"Multiplexer Error-There was an error during formatting."

Slow Burn.

Just spent all night reliving fournerstudio's (and other's) frustrations. No sleep and bleary but I did finally burn successfully, so wanted to post while still fresh in case it can help - hope I still make sense.

Brief history:
I've been using Mac's since '89 and won't use anything else. I've spawned a more hardcore Mac addict - my daughter who's in film (high) school. She HAD to have a reel (film portfolio) for an interview today at 4pm. She worked for days, got it done, then it would not burn.

Problem:
"Multiplexer Error - There was an error during formatting".
D went to bed and left the problem with me (mom-IT).
Read everything here, and here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1111467.

After lots of unsuccessful burns, this is what I learned - more accurately, these are the issues I was able to disprove or eliminate (for my machine):

Versions.
D used iMovie HD v5.0.2 (she didn't have the patience to learn the new '08 version that I just paid a tiny fortune for - teenagers)
However, she was taking it into iDVD '08 v7.0.1 to burn DVD (go figure).
Think I read somewhere that was a problem (?), but turns out it is ok to mix (at least these 2).

Project & Project Size.
Can't tell you much more about her iMovie project (I'm a graphic designer not a film person) except that iMovie size is 7.77GB, and iDVD ended up being 555.4MB.

Cheap media.
I too have heard cheap DVD's are a problem but wasn't going out at 4am to find Verbatim's no matter how much I love my little D. I had and used: "Staples DVD-R, up to 8x compatible, 2 hours video, 4.7GB Data".

Hard drive space.
I read problems can occur with "under 20GB of free space on their startup drive" - and I have no doubt that they can, however my successful burn occurred with 7.19GB of free space. (Having a little issue with Leopard & Time Machine & my BRAND NEW, now ruined external... but that's a whole other story and what I get to spend tonight resolving).

Date in title. (especially for Greg Stiehl)
We did have the date in the title but with dashes (11-14-07), not periods (11.14.07). Not sure if this was a/the problem, but I took out the date completely just before the successful burn. Unfortunately, I also changed the prefs (see below) at the same time, so I'm not sure if that was it. Suggest using only alpha characters if this problem occurs.

iDVD Prefs.
These were my settings for the final successful burn.
Projects.
Video Mode: NTSC (left as it was)
Encoding: Professional Quality (changed from "Best Performance")
DVD Type: Single-Layer (SL) - 4.2 GB (left as it was)
Slideshow. (Didn't change anything)
Movies. (Didn't change anything)
ADVANCED. Only changed "Preferred DVD Burning Speed". 2x is what finally worked. Had previously tried 8x (max available) & 4x with no luck. My G5 has a Pioneer DVD-RW.
*I'm fairly certain that this speed change is what did the trick for us.

As for all the other tricks and work arounds involving changing the iMovie project, using Toast, burning to Disk Utility 1st, downgrading to iLife '06, resorting to using a Windows machine (?!?) - we obviously didn't have to try those.

Hoping this helps someone, and that I don't have to go through this again.

Hi ireny,
In case the problem does return, consider burning the project right after starting up your Mac. My experience for now is that burning a DVD right after starting up my iMac gives no problems.

It might still be usefull to see what other workaround have been found right here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1203323&tstart=0
A summary is provided by me at the end of the topic on page 2.

cykz: My Mac probably had been on for a day or so, should have known better. That's the 1st thing I'll try next time. Also, had not seen the thread you mentioned. Thank you for both!

OK,let me know what worked as it might give more information to which workaround worked for which freezing problem. Good luck!

Here's what worked for me. I got the same Multiplexer Error when trying different media, different compressions, write to .img, write to Video TS, and archive. I finally tried the "Best Performance" setting. My project was over 100 mins. in length so this ran out to almost 6 GB. I was able to burn it successfully to a DVD-R DL disc and then transcode it with DVD2oneX2. Not a perfect solution, but at least it worked and the additional artifacting from the extra coding step was minimal. I made my deadline and the client was happy.

But, I will NEVER use iDVD for another paying job again. As the editing was going on in FCS, I would periodically output the project to QT, bring it into iDVD where the menus, graphics, etc. were already in place and burn a test disc. This worked just fine until I was ready to burn the final edited master and that's when the dreaded "Multiplexer Error" appeared. While iDVD is easy to use for simple projects, unanticipated show-stoppers like this one put the app in the category of "For Amateurs ONLY".

I thought I had a fall-back position where I could import the iDVD project into DVDSP2, but when I attempted this, I was greeted by a dialog box that told me that my copy of iDVD was too new to be compatible with DVDSP2. Geeze Apple, c'mon. They really dropped the ball on this one. iDVD is unreliable, buggy, and in sore need of an overhaul (of course if they overhaul it like they did iMovie, that might be a bad thing). Anyway, there you have it.

Just an update everyone:
Today D was able to burn a new movie all by herself with no mom-IT and on the 1st try.
iDVD Prefs still set as above.
Made sure Mac was started up fresh as suggested by cykz.
Hard drive space free even lower: 6.80 GB.