Sep

26

Creating the DVD

Posted by: | September 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

This week I decided to take a look at the DVD wiki and use iDVD to create my very own DVD. As someone who embraces the use of technology in the classroom, I never thought about the DVD as part of this technology. For me, DVDs’ have always been a great way to provide my students with pertinent, easy to follow information that always seems to perk the interest of my students. It never really dawned on me how portable and easy to use the DVD format is. Secondly, I never really thought about creating my own DVD to be used in an educational setting. In any event, I thought that I would take the plunge and work my way through the activity. First thing I needed to do was purchase some blank discs as lately I have gotten away from using any type of optical format. This is mainly to do with trying to reduce my consumption and waste. As well, it seems that lately I have been plugging my computer into the projector and playing my media directly from the hard drive. Anyway, after I made my purchase at the local Future Shop I was ready to start, or at least I thought that I was. The problem? Do I create my DVD disc on my PC which has some pretty good DVD creation software or do I use my Mac and go with iDVD? Well after about twenty minutes of pondering and weighing my options, I opted for iDVD. Now I don’t want this to get into a Mac vs. PC debate because I think they both possess both positive and negative attributes but I just felt like using the program that I’ve had a lot of experience working with. Now that I had picked my software, I was ready to go.

What I really like about iDVD are the various themes that the software comes preloaded with. They are very professional looking. So after browsing through the themes I made my choice and proceeded on. The next step for me was to decide on a video to use to create the DVD. After a few minutes I decided on two; one short documentary video I created about Chinese cities and a Claymation project I had worked on many years ago. Both of the videos were easily imported into the project which made me ready to burn. I almost pressed the burn button when I decided that the project would look better if I imported some photos for the opening DVD animation. So I looked through my Mac photos and found some pictures that would do the job. At last I was ready to burn the project. Nearly forty minutes later and I had myself a brand new DVD. I decided to test the final product on my DVD player to see how it turned out and if it burned correctly.  To great excitement, the disc turned out exactly as it was intended and I am happy to report that it seems to play back on every machine that I have tried it on thus far. The process was quite easy and worked as intended. Now if only I had more video to burn!


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. John Egan on September 26, 2010 6:33 pm

    Well done Joey!

    I think DVDs are an under-valued educational platform. Building a lesson-specific DVD is often something that can be done quickly and easily. For folks in schools with a shortage of LCD projectors, finding a TV and DVD player is often easier.

    They’re also great for students trying to catch up: they’re a great self-directed learning resource.

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