[mitchell_pgh]

Playlist to DVD (from Apple)

http://www.apple.com/applescript/playlisttodvd/

I saw this on the front page of MacNN.com today and thought it would be an amazing feature. Basically this AppleScript Studio application will take an iTunes playlist and create a DVD (naturally with the music) with cover art for a standard DVD player.

This could be cool for parties etc. where you don't want people fumbeling around with your MP3 collection or your $1000 - $5000 computer setup.

All was sounding VERY cool UNTIL I saw the MAJOR limitation.

Track Count
An iDVD project can hold an exported playlist that contains a maximum of 99 tracks with a maximum total combined length of up to 90 minutes.

So I can get an hour and a half of music on a DVD!!! Perhaps I'm missing something, but even if the files were decompressed into a raw format, you should be able to get at least seven albums on there along with the artwork...

Perhaps I'm missing something, or is this another way for Apple to cripple an application to avoid piracy. I would love to see an application like this that would create iTunes visualizations on the DVD... that would be interesting.

[chabig]

You're missing the fact that this application is simply turning your songs and album cover artwork into a regular movie with a maximum length of 1 1/2 hours. The limitation has everything to do with this fact, not the data storage capacity of a DVD disc.

It's not earth-shattering, but it does seem kind of neat to have a fully navigable DVD with graphics.

Chris

[starman]

It's the usual iDVD limitation.

You don't have this problem with DVD Studio Pro, but then again, there's no Applescript to do that with DSP, so you have to do it manually.

Mike

[chabig]

Doesn't DVD Studio Pro make longer movies by doing higher quality compression? So there still must be a maximum length for a movie. I wonder what that is.

Chris

[OAW]

Personally, I'm looking forward to playing with this AppleScript. The only problem is I have to wait until 1/16 when iDVD 4 comes out just to tinker with it!

OAW

[vasu]

does anyone have this script anymore? It's not on apple's site

[Red Wolf]

I have the script (downloaded it shortly after Macworld). However it seems to be buggy so I would wait until Apple re-releases it. I can make independent QuickTime movies for 3 of the 4 formats but every time I try to make the actual DVD QuickTime errors out while saving the movie but before moving it to iDVD.

As for the 1.5 hour limit I understand it is limited by iDVD's video limit but Steve said that iDVD 4 would have a 2 hour limit. Maybe when they re-release Playlist to DVD we'll see no bugs and a 2 hour limit.

[titan44]

i've been trying to track down the plalist to dvd script from apple with no luck, does anyone know what happend to this wicked little script

[mitchell_pgh]

that's interesting, seems to be gone.