[darcybaston]

I can't seem to get iDVD to complete a project without something going wrong.

I started a project in January, and have worked on it all this time and have yet to fix all the quirks and bugs iDVD has. My first problem was that movies made in imovie that use the spin in/out transition won't play video past the first transition once included in an iDVD project, but the audio continues fine. It works in preview mode mind you, but burning creates something Apple's DVD player, a PS2, and a Sony DVD player won't display right.

So, I redo all my imovie work to use simple cut transitions. Then I go to burn the DVD, and the main menu animations don't render. Sub menus are fine, but the main menu is whacked. All that was created was a black screen with text on it. This always rendered just fine before.

I've tried burning from a disc image and burning from iDVD, and sometimes other things won't render on some burns, while others will. Some things are fixed by burning through Toast, while others break that way.

I can't find a way to burn a DVD where everything works. Different methods fix some problems while introducing new ones.

Has anyone made a successful DVD with iDVD, where the transitions from imovie projects work, where the audio plays fine in slideshows, and all menus that work perfectly in preview mode actually render and burn properly? Preview mode always works great! I just can't get what iDVD previews to show up on a DVD without something breaking.

G5 DC 2GHz, latest OS X, 1.5 gigs ram, latest iLife patches, Sony DVD+R media.

[darcybaston]

Ha! Final nail in the coffin happened today. I recently moved from iPhoto to iView media as my asset manager and blitzed the iphoto library without remembering that my iDVD project had some dependencies on that.

Oh well, looks like I'm starting over anyway. God...I'm cursed.

[darcybaston]

Success! The trick was to avoid all iLife apps except for iDVD. By just dragging and dropping out of iView media, and combining multiple movie files into one using Quicktime Pro and saving as a 'reference', I was able to create a flawless DVD with iDVD.

What's amazing is that by avoiding iLife apps, I was able to redo the whole DVD from scratch in a quarter of the time it took me before. Cutting and pasting in Quicktime is TONS faster than having an iMovie project created, then exported, and then imported.