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I have an old Macbook with Snow Leopard on it, and a newer Macbook Air with Yosemite, and a newer Macbook Pro with Mavericks.

The old Macbook is taking about 4 hours to encode videos to burn to a DVD disc using the highest quality setting, so I wonder if I install it on the Macbook Pro, whether it can be much faster. However, since iDVD is discontinued since Lion, there might be 2 ways to install it on the Macbook Pro or Macbook Air and I wonder if they will work.

  1. Buy iLife 11 (produced in 2011) from Amazon and install on Mavericks and Yosemite... but I wonder how compatible it will be, and whether the installation may write some outdated material over the newer, more current files (of the OS).

  2. Simply copy the iDVD app from the Applications folder on the Snow Leopard machine to a USB Flash drive and copy it over to the Applications folder of the Mavericks and Yosemite machine. But is there any side effects of doing so? Often, the way general users install apps on the Mac is by download a .dmg file, and double click to see a virtual disc, and then just drag the app (which is actually a folder) to the Applications folder. So if I do the method (2) here, isn't the same as the .dmg way of installing an app?

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  • Just because some apps can be "installed" by simply dragging the .app bundle to your hard drive, does not mean that all apps will function after being "installed" that way. Many apps (including iLife) have an installer package that may run pre- and post-install scripts and install additional files in other places to support the application.
    – tubedogg
    Apr 29, 2015 at 20:38

3 Answers 3

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iDVD still runs on Yosemite. I haven't tested to see whether it still actually functions correctly, as I have no DVD video player to view the result on.

Edit 2017: This method apparently still works on Sierra, but I haven't tested.

I would go for the 'sneaker-net' method of install…
copy the app to a USB key & carry it over to one of the other machines. Will take 2 minutes to discover if that works.

Edit
I trawled my boot drive for associated items for iDVD

It appears that the themes, which would be installed by the installer live in
/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes & ~/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Installed Themes In folders by version, iDVD 4, 5, 6, 7 etc

It would be a simple-enough task to carry these over in the same way.

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  • Answer updated with App Support info
    – Tetsujin
    May 1, 2015 at 11:10
  • I moved iDVD over to my 2015 MBP, but it needed the Themes files to operate. I'm running Sierra by the way. Thanks to Tetsujin for that tip.
    – Jerry
    Jan 7, 2017 at 3:58
  • Thanks @Jerry I got one of the mods to move the answer over to be a comment under here & I've added your info to the existing answer.
    – Tetsujin
    Jan 7, 2017 at 10:15
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You would need to buy a copy of iLife. Per comments found here you might want to buy iLife '09 (iDVD 7.0) and then enable updates in the application so it will download the newest version. If you go with iLife '11, it contains iDVD but does not contain some of the themes found in iLife '09.

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  • maybe that's why iLife 09 is more expensive than iLife 11 on Amazon... also iLife 09 is a 4.2 stars of of 5 vs iLife 11 is 3.6 stars... although I haven't investigated into why the lower star ratings... it might be due to some other reasons
    – nonopolarity
    Apr 29, 2015 at 22:27
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iDVD does not work on my 27" iMac OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan. Apple says DVD production market has disappeared so they don't put anymore time in developing software or keeping the existing (iDVD) software working on the new system software (El Capitan). Tip they gave: downgrade your system software or buy an old Mac for iDVD only. Or: try to use an external harddisk with older software and reboot your mac through the hdd for iDVD only and reboot from your internal disk and live in the present.

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