iLife ‘08-iDVD Review

Most consumers are moving towards the digital life, so it only makes sense to create programs for that lifestyle. iLife is one of those programs. And iLife isn’t one giant program as some may think; iLife is composed of five applications - iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and Garage Band. These applications are designed to help you and your digital lifestyle, and they do so with Apple style-beauty and simplicity. This is the fourth part of my review on the iDVD application for iLife ‘08.

There is not much to say about iDVD ‘08. It is the least updated of all the iLife applications, with only the addition of a few new templates and higher quality video being the key updates. The new templates are great, but iDVD feels almost forgotten about this year. Like Apple doesn’t really care about it. I think in the future, Steve Jobs might actually drop this application from the suite. Steve Jobs even quoted, “Some people still want to make DVDs.” I can imagine without much enthusiasm.

For those “some” who still use iDVD, it incorporates a few changes that make it easier to customize DVD menus. The “Buttons” button is no longer a spot for everything related to the navigation elements in each theme. Instead, you get to choose from several options in two categories: icons or underlines when a button is highlighted and the appearance of the buttons themselves.

iDVD still holds a two-hour limit to how much media you can put onto a standard single-sized DVD, but iDVD ‘08 provides another encoding option: Professional Quality. I’m not going to get too technical, but the “Pro” setting uses two bit rate encodings, which means that iDVD examines every frame of video twice to determine the best amount of compression to apply; the “High Quality” setting uses a single-pass bit rate. The Pro setting takes more time, of course, and more space.

All in all, iDVD ‘08 is a solid, fun upgrade. Given Apple’s apathy in the application, it is somewhat encouraging to see the improvements in iDVD ‘08. Like I said, I don’t think there is too much of a chance for iDVD in the future. Only time will tell…

Be sure to check back for the last iLife ‘08 application review.