Can iMovie 9.x and above create a 2 hour movie with chapters and burn it to a DVD?

Posted:
in Mac Software edited March 2014

My situation: Two times every winter, I video programs put on by seniors at our RV park.  I currently use iMovie HD (Version 6.0.3) to assemble the clips and audio into a movie that is between 1 and 2 hours long.  The video clips come from 3 cameras and can be MOV, AVI, or Mp4.  The audio comes in as a separate AIFF file recorded in Audacity from the sound system mixer board.  There is a considerable amount of clip trimming and audio adjustment to get everything synced properly.  The final movie is then exported to iDVD, also an orphan because... no optical drives on the new machines.  The finished DVD master is then sent to a professional duplicator for 50 - 100 copies.  I sell the finished DVDs to residents for $5 each.  The market won't bear more than that, and it covers my expenses and some of my time.

 

I am currently running Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) on a 2011 MacBook Pro with 8Gb ram and a 2.66 GHz i7 processor that seems to handle the job just fine.  Final file sizes for the movie are 60-80 GB.  Video clips and iMovie projects are held on USB 3.0 external drives hung off of my Mac Mini and connected via ethernet.

 

My Problem: I am afraid to upgrade my OSX because iMovie HD won't run and I don't know if there is the capability to publish a finished movie to a DVD and what size limits newer versions of iMovie may have.    Since I only do this twice a year, in the winter, mostly for free, Final Cut Pro is way too expensive for my needs.  iMovie HD is actually adequate for the job, but I would like to upgrade my laptop to Mountain Lion or Mavericks.

 

Any advice on what other video editors, DVD publishers I can use to get this job done would be appreciated?

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