie - just regular digital video import (30 FPS, 720x480 pixels) which for some reason takes up 12 gigs on my hard drive. I want to burn this to make a DVD out of this movie, but 12 gigs is way too big. How do I burn this regular 58-minute video on a regular 4-gig DVD? there must be some way, since you can get 2 hours of Hollywood movie on a DVD... why not my 58 minutes of amateur video? (Why would it take up so much space, anyway?)
posted by mark7570 to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

You use iDVD, and it transcodes automatically from DV to MPEG2.
posted by trevyn at 8:55 PM on December 6, 2005

iMovie saves your stuff as uncompressed DV files. If you go to the folder where your movie is stored you should see a quicktime movie. You can open this up in quicktime pro and export it as an mpeg-4 file which will solve your problem.

I seem to recall doing this without quicktime at some point, but I think I'm mis-remembering.
posted by singingfish at 9:00 PM on December 6, 2005

the long story: the video that is on your computer's hard drive is uncompressed, meaning the video is very high quality. when you burn it to a DVD using iDVD, the video is compressed into the industry standard MPEG-2 format, which all video DVDs use. think of this like 35mm film vs. VHS.
posted by tumult at 9:02 PM on December 6, 2005

Try DVDShrink
posted by A189Nut at 9:04 PM on December 6, 2005

note that if you just convert the file directly to quicktime's mpeg-4 (as singingfish suggested) and burn it to a DVD, it will not play in any standard DVD players or non-Mac computers.
posted by tumult at 9:05 PM on December 6, 2005

If you have iDVD you can send to iDVD from iMovie and it will create a DVD that will hold your work AND play in almost any DVD player.
It may well have come with your Mac if you have iMovie. If not, the iLife package from Apple is a must-have for low end cheapo (79.00 or less with edu discount) production that is easy to use and makes amazing results. (sorry for the MacFreak tone of this post, but it's true. really.
posted by cccorlew at 9:33 PM on December 6, 2005

Best answer: AHHHH. Ok, some of the above is wrong, wrong, wrong. Sorry, just have to vent my frustrations.
You don't need to 'use' quicktime conversions, you don't make an MPEG-4. Apple has given you all the tools. Ready to go, ready to make a DVD - it's called iDVD.

Short answer: iMovie: File Menu - Share -> iDVD

Long answer:

iMovie is capturing the DV footage (really a copy of the data from the camera.) It's compressed 5:1, 720x480. Do the math here, that's 30 frames per second, NTSC DV, with some wavlet (JPEG like) compression.

What does it mean? 5 minutes to the Gigabyte. (Uncompressed is about 5 times that...or one minute to the gigabyte.)

The compression format of a DVD is MPEG (it's a multiplexed MPEG that can vary in size.) The raw dv files are too big to store (and realistically, there are no consumer 'dv' players). So, we convert to MPEG-2 and author into a DVD

So, what we have are DVDs. iDVD will compress your finished work (as little as possible...but also as much as necessary to get it to fit on a DVD-5).

Your last step in iMovie will be to go to the file menu and choose Share...and choose a DVD. iMovie will pass your finished work off to iDVD where it will compress it (in the background if you choose) and permit you to burn a DVD that plays on (pretty much) any DVD player (set top or computer)

You may want to add chapter marks in iMovie before you get to iDVD (just like hollywood movies!) or add photos from iPhoto as a slideshow.

Additionally, if you want to keep the raw information, iMovie has the choice to File>Burn Project to disc. I've never used this, but I believe it backs stuff up over several DVDs if necessary.

You're going to need an additional 5 or so gigs of space for the MPEG2/DVD conversion to take place from the iMovie file. Burn two while you're at it (no extra space once finished)...or more. You can always make more copies of the finished DVD.

Hollywood, by the way, utilizes dual layer - DVD-9s for their DVDs, pack them much tighter (with extras), have very good hardware tools for compression, and have a lower frame rate (making it easier to compress.)
posted by filmgeek at 9:33 PM on December 6, 2005

Best answer: Oh, why is it big?
60 minutes x 60 seconds x 30 frames per second @ ~110k frame= 12 gigabytes
posted by filmgeek at 9:38 PM on December 6, 2005

filmgeek writes "utilizes dual layer "

Burnable dual layer DVD is available now. The disks are wildly more expensive(5-6X) than the single layer stuff so it's really only appropriate when you need the 8Gs vs 4Gs.
posted by Mitheral at 12:54 AM on December 7, 2005