iDVD bombs out during the middle of encoding

[Nilfennasion]

Okay, I have been making video files in iMovie, and I have a friend whose computer is too low-spec to see them on YouTube. So I figure, why not try encoding them in iDVD and send a physical DVD to her?

So I get all the video assets placed on the disc, but when I click the burn option or try to make a disc image, I always get to about halfway through the preparation of the disc and it bombs out with an error message saying "There was an error during rendering/encoding of the menus/slideshows. The burning process has been canceled."

Now I feel like an idiot, but there are no slideshows on this disc. And the only thing I can think of that I am doing wrong in the menus is that I am putting one of my iMovie-made videos in the drop zone. That aside, I have no idea what I could be doing wrong. I do not even know what information to provide at this juncture.

*sigh* It's still a thousand times more flexible than my old IBuM, I must say...

[terryj]

ok,
let's take it by the numbers:

1. All of your video content is coming over from iMovie correct?

2. You have video assets on the main menu, and you have your
assets for the actual movie, but they contain no pictures?

3. You verified that you have enough Disc space left on the main HD?
20% is the bare minimum that must be free for OS X to use
as virtual memory in encoding, so say on an 80GB HD,
you need to have 16GB free.

4. You have enough HD space on the drive where the assets are stored
to enable the temp file to be built while encoding?
If you have say 100GB of assets, you need at least 100GB free space
for the temp file to write while it's encoding.

You error could point to several things, such as #3 and 4 above,
it could point to also assets that weren't ran through iMovie first,
and that iDVD is having problems converting them to DVD spec,
such as .flv files for example.
But you said that all your assets have come from iMovie, so that
shouldn't be the case....

[Nilfennasion]

Yes, all of my content is coming from iMovie. About the only thing that I can think of there is that the video assets are in different resolutions. One file is 640 by 480, the others are 540 and either 4:3 or 16:9, depending on what I had originally made them for.

I am not sure I fully understand the second question. The files are linked to the main menu, and as far as I can tell no pictures are involved.

I definitely have enough free space, though. I still have over 600 GB on my main hard drive that I have not yet used.

This is probably an equally silly question, but how do I get screen captures on the Mac? That would make it easier for me to show more helpful information, I think.

[Case]

How do I get screen captures on the Mac?

In the Finder, there's a Help menu, which lists Mac Help (Cmd-?). Go to the Index. Select 'S'. Select 'screen shot'. There you'll find several articles on making and using screen shots. The article 'Shortcuts for taking pictures of the screen' is perhaps the one to get you started.

[Nilfennasion]

Okay, the specific error message I get is (hopefully) attached to this message...

[terryj]

try these steps.

[EMT]

..it may help maybe to use a idvd 6.0 theme instead of a 7.0 theme.