Burning iDVD 6 .img file on Windows PC

[Ben Hayes]

Hi, I have a powerbook with a combo drive, plus bought a copy of iLife 06, hoping to be able to use iMovie and iDVD. I want to burn a disk image with iDVD then move it over to my Windows machine and use Nero to burn it.

I've created my movie and used iDVD to write an image file 'mymovie.img'

I read somewhere that I could use Disk Utility to convert this into .iso format. I did this, chosing 'convert' and saving it as 'mymovie.cdr, then renaming to .iso

When I move this over to my Windows machine (which has a DVD burner) of course it won't burn it as a DVD, it tries to burn it as a CD-ROM, which is useless.

Does anyone know if what I want to do is possible/practical? I want to avoid having to buy a separate external DVD writer! Thanks.

[dmetzcher]

Burn iDVD Projects to a DVD Using Your Windows PC

Someone posted it on here before, and I wrote a tip on my site. See the link above.
Just so no one thinks I'm trying to spam this forum with links to my site, here is the text of the tip. The page on my site has pictures, if you are interested.

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Once you have your iDVD project, and you are done with it, you need to click File -> Save As Disc Image. This step will give you something you can work with in Disk Utility. Converting this disc image into an ISO file that can be burned on your PC is the next step.

Disk Utility Window with a Disc Image AddedOpen Disk Utility (located in the Applications/Utilities folder), and drag your new disc image from the Finder to the left-hand pane of the Disk Utility window. (The left-hand pane is where all the drives on your computer will be located.) Once it’s added, click the file in Disk Utility. Now, click the Images -> Convert… menu item.

Convert a Disc Image with Disk Utility
When the “Convert Image” dialog appears, select “DVD/CD Master” from the “Image Format” popup menu. Give your file and name, and end that name with “.cdr”. Now, click the Save button.

Convert to DVD or CD Master with Disk UtilityWait for the conversion to complete, and browse to the new file in the Finder (remember that it is the one that ends in “.cdr”). You must now change the file extension of the file from “cdr” to “iso”. This will enable your DVD burning software on your Windows PC to recognize the file format.
Change the CDR File Extension to ISO

All that is left is to copy the file over to your PC. You can either burn it to a CD or DVD or copy it across your network. Once you have the file on your PC, use the burning software that came with your DVD recordable drive to burn the ISO file to a DVD.

[dmetzcher]

Also, regarding your issue with not being able to burn the ISO on your PC...
Does your PC software support DVD burning? If you are using Nero, there is a little popup menu on the left side of the window where you select the type of project. CD or DVD are the options, I think, and then the left pane changes to a bunch of DVD or CD projects, based on your selection in the popup menu.

[Ben Hayes]

Hi Dennis. Yes I read exactly the information that you give on your blog. I followed those instructions exactly. But Nero will not burn the image to a DVD, it will only try to burn it to a CD, as I said in my post. This is the problem I am having.

I am assuming that there is a difference between a DVD Video disk image, and a CDR disk image. When you use Disk Utility to create 'imagename.cdr' presumably it is creating a CDR type image?

Anyway it doesn't seem to work for me. Can you confirm that you managed to burn a Video DVD in this way, from iDVD 6?

[Ben Hayes]

OK I'm using Nero Express 6, which does support burning DVD Video and DVD Data files. But it does not seem to let me select which type of disk I would like to burn when I select the disk image - only CDR. Perhaps this could be a limitation of Nero Express, I'm not sure.

[dmetzcher]

I thought that Nero Express was part of the Nero package. Is Nero Express the only thing that you see in your Start -> Programs menu?
Also, I haven't tested this whole thing in iDVD 6 (I believe I was running 5 when I wrote it), but, if you are able to get the image converted to an ISO (via the instructions), then I'm guessing it might be a Nero thing. I'm running a full version of Nero, and it contains Nero Express, but I never use it, because I prefer the drag-n-drop advanced panel for the added options.

You might also want to check out other burning software. There might be something free that burns DVD ISO images. Check out VersionTracker.com (Windows section) and search for "DVD burn", or something like that. (That's if you don't have the full version of Nero.) Make sure it does ISO image burns.

Also, did Nero come with your DVD burner? Have you ever burned a DVD with it before?
(Maybe the Express version cannot burn ISO images.)