[MichaelB43]

I recently switched from an XP machine to an iMac, primarily because I had heard how easy it was for movies and photos. I took out my miniDV tapes and created a test video from a few clips. I used iDVD to burn it to DVD, and it worked great, no problems. It was SO EASY, I was amazed. So then I created a 56 minute video and added a song from a CD. That was where the problems started. I went to burn it, and the audio and video were out of synch.

I searched the forums and learned about the 12-bit vs. 16-bit issue, and sure enough, my camera was set to 12-bit. I followed instructions for a workaround, which was to use the "extract audio" feature. I did that, and tried to burn it again. After trying 3 times, things freeze up when iDVD gets to Stage 3 of the process. It just sits there and the progress bar never moves (says there's about 35 minutes left). If I hit "cancel", an error message shows up behind that says something like "error rendering/encoding video". I am totally stuck now. I was hoping to fix the synch issue, and now it won't even burn.

System info: Brand new 17" iMac with 768MB RAM. I tried using a number of different DVD-R and DVD-RW media, all with the same result.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Mike

[MichaelB43]

Here's an update. I tried to burn a short movie to DVD, and it worked perfectly. I didn't extract the audio, and everything was still in synch.

So I yanked the CD music track from my long movie and tried to burn it. Again, it got stuck at Stage 3: Asset Encoding, or so it seemed, as it said 87 minutes remaining for over an hour. I said to myself, "why not let it run all night and see what happens". Sure enough, when I woke up, the disc had ejected and it burned perfectly, with audio in synch.

I'm not sure what contributed to the audio synching up. It was either the fact that I used the "extract audio" command, or the fact that the CD track was removed.

I will try again to narrow things down, but I can't imagine why it would take THAT long to burn, and also why the progress bar would be stuck at the same point for so long.

Mike

[Mediaman_12]

The progress bar in iDVD is a joke, it doesn't include 'asset encoding'. The idea is that it does this (continuously) in the background, unfortunately every time you change anything it must restart, and it is VERY processor intensive (it can take over night on slower machines).
To get a REAL idea of the progress of the 'asset encoding' in iDVD click the 'Customize' button to open the draw. Then click the status button in the draw, here you will see a list of the 'Assets' (movie and audio tracks), next to each item is a status bar, this is the REAL progress bar of how long it's going to take. The best thing i find is to let this to finish before hitting the burn button.