DVD's

Last night after work, Ossil mentioned that he wanted to make a DVD to show his class today after the final to keep them busy.  He had a bunch of pictures and a few short videos.  We were excited to try out iMovie and iDVD that came with my computer.  

After he gave me a DVDRom with his stuff on it, we got some music and put together an iMovie and then put in on the iDVD program, and then we just dragged the pictures over to the program as well.  Then we just burned it.  It took a total of 3 hours.  That includes picking over the pictures, deciding the music.  The movie took about 20 minutes to be converted to a form compatible for iDVD.  The most amazing part is that the burning of the DVD took about 20 minutes.  That is incredibly fast.  The neat thing about his DVD, is that the menu has music and animation (pages of a Napoleon Dynamite style notebook being turned with pictures you put in taped on to the notebook).  It is so cool.  My old computer took hours and hours (for the first DVD, the second and third of the exact same DVD would take much less).  So we would get it all ready to burn, and then right before bed, start the burning, and it would work through the night.  Of course, if you had any problems that came up, you would be in bed so you could not do anything and it would take another whole day to burn the DVD.  

Of course Ossil's video was fast and we didn't do any editing or special effects etc.  That takes time.  Not because of technology, but because of personal preferences and style etc.  The programs I used that came with my computer are not even the newest ones.  I am ordering the newest iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, Garage Band, iWeb, that all come with iLife.  Apple announced the new iLife January 6th, the day I bought my computer, and because of that, I am getting the program for 10 dollars, instead of 70 dollars.  I am excited to see what it can do.  Apparently it will be a lot better.  There will be music lessons included with Garage Band, as well as lots of DVD menu backgrounds, etc.  I still have to learn how to use all these programs, but they are rather intuitive, and fun to learn.  The one I really don't understand is Garage Band, but it has so much potential.  It is a program where you write your own music.  It has different sounds from different instruments, and you can put them together to make music.  This is really good if you want to put non-copyrighted music on a blog, a dvd, a movie, etc.  I still have to learn how to use it, but it seems really neat.  

So, if I am not too busy, and you have a CD or DVD with files of pictures or videos on it and you want a simple DVD (with out too much editing of the movie), I would love to make a DVD for you (for free).  It will be good practice for me.  I will probably keep a copy of it for myself so that I can have a record of my past work, in case I someday decide to charge for it.  

Mom asked me to make a slideshow for the Stake Relief Society.  That is something I am really looking forward to.  I am going to spend a lot of time editing how the pictures go together, and maybe the pictures themselves (lighting, cropping, signs, divisions etc).  But I think that actually putting it together and burning it will not take long.  I have 6 weeks, but I think it will take 6 hours.  

I also just bought a new DVD burner with a hard drive for our new DVD player.  My old DVD player broke, and I found this one for less than $250.  The only place they sell it is Walmart.com.  It is so neat.  It is like Tivo.  It records to a hard drive, but there is no subscription fee, you just program it, or simply push record, and it can record up to 30 hours of high quality video.  You can then take that and record it to a DVD.  Or you can just plug something into the DVD burner and record it on there.  I needed this because I have a whole bunch of family videos on VHS, and I want them to be DVD.  Computers don't have a way to connect a VHS player and make DVD's.  I hope that I can take those DVD's since they are not copy protected and down load them into my computer and then make fancy DVD's with menu's, etc.  Even if I can't, at least I could have all our family videos on DVD.  The one I really want to edit is the one we had playing at our wedding reception.  It was your typical slide show, but when we had it made, there was only 3 choices for the style of music, and the music they put on there was horrible.  So we just played it with the volume off.  I want to change the music on there, and make it a DVD, kind of like Rick and Elizabeths.  

Anyway, I am serious about the offer.  Also, if you have a Mac, I can help you figure out how to do it yourself.  

vccccccccccccccciooooooooouj  (This is the cat walking right if front of me and on the keyboard while I am working on this blog) Ammon our cat gets attention by standing in front of the computer or sitting on the keyboard.  I think he is trying to tell me something.