“I’m decided to take on a DVD project for a band I recorded in my studio recently. Is it really realistic for me to produce “real” DVDs with the iDVD software that came with my Mac? Discs are kind of expensive. Do I need to burn one each time I want to test it?”
Yes, and maybe. Yes, you can absolutely produce functional DVDs on your Mac with the free software. Some very old DVD players do not read the DVD-R media very well, and thus may not work, but these are rare. The iDVD software’s authoring capabilities are limited in some respects, but while this may limit some “features” you can include in your DVDs it doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on the extent to which discs “work,” keeping the above caveat in mind. Of course it’s assumed that you understand you need to have your audio and video “ready to go” before importing it into iDVD. This means you need to use iMovie or some other video editing application to construct your files.
As for testing discs, there is a preview mode in iDVD that allows you to take a tour through your DVD and examine how it is laid out, both functionally and aesthetically. This preview mode is an effective way to find the vast majority of the little problems you are likely to create while building your disc, but ultimately there are always those few little annoyances that never show up until you actually burn a disc and play it. This has as much to do with how we observe things as it does with the functionality of the program (why is it that we first hear some particular annoyance in our “finished” mix when playing it on a stereo at a friend or relative’s house?). Fortunately blank DVD-R media has come down in price substantially in the last couple of years. I pretty much assume I’m going to waste one or two discs for every project I do.
