I want to take a series of about 50 JPG pictures and convert them to a slideshow and then add narration to the slideshow and burn the final product to a DVD. Will I be able to accomplish this with iMovie and iDVD? If not, point me in the correct direction.

The short answer is YES. iMovie and iDVD will let you do that just fine.

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Originally posted by George Little:
I want to take a series of about 50 JPG pictures and convert them to a slideshow and then add narration to the slideshow and burn the final product to a DVD. Will I be able to accomplish this with iMovie and iDVD? If not, point me in the correct direction.

There has been some talk recently about Apple's possible discontinuation of iDVD. I always wondered why these are two separate applications anyway. It seems to me that most people would make a movie in iMovie and then most-likely make a DVD. Or am I missing something here conceptually? Maybe Apple is planning to combine functionality.

If iDVD is discontinued, it will be because Apple is moving away from optical media.
As far as why the two are separate, not everyone uses iMovie to edit movies in. I don't! However, I do occasionally use iDVD to burn movies I've edited in other apps to a DVD. Also think about Final Cut Pro users who find iDVD sufficient as opposed to DVD Studio Pro (which also hasn't seen an update in years.)

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Originally posted by Donna:
There has been some talk recently about Apple's possible discontinuation of iDVD. I always wondered why these are two separate applications anyway. It seems to me that most people would make a movie in iMovie and then most-likely make a DVD. Or am I missing something here conceptually? Maybe Apple is planning to combine functionality.

Lots of movies head to the web instead of being burned to DVD too.

I use imovie 6.0 for just the purpose George asked about. I don't have a movie camera, so use it purely for slide shows then use iDVD to burn it to a disc. I haven't put narration into my slide shows but use music instead. I find this version of imovie allows for lots of customization that is very easy to use. If you haven't done it before, use a minimum length of 5 seconds for each slide if you plan to use transitions, otherwise your slides will be on screen for too short a time.

If you really want to spice it up try Pulp Motion. But for basic photo slideshows imovie works great.

Hard to second guess Apple's reasons for what to continue & what not. However, when I read George's question, my first thought was "why not do this with scans of old family pictures" Audio would be a bonus for commenting on what & who each pict represents.

No doubt a lot of folks have done this already. The value is in being able to produce a DVD to distribute family history to relatives.

Doesn't seem to me that DVD's will become replaced by movies on the web.

Any opinions on whether the upgrades to Toast features will fill in the gap if Apple discontinues iDVD?

Apple's tutorials for iDVD, iLife 2009

http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#idvd

iMovie voiceover tutorial, Apple
http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#imovie-voiceover

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No doubt a lot of folks have done this already. The value is in being able to produce a DVD to distribute family history to relatives.

Don't forget iDVD has the ability to add the photos from a slideshow as data on the disk. That way you are not only making something for your family to play on the tv but load the images into their computer and/or have them printed.