"Why doesn’t my exported 16:9 material work properly in iDVD?”

First you have to export you edited 16:9 (anamorphic) DV material from Final Cut. To do this use Export>QuickTime Movie. If you're going to make the DVD or disc image right away, you can make it a reference movie, not self-contained. If you're going to continue work on the project or build the DVD elsewhere use Make Self-Contained.

iDVD doesn't support anamorphic material, only native widescreen. It works with widescreen HDV material but not with anamorphic (squeezed) 16:9 DV material. To make iDVD work properly with this format you need to use either myDVDedit or Anamorphicizer to make iDVD work properly with this material. I like myDVDedit better, but you can use whichever you prefer. They both work well.

You can also do this with the QuickTime Pro player if you have it.

1. 1.    Open the exported file in the QT Pro player.
   

2. 2.    Go to Window>Show Movie Properties (Cmd-J).
   

3. 3.    Select the Video Track and in the Visual Settings panel uncheck Preserve Aspect Ratio.
   

4. 4.    In the Scaled Size box set the width to 853 pixels for NTSC or 1024 pixels for PAL.
   

5. 5.    Save the file and import it into iDVD.
   

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