[jstearns]

My daughter is having trouble transferring her imovie she made for a school assignment to idvd so she can burn it to a dvd.
We've followed the instructions to the letter and it's not working. It just will not transfer to idvd. We hit the create idvd project button in imovie; idvd opens and the name of our movie is shown, but the movie never loads. It's a 2 minute movie and I waited 30 minutes - no luck.
We were able to get it working on quicktime, but when we open that file with idvd, we get the picture but no sound.
I know nothing about video, obviously. What are we doing wrong?
Her assignment is due in a little over an hour - help!
Thanks in advance

[k_munic]

Hi j,

sorry to say: ... zillions of options, what went wrong...
so, to locate the problem:
* where does the raw material come from? video but no audio is a "traditional" error; iMovie is for editing miniDV tapes, not "import from digi-still cam/some iNet download". esp. these "still-cam can do movies" movies are mostly "mpegs"; that is a file format, your Mac can play, but not edit... needs conversion... =>

* you're able to play project IN iMovie? with sound? no audio here? => conversion

* iMovie plays video+audio; choose "share"/Quicktime/Fully Quality"; creates file of ~500MB; open that with QTplayer - ok?
* drag'n drop that into open iDVD project... =>done

* Movie had no sound/conversion; download/use for free STREAMCLIP: http://www.squared5.com/; convert mpeg to dv; drag that into iM; continue usual workflow

* still no go? what Mac? how much FREE disk space on internal drive? iDVD needs at least 10 - 15 GB of free disk space to work properly....
* do you use any purchased music from the iTunes Music Store? depending on your version of iM/iDVD (tell us) needs "conversion" (iLife6: not needed, any version before does need a legal workaround)...

.....

[tjradiohead]

When you clicked on the DVD section of Imovie, did you make sure to add chapters on certain points of her movie before making a DVD Project? That may be the problem

[jstearns]

Thanks for the help, but the solution was easy - just had to double click on the name of the file on the idvd screen and all was well. Burned the dvd and got it to class on time.
I'm pretty sure the instructions said it would start automatically and that through me. Also not having a clue what I was doing played a part as well.
Thanks again.