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slimmy · Jul 17, 2004, 04:50 PM

Am I wrong, or is iDVD a buggy, slow, useless piece of crap?

Just installed it in a PBG4 1.5 GHz and can't get any work done. Takes forever to import, move, do anything - spinning ball is there all the time.

This is iDVD 4.01.

Slim

jszrules · Jul 17, 2004, 05:16 PM

Same. Although not useless, it is very slow and takes forever to get anything done.

intastella · Jul 17, 2004, 05:35 PM

Pretty much. My number one beef with it is there is no blank theme to start from. That and you can't use the arrow keys to move things slightly, always dragging with the mouse. It would be nice if they had some keynote style guides in it.

Old Toad · Jul 17, 2004, 06:15 PM

Originally posted by slimmy:
Am I wrong, or is iDVD a buggy, slow, useless piece of crap?

Just installed it in a PBG4 1.5 GHz and can't get any work done. Takes forever to import, move, do anything - spinning ball is there all the time.

This is iDVD 4.01.

Slim

How much free space do you have on your HD? iDVD requires a fair amount as does the system and other apps. I am using it without any issues at all. I would suggest you run Cocktail, Onyx or Panther Cache Cleaner to clear out the old cache/swap files. I would also run DeLocalizer and remove the unneeded language modules. I saved 900+MB the first time I ran it. It does run under 10.3.

Hope this has been of some help. Good luck.

Nexus5 · Jul 18, 2004, 08:21 AM

Originally posted by slimmy:
Am I wrong, or is iDVD a buggy, slow, useless piece of crap?

Just installed it in a PBG4 1.5 GHz and can't get any work done. Takes forever to import, move, do anything - spinning ball is there all the time.

This is iDVD 4.01.

Slim

iPhoto is slower.

nexus5.

Synotic · Jul 18, 2004, 11:10 AM

Originally posted by Nexus5:
iPhoto is slower.

nexus5.

iPhoto.. slower? Have you forgotten to upgrade?

JKT · Jul 19, 2004, 12:28 PM

Originally posted by slimmy:
Am I wrong, or is iDVD a buggy, slow, useless piece of crap?

Just installed it in a PBG4 1.5 GHz and can't get any work done. Takes forever to import, move, do anything - spinning ball is there all the time.

This is iDVD 4.01.

Slim

How much RAM do you have? If it is less than 512MB, it isn't enough. Also, turn off the Motion mode until you want to Preview your DVD.

My biggest issue with iDVD is that it doesn't have any means of snapping buttons to a user-definable grid - you either have to use the one in the Template (which invariably doesn't cover the area I want to put the buttons) or none at all, in which case it is nigh on impossible to actually line them up to each other.

slimmy · Jul 19, 2004, 06:27 PM

I've got 1GB RAM. I do turn off motion, which helps. But it's still slow as molasses.

Slim

Nodnarb · Jul 19, 2004, 11:32 PM

I've got a iBook 1 Ghz with 768 mb RAM. I made a DVD earlier today, and I started burning it at 8:45. It is now 11:30, and it JUST popped out of the drive.
Three hours seems like a long time to me...

jszrules · Jul 19, 2004, 11:37 PM

wow, at first i thought you meant 8:45am to 11:30pm!
but yes, 3 hours is about how long my burns take...that would actually be considered on the faster end, unfortunately.

Mediaman_12 · Jul 20, 2004, 06:46 AM

Originally posted by slimmy:
I've got 1GB RAM. I do turn off motion, which helps. But it's still slow as molasses.

Slim

iDVD attempts to reduce the final encoding time by taking any pause in activity as a signal to start the rendering/encoding process (and continue it in the background), but anytime any changes to the project are made it has to start again. IMHO this is a dumb idea and unless you have tones of RAM and a really fast Mac it can make the programme unuseably slow, it should leave the rendering/encoading until you have finnished the entire process (or want to preview).

