Error during rendering/encoding

j/c .... Have you tried Mpeg Streamclip yet or perhaps visual hub prior to bringing these files into iMovie and then over to iDVD? It's just a thought that may help.




To quote J Keller:


If you'd like a DVD that plays in a standalone player, it has to conform to a set of standards. Menus are one of the options in those standards, and Apple has some plain menus.
Your main issue will be the movies. That video format (.avi) is a container format (typically in the Windows world), and your video is compressed in one of many ways "inside" the .avi container. You'll need to convert that .avi video into .dv (DV Stream) for the best compatibility. MPEG Streamclip is freeware, try that to see if you can convert your video. If not, Visual Hub has lots of capability.

Good luck!

This *extremely frustrating and tantalizing* message has to do with how you position the elements of your menu. They must fall within the "safe area" for the format you are using, but that is not the only requirement. Items must not overlap in certain ways that are hard to define.

What I finally did was to start a fresh project and add one element at a time -- first the title, then the menu audio track, then the first menu item (movie), then the next, etc.

After adding each item I would try File > Save as Disk Image and make sure it got past the "Process Menus" item and into "Process Movies." Then I would cancel and add the next item.

Eventually you will find what makes it barf and avoid it.

It is just SO WRONG that the error message gives you no clue what you have done or how to fix it. Bad, bad software design.

It is just SO WRONG that the error message gives you no clue what you have done or how to fix it.

Sadily, computers and software have a 'very complicated relationship' and error messages usually only 'point you in a direct' and rarely identify an exact problem. (Just like real life 🙂 )

The software writing goal really should be to make sure you never need to see ANY error message.

I was having the same issue and someone suggested deleting the audio file I had in the menu. When I did that it rendered correctly. But of course now I have no audio in the menu.

Better than nothing.

I'm thinking of going back to my PC. iMovie 08 crashes when attempting to import from my Sony Mini-DV via fire wire. Now, after installing iMovie HD (06 version) to get the video in then using iMovie 08 to edit, my iDVD 08 crashes during Rendering! I'm starting to think the grass is NOT greener on the Mac side! This *****! I'll try downloading the previous version of iDVD. Is it too late to get my money back!!!

Have you tried this?:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306708

I had this issue, too. Thought it may be the video but wasn't --> it was a few of the photos. Turns out if you've done any type of layering with TIFF files in Photoshop and not "rendered" the file, it trips up iDVD. It looks fine in iDVD until you go to burn the disk (and the "Error during..." message appears). So, I would recommend checking out your photos and making sure they're all rendered correctly.

The way I figured it out was (as someone else suggested) removing each menu (or item) one at a time and attempting to burn the DVD. You can quickly narrow down where the trouble areas / files are -- and go from there.

Hope that's helpful!

David Cortesi wrote:
This *extremely frustrating and tantalizing* message has to do with how you position the elements of your menu. They must fall within the "safe area" for the format you are using, but that is not the only requirement. Items must not overlap in certain ways that are hard to define.

What I finally did was to start a fresh project and add one element at a time -- first the title, then the menu audio track, then the first menu item (movie), then the next, etc.

After adding each item I would try File > Save as Disk Image and make sure it got past the "Process Menus" item and into "Process Movies." Then I would cancel and add the next item.

Eventually you will find what makes it barf and avoid it.

It is just SO WRONG that the error message gives you no clue what you have done or how to fix it. Bad, bad software design.

Thanks for the comments. I was getting the exact same error today, my first time to use iDVD 08 (have successfully used all other versions over the years without this major a problem). I had imported my movies and drug them all over the place and changed the buttons a gazillion times (experimenting), but even with the final version I had it all in the TV safe area and was careful not to overlap, but it still didn't work. Also, deleting audio, as others have suggested, did not work for me, either.

What worked for me was to just start a new project and re-import everything, which only took a few minutes to redo. I also did the following, which may/may not have made a difference.

- renamed my DVD with underscore instead of spaces in the title (so "My DVD" became "My_DVD")

- instead of drag and drop my photos from the desktop into the menu, I imported them into iPhoto and then drag and dropped from within the iDVD application.

I think the overall key was just to start a new project and not make a lot of changes to the default layout. I guess I've learned to be a little more careful next time. Too bad, because not being able to experiment with the application without getting errors will mean I will be less creative in the future.

Message was edited by: iSmile