posted
So I've been working on an animation project for my senior honors project thing that I have to do. I finally completed all the animation last night and so I went to burn it to DVD. I've been using iMovie to compile all the stuff. I told it to share the video to iDVD. I set up the menu for the DVD and hit burn. It asked me to insert a DVD, so I did. It rejected the DVD and asked me to put in a blank one (despite the fact that the one I put in was blank). So I tried 2 other blank DVDs (as well as trying to mount the blank DVD before opening and running iDVD). It wouldn't work though.
So I turned to Toast Titanium. I saved the iMovie project as a high quality DV file, then opened it in Toast. I let it burn and it seemed to be fine. I put it in my DVD player though, and the image is cropped. This wouldn't be a big deal except one character has 2 lines of Japanese that need subtitles, and the subtitles got cut off. After looking into it, I found out that all non-LCD TVs can crop up to 10% off each side of the video being shown, and so that's why it's not showing up. If I play the DVD in my iMac though, it plays normally and you can see the subtitles fine.
I'm asking for some help in getting a DVD burnt that will play on the TV and include the subtitles still. I've tried re-encoding the thing at a different aspect ratio as well as doing the letterbox option. All that has done for me is allow for no cropping along the sides, but not along the bottom (where the subtitles are) or the top). Is there some way to add a border to the video footage (similar to letterbox but all the way around)? Or is there a way (in settings or something that I don't know about) to get it to automatically compensate for the cropping problem on the TVs? I really have no clue as I only have limited experience with editing and burning stuff to DVDs. Any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated. Thanks guys. Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Care to explain, Kwea? Those programs, at least from my brief Google search, seem to be geared towards de-encrypting and copying DVDs, which doesn't help me much. Maybe I'm missing something.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Seriously, I don't know how you'd normally deal with this level of overscan. I've never run into this sort of problem.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Yeah, with previous projects I haven't had this problem either. In fact, if it wasn't for the subtitles, I'd just leave it as it is. Unfortunately, I think it's lacking without the 2 subtitles, particularly since this is my senior project and all.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
It seems like iDVD should be able to scale the video to the correct size. Since you're having trouble burning with iDVD, you could try using iDVD to burn to an image file and then use Toast to burn to the actual DVD.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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How do I do that, camus? In the past, I've just gone under the sharing option of iMovie and hit the iDVD button, then it sends it over to iDVD. I then just customize the menu and hit burn. Is there an option somewhere to have it burn an image file? I really don't know as I rarely use iDVD.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I think you have to hold the Shift key while you press Burn, and then you will get the option to save to a file. I've done this twice myself since I have an external DVD burner, so I have to use Toast to burn the DVD, but I can never remember exactly which buttons I have to hold. It might be Shift and Control. I'll try to find a link somewhere that describes the process.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
It depends which version of iDVD you have. In iDVD '05 it looks like there is an option in the File Menu based on the iDVD tutorial on the Apple webpage.
quote:To create a disc image of your project, choose "Save as Disc Image" from the File menu.
I've also read that DVD+ won't work with iDVD, just DVD-, which will give you the error message that you keep getting.
If you have an earlier version of iDVD, then you will have to use this method to create an image file. Although, all you really need to do is step 4:
quote:Hold down "control" key, then select "Burn DVD..." from the File menu (while "control" key is held down). Keep holding the control key down until the dialog box pops up
and if I remember correctly, this can actually be abbreviated to simply holding the Control key while clicking on the Burn button, and then keep holding the Control key until the new window comes up.
hope this works for you.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Well that may be the problem, as all I have on me right now are DVD+Rs. Another problem that may be cropping up is that the iMovie project and files are on an external hard drive. Maybe I'll encode the iMovie project to DV on my main hard drive, then try loading up iDVD 4 with the easter egg to burn a disc image.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Well no luck there. I was able to burn a disc image from iDVD and then burn that in Toast Titanium. It suffers from the same problem though. It's the exact same thing as the original, just with a fancier iDVD menu. Still no solution. Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
If you're adding the subtitles in iMovie, make sure that the QT Margins option is unchecked, because selecting this option will typically force the text outside of the TV area. Otherwise, if the subtitles are added before you work with it in iMovie, you could always just add another set of text but in a different location on the screen.
And if you use iMovie to share or launch iDVD, you can also do the following:
quote:1. Choose iDVD > Preferences. 2. Click Slideshow. 3. Select the checkbox labeled "Always scale slides to TV Safe Area."
posted
Thanks for the suggestion, camus. A friend of mine came up with a different method that worked pretty much though. He took a copy of my DV footage, opened it in After Effects, shrunk down the image a little (so that it would have a black border), then re-encoded it as a DV file and sent it back to me. I then took the DV file, added it to iDVD, saved the thing as a disc image, and then burned the disc image onto DVD. I played it on my TV, and while it does look a little off (mainly because there's a little more black along the top than along the bottom), you can read the subtitles and nothing gets cropped out. So it works.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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