iMovie '11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Chapter 20. Advanced iDVD

Although iDVD appears to be a simple, straightforward tool for wrapping videos, photos, audio, and menus into a single, neat package, there’s more power lurking inside than you might expect. You can see, change, and control things you never knew you could—if you’re willing to try new and unusual approaches. Some of these approaches require add-on software. Others demand nerves of steel and a willingness to dive into hidden iDVD files.

In this advanced chapter, you’ll discover how some of these sideways (and backward and upside-down) methods can expand your iDVD disc-development repertoire.

iDVD: The DVD-ROM Maker

At their core, DVD discs are nothing more than storage devices. You most often associate them with media files—movies, songs, and so on—but they can store boring old data files, too, like Microsoft Word documents or email messages. In fact, iDVD sets aside a portion of every DVD you create for data files, namely housekeeping files that the DVD uses to work properly. In DVD lingo, this area is called the DVD-ROM portion of your disc, and iDVD’s ability to add data files to it may be its least-known feature. (The files won’t show up on a DVD player, by the way—only on a computer.)

With iDVD, you can store any kind of data you want in the DVD-ROM portion of a disc. Here are just a few ways you can use this feature to enhance your disc:

• Store documents that relate to your DVD contents. A disc’s DVD-ROM area provides the perfect place to store documents ...