Burn to DVD

Right, you've shot and edited your film. Unless you're an ego-less person who needs no external affirmation of your artistic skill, you'll want people to watch it. Given the low cost and availability of DVDs, we'd recommend you opt for this format.

Apple iDVD is our software of choice for authoring a DVD and is included free if you buy a Macintosh computer. PC users might consider Roxio's DVD Creator or Adobe's Premier Elements. There are also much more powerful applications such as Adobe Encore DVD (PC) or Apple DVD Studio Pro (Mac), both of which can emulate anything you find on commercial Hollywood releases -- this is the software the pros use.

To give your DVD a professional look, you can export a still frame from your movie into Photoshop, clean it up, and use it as part of the DVD splash screen (the image that appears on the DVD menu section). But for the highest-quality still on your DVD menu, you should take a high-resolution digital photograph of a key scene while you're still in production. Hollywood productions use a stills photographer to get a photographic record of the shoot. Some of these photos may later be used on promotional material. You could recruit a friend to take on this role during your shoot, or you could do it yourself between shots.

Many of the templates in iDVD will let you use sections of your movie as a looping clip in the DVD menu. iDVD's interface is deceptively simple, but you can do sophisticated things by dragging and dropping clips and editing existing templates. Almost all of what you see on commercial DVDs can be achieved here with some imagination.