peripherals

A great book for the less than computer proficient in getting started using iDVD. Easy to read and instructiuonal at the same time, it gives straight forward and easy to follow directions to be successful in using iDVD with a minimum of hassle, but at the same time enough depth to make it understandable. Well worth the price.

Hey ya Hitchcock wannabes, tired of folks only being able to see your movies of suspense and terror on Macs and the occasional QuickTime equipped Windows machine? You know, or at least you will in just a moment, that you could burn your creation onto a DVD and allow just about anyone with DVD player to view your digital masterstroke. Of course knowing that you can dub your newly birthed nail biter onto a DVD and knowing how to do pull off the trick with panache are two very different propositions. To actually transfer your ninety minute edge of the seat flickering image to the shiny coaster that is a DVD your going to need a few things: a SuperDrive equipped Macintosh, iDVD (packed with every SuperDrive equipped Mac), and (probably) a bunch of blank DVD media. I'd say that's generally equipment enough to get a fairly weak DVD made. On the other hand if you want to make the DVD anything more than the aforementioned homemade ... (you know, give it some style) then you should pay attention to what Bob Levitus has to say in The Little iDVD Book.

iDVD is not an overly complicated program, it's (as are most of the iApps) fairly straightforward. iDVD is basically getting media in, record media onto disk, thanks for using Macintosh. You can do it without an instruction book, which is nice because Apple includes no manual for iDVD. Still, just because a program is fairly easy to use doesn't make the program fairly limited or, trust me, so easy to use you couldn't do with a bit of instruction and a little help. This is where The Little iDVD Book comes in, your most puzzling questions are answered with a quick trip to the index and hints for making a stylish DVD abound. The Little iDVD Book is easy reading and you won't regret the investment of time spent reading The Little iDVD Book or the 19.99 price of admission. Add to that that no matter incredibly lame your iMovie actually is if you follow Bob Levitus' advice it will at least have a very nice wrapper.

The Little iDVD Book is not perfect. The title does contain the word "little" and you would think that would entail ripping anything out of The Little iDVD Book not directly pertaining to DVD creation. Alas and alack this is not the case in Bob Levitus' pamphlet about DVD creation. Bob Levitus includes a goodly amount of iMovie tips, a fine idea but again I expect the word "little to actually mean something. This actually seems to be a failing of a great number of instructional books since iMovie was introduced, heck you can't pick up a book on COBOL programming without finding an admonition to create a storyboard of your movie before filming somewhere between the covers. The iMovie tips, while solid, are just as out of place in The Little iDVD Book as they are in the fictionalized COBOL book. My other complaint is purely superficial, Bob Levitus seems to love pictures of himself playing the guitar as much as Bruce Springsteen loves singing about cars. Hence every photo is of Bob Levitus in an OS X t-shirt strumming some conglomeration of wood and metal that I bet has a name (probably Rosabelle). I would've appreciated a little more variety in the visuals but this in no way detracts from the quality of the text.

Those small complaints aside The Little iDVD Book achieves that rarest of all feats for the consumer level instructional book: The Little iDVD Book is actually fun to read. Bob Levitus has a light touch and keeps a subtle amount of humor running throughout The Little iDVD Book's 189 pages. While being entertaining is not the bailiwick of most informative tomes (when's the last time you guffawed while perusing the Encyclopedia Britannica?) it adds to the readability of The Little iDVD Book thus ensuring that the reader will likely pick up more useful info from The Little iDVD Book than the large majority of instructional books I've had the pleasure/chore of reading.

Bottom line: If you're going to be using iDVD buy this book....

iDVD is pretty easy to start with, but this book goes into just enough detail to help you get the most out of the software. It helps not only with iDVD, but it offers advice on iPhoto and iMovie, so that you have the best quality contents for your creation. I enjoyed it because it gets you results without taking weeks to read. I was able to improve my usage of iDVD from the first chapter.