Is there a way to simply take an SD card from a (Panasonic) camcorder and burn the entire contents to a DVD using iDVD? It seems that I have to do this via iMovie – create an iMovie project, then share it in the media browser – in order for iDVD to pick up the footage. This takes forever. You can select an iMovie event from iDVD but then all the individual clips appear as separate movies on the DVD.
The One Step feature of iDVD seems perfect for digital camcorders that use tapes but doesn’t appear to work for SD card camcorders.
Many thanks.
— Colin Sarling
You don't have to use iMovie at all. You can use iDVD. Just create an iDVD project and then use drag and drop into it. Or, use the Magic DVD feature -- which is almost perfect for what you want. It asks you to drag and drop movies and photos into a simple interface. Just drag the video files from the Finder right into it.
My Panasonic SD9 digital Camcorder stores a whole folder structure on the SD card with lots of files in each. None of the files or folders is compatible to drag right into iDVD. Any idea's?
What format are the files in? You might be able to tell from the file extensions: mp4, avi, mov, etc.
You probably just need to convert them to something else. See episode 362 http://macmost.com/importing-incompatible-video-into-imovie.html
Thanks for the fast reply Gary.
They are in the High Definition movie format generated, I believe, by many popular movie camera's. You get a folder called AVCHD, with three subfolders AVCHDTN; BDMV; and IISVPL. These forlders in turn have their own files and subfolders - none of which seems to be recognised by Quicktime or iDVD. iMovie picks up the video footage directly from the SD card when I plug it into the Mac and import in the usual way. It see's the SD card as an attached camcorder which is brilliant. I just can't seem to get the movies into iDVD without going via iMovie which is a real pain.
The AVCHD format can't be handled by iDVD directly. That's why iMovie needs to convert them. At least once you have them in iMovie, you can edit the video, which you can't do if you try to take it directly into iDVD.
OK thanks Gary. I guess none of the video conversion app's you mention in episode 362 can convert AVCHD into an iDVD friendly format?
They might be able to, yes. I haven't tried it, though.