"It'll probably turn out to be a very simple thing ..." or, One Man's Ascent into iDVD Hell

In all of written and recorded history, few pieces of music have risen above the commonplace and ascended into the pantheon of cultural favorites -- and of those, even fewer can be identified by only a few notes.

Such is the case with, for example, the introduction to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. At first instantly recognizable and yet still stirringly fresh and new, these four notes have symbolized the power and majesty of music, and even brought succor and comfort to the Allies during World War II, serving as the audible equivalent of "V for Victory."

And yet I'd like to nominate another piece that, though lacking in age and refinement, moves men's hearts, lifting them to sun-dappled autumn afternoons, the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass wafting across pastoral fields of green, as another sort of victory is fervently wished.

I speak, naturally, of "Heavy Action," by the famed British composer Johnny Pearson.

What's that, you say? You're not familiar with the song? Of course you are.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At the Time
I was lucky enough to watch Super Bowl XLIII at the home of a client of mine. She had many people over, but reserved the big plasma HD room for "the adults." I was among them, biting my nails, cursing at referees until the glorious end ... and once it was over, my first thought: I've got to get that game off my DVR and onto some DVDs.

My second thought: It should be easy!

My third thought: I'll have it done by Tuesday!

And I finally did it. I am the proud owner of a two-disc set with the entire Super Bowl broadcast, sans commercials and the halftime show, with chapter markers and a cool opening menu.

What's that? You want to see the opening menu? You're in luck!

That music makes me cry.

What It Took
I don't want to get in trouble with my cable provider; nor am I looking for them to close this particular loophole. I'll just say this: it's a federal law that DVRs must have a port available for consumers to use to transfer data off the DVR. I think the common one used is FireWire. If you've got a Mac with FireWire 400 ports, you're halfway there. Google around to find the other pieces you'll need -- a FireWire cable and some software that is free, easy and readily available.

So I hooked my laptop to the DVR and pressed "Play" -- and the entire HD broadcast streamed to my laptop. The .m2t file ended up just a hair under 40 GB. I then used MPEG Streamclip to convert the .m2t file to something I could edit -- a 1280x720 QuickTime movie (encoded HDV 720p25, whatever that means) that topped out at 38 GB. From there I put the movie into my favorite near line editor, chopped out the commercials and was ready to go.

Except -- the 3.5 hour broadcast was too long to fit on a single layer DVD. Solution: get a spindle of dual layer DVDs. Which I did -- and my Mac spit out every single one of them. So I had to go back to my editor and make two files -- one for the first half, and one for the second half.

Then I tried to master the DVD using some professional-level software I have lying around. A big mistake, because I really have no clue what I'm doing with professional-level DVD mastering software. So I went to iDVD, which is Apple's gee-ain't-it-cute consumer DVD software. It hasn't been updated in years, because Apple's apparently realized that there are only several million DVD players in the world, and because it doesn't control the market on DVD players, it's only a matter of time before people throw them out the window and go with ... AppleTV boxes, I guess.

iDVD takes its time, and often crapped out five hours into the burn. Yes, I said "five hours into the burn," because each disc took around seven to complete. Each subsequent one took only 20 minutes, but there were crashes aplenty. By the time Sunday rolled around, I'd managed to burn a few copies of the disc.

The Horror ... The Horror
Remember when I said I'd have this done two days after the game? The Sunday mentioned above was two weeks after the game. It took me fourteen days to make about as many DVDs, during which time I had to change strategy a few times, reassess whether it would even work, and ignore that NFL.com is probably selling the damn thing on one disc for a lot less money than I'd have earned if I had a job -- and one that would let me spend two weeks wandering through my own personal "Heart of Darkness" adventure.

I'm not blaming Apple, because they make some pretty good software. iDVD is very slick and easy to use, and the editing and authoring software also comes from Cupertino. I shouldn't be allowed to know how to edit or build a DVD but thanks to Apple, I don't have to know everything. I just need to know enough to be dangerous.

I'm not blaming my cable provider, because they actually did a pretty cool thing -- they made it just hard enough to get shows off my DVR that piracy isn't running rampant, but not hard enough that a little elbow grease and a subscription to the Google can't teach you. It's not big corporations' jobs to make it easy ... it's nice when they make it not so hard, though.

No, I guess I'm forced to blame myself, because I had no earthly idea what I was doing. I distinctly remember thinking "Hey! It's 2009. This sort of thing ought to be possible by now."

Dangerous thoughts, because on projects like this, there are two ways you can go: a victory parade in Point State Park, or muttering "Rosebud" while your snowglobe crashes to the floor.