Raining Down in Texas · Jul 20, 2004, 08:00 AM

Originally posted by intastella:
Pretty much. My number one beef with it is there is no blank theme to start from. That and you can't use the arrow keys to move things slightly, always dragging with the mouse. It would be nice if they had some keynote style guides in it.

Have you tried iDVD Companion? It allows you to nudge buttons and titles around, and to align buttons to each other. While it says it's for iDVD 2.1, most of it still works in version 4.

JKT · Jul 20, 2004, 10:44 AM

Thank you very much Raining Down in Texas! That's just what I was looking for, but why this fundamental functionality isn't included in iDVD after 3 revisions is utterly ridiculous.

Anyway, it works mostly apart from it causes section titles to jump to the wrong position when you move any buttons - so long as you don't forget to reposition your title after adjusting the buttons, it is great.

Ryan1524 · Aug 25, 2004, 08:24 PM

my iDVD gets stuck on Stage 3: Asset encoding all the time. the bar never went from the partial progress (stripes) to the full progress bar (gel filling) ever. and if i leave it on for a long time...it quits unexpectedly at some point. am i doing something wrong here? or is iDVD just terribly useless and unreliable?

the movies i'm using are all .mov quicktime movies.

fiesta cat · Aug 25, 2004, 10:57 PM

What I don't understand is :

1)Themes. Just give me a blank theme.
2)External burning - why should I have to hunt down two files that drop into a directory to enable external burners
3)16:9/Letterbox. iMovie handles it just fine (may look funny while in iMovie but when burning out to DVDSP3, it's just fine).

anthology123 · Aug 25, 2004, 11:22 PM

I have used iDVD since the 2002 and just recently bought iLife 04. I have a quicksilver 1GHZ/1.5 GB RAM and have yet to make a DVD coaster. Sure it's slow, but knowing the MPEG2 encoding speed is 2:1, it's going to be slow. BTW, has anyone tried MPEG2 software encoding on a PC, how long does it take?

Ryan1524 · Aug 26, 2004, 01:25 AM

....

i dunno what to say...i just remembered that it took me 15 hours normally on my PC to convert divx to mpeg2 or SVCD burning. but my PC was P3 700.

and not only the encoding part that sucks, iDVD is slow during the design process. any click or movement would result in a beach ball, and even after i waited for the background encoding to complete, i still have to wait hours during the burning time on stage 3. i find this to be very odd. if the background encoding was done, then why is it encoding again?

fiesta cat · Aug 26, 2004, 09:53 AM

Originally posted by Ryan1524:
....if the background encoding was done, then why is it encoding again?

Mediaman_12 mentioned if you make any changes it starts over again.....

anthology123 · Aug 26, 2004, 12:06 PM

I don't know what you guys are doing, but if it spits out and asks if I want to burn another DVD, it takes less than an hour to make subsequent DVDs. I made a 90 min video and it took about 3 hours to make copy 1 and 30-40mins each to burn 3 more copies. My system has 1.25 GB of RAM.

Person Man · Aug 26, 2004, 02:37 PM

Originally posted by fiesta cat:
2)External burning - why should I have to hunt down two files that drop into a directory to enable external burners
3)16:9/Letterbox. iMovie handles it just fine (may look funny while in iMovie but when burning out to DVDSP3, it's just fine).

First, external burning is not an official feature of the application. Apple pays a license fee for the MPEG2 encoder in iDVD and also for the MPEG2 encoder in DVDSP3. My guess is that by limiting iDVD to only run on internal drives, Apple was able to get a lower license fee for the encoder (it is consumer software, after all). The two extra files that enable the burning to external burners is probably a debug feature that didn't get completely removed. So, for now, to burn to an external DVD burner from iDVD, you'll have to look for those files, because it's more likely that Apple will remove that "feature" than make external burning an official option.

16:9 Letterbox. Apple probably considers that a "Pro" feature.