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iDVD 08 Menu White After Burn

I have a project in iDVD 08 that I have created. I originally used the "Forever" theme but ran into a problem when I inserted the DVD into my home DVD player. I hit play and up on the screen was nothing but white except for the two buttons I added that would start the different movies I had on the disc.

Figured I did something wrong so I went back to my computer and tried playing the disc on it....same thing. White screen with the two buttons showing up. I remade the project in iDVD starting from scratch and this time picked the "Revolutions" theme.....same result.

I tried both projects to a folder and then burned the Video TS folder to a disc but still had no luck. When I open the Video TS folder directly on the computer the same result as well. During the rendering process and burning process in iDVD the preview window shows all of the menus being rendered.

Anyone else run into this issue? I am trying to get this DVD done for a wedding on the 27th of December.....yikes....

Thanks,
Dan

MacPro, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Intel Dual Core Xeon - 2.66 GHz/2 GB RAM/Dual GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB Each

Posted on Dec 17, 2008 7:23 PM

36 replies

dcross Author

Level 1

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Dec 18, 2008 8:42 PM in response to Glo H

Well, the two movies that I am adding to my iDVD project were created in iMovie and then exported as a large movie from iMovie. Nothing too special there. The final disc that is created in iDVD (or disc image or Video TS folder) has all of the content that I wanted, the movies view just fine....it is the additional content that I add with iDVD that doesn't render....

For instance....the title menu, and any submenus I add using any of the iDVD themes. The photo slideshows that I setup in iDVD don't render correctly either. The transitions just come out white. So basically my slide show is a white screen then jumps to a photo (no fade, wipe, etc.) then jumps back to white then photo and so on.

It is almost like iDVD processes everything but doesn't actually render an image although in the preview window while it is rendering I can actually see the menus running and the slideshow transitions as well. Weird....and really frustrating....

Thanks for everyones input so far....hopefully we can get an answer that will work.

Dan

dcross Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 18, 2008 8:43 PM in response to Glo H

Yeah, that is actually what I was going to try next....even go so far as to use an older theme as well....

dcross Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 18, 2008 9:25 PM in response to dcross

Ok....enough is enough. I started a brand new project, used a brand new theme (one I haven't ever used before), used only 6 photos (ones I took 10 years ago on my old crapy digital camera), used a music track that I ripped from a CD 6 years ago (so there isn't any protection issue) and I still get blank menus and now NO MENU BUTTONS!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is really making me mad. I have done all of this work to create a couple of great looking movies for my cousin's wedding in a week and I can't get iDVD to compile a DVD menu?????!!!!! For the love of God....

Honestly, there has to be something wrong with one of the OS updates or iDVD updates or something in the last 6 months. I did a DVD about 6 or 8 months ago and didn't have any trouble at all. Just for fun I opened that old iDVD project and tried to reburn....guess what....same result. White menus with background music playing but no images. I don't get it.

If I can't get this resolved I'm going to have to take it to work and produce the movies and create the menus using my.... "gasp" PC and another product called Adobe Premiere.... geeees

Dec 19, 2008 6:05 AM in response to Glo H

Mine is a slideshow with no video at all. Just a bunch of still images -- mostly JPEGs with one GIF, four or five BMPs and a PNG.

The slideshows work just fine, now that we removed iDVD's transitions. Music is synched properly and music quality is fine.

The main menu, which has one still JPEG and the "Revolution" theme's built-in animation, is a blank white screen except for the two text links that go to the two slideshows.

It feels like everything is fine except for the iDVD special effects, the between-still transitions and the menu animation.

(And it breaks PC's, but at this point that's a secondary concern if we could get it to run properly on a DVD player.)

I can burn a DVD properly, and the DVD plays exactly the same as the Disk Image plays in the Mac's DVD player. So if I could get it to export to a disk image and run properly, I'm reasonably confident that the DVD itself would work.

I just removed all components from Library/Quicktime and ~/Library/Quicktime. Exported to disk image again. Exactly the same as before.

Dec 19, 2008 6:11 AM in response to Shane Ivey

SUCCESS! Sort of.

Still no luck on the +very expensive and powerful+ Mac Pro.

But I moved the project file over to the (less expensive and powerful) laptop, running OS X 10.5.5 and iDVD 7.0.2, and it exported a disk image that worked perfectly in DVD Player.

OSX 10.5.6 on Mac Pro, no joy. OSX 10.5.5 on Macbook, yes joy.

Dec 19, 2008 6:58 AM in response to Shane Ivey

I just burned the project from the Mac Book to a DVD and it played perfectly on the DVD player. (I Don't have a PC that plays DVD here to try that out.)

I'm curious whether updating the Mac Book to 10.5.6 will prevent the Mac Book from rendering it correctly. I don't want to risk it.

Glo H

Level 4

1,541 points

Dec 19, 2008 10:18 AM in response to Shane Ivey

Dan & Shane,

I have run out of options to offer. I have created a new post that will hopefully attract the attention of some of the very knowledgeable posters in this forum. Maybe they will be able to come up with a solution.

Good luck.

Dec 19, 2008 11:36 AM in response to Glo H

Thank you very much for taking the time to help out.

Old Toad

Level 10

215,706 points

Dec 19, 2008 3:56 PM in response to dcross

As a last suggestion log into another account on the Mac and see if you can create and encode a slideshow successfully. If you can then your other account is the culprit somehow.

dcross Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 19, 2008 6:01 PM in response to Old Toad

Yeah, I tried that last night as a "hey, instead of remove all of my preferences why not just create a new user and log in as them and try it" idea.... It didn't work either.

I even tried a brand new project with two photos in it....very small photos and a very simple menu....iDVD on my computer will not render any kind of special effect or transition applied in iDVD.

Dan

Old Toad

Level 10

215,706 points

Dec 20, 2008 11:55 AM in response to dcross

Since you've already tried to reinstalled iDVD the only thing I can think of is an archive and install (with the option to keep user and internet settings) of the system, update to the latest version and a repair of disk permissions. It sounds like there's some basic system components that iDVD needs to render that are missing. You've tried everything else.

dcross Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 22, 2008 3:32 PM in response to Old Toad

Well.....I pulled my bay one hard drive out (the one with the OS on it) and slipped in an extra formatted hard drive and installed the OS on it....installed the iLife 08 stuff and applied all of the software updates....1/2 a day later I was ready to give it a go again.

I started a brand new iDVD project....add a slideshow with about 6 photos in it....setup the DVD menu the way I wanted it and hit go.... Drum roll....

It worked! Flawlessly! I decided to take a leap of faith and opened up the same iDVD project that I haven't been able to burn with menus and ran it.....it worked!

Now that my project is done I will try to investigate why it didn't work on my old install. I think I'll start with permissions again. That may be a start place.... Whatever I find I will post back but for now the fix was to install the OS and iLife and then all updates.

Dan

Dec 26, 2008 9:19 AM in response to dcross

I experienced the same problem on my Mac Pro with iDVD.

The menu background was completely white after encoding to a disc image, VIDEO_TS folder, and burning a DVD.

I tried:

0. ...creating a new user profile and encoding the iDVD project with the new user account. Same problem. I know the issue is not related to something in my user account or preferences.

1. ...a different MacBook Pro and PowerMac G5, and the same project encoded successfully on those. So I know it is something on the Mac Pro.

2. ...deleting the iDVD app, preferences, all iDVD receipts under /Library/Receipts, all themes under /Library/Application Support/iDVD, all themes under ~homedir/Library/Application Support/iDVD, and then re-installing iDVD from the iLife '08 DVD. After doing all this, I still had the white menu background problem. So I know it's not related to a bad install or preferences.

3. ...different themes from 7.0, 6.0, 5.0, and older. All themes had problems, so I know it's probably not specific to a theme.

4. ...running iDVD on my primary vs. my secondary display on my ATI graphics card. This did not fix the problem, so I know it's not related to running on a primary vs. secondary video port.

5. ...removing my NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics card that had nothing connected to it so that only my ATI Radeon X1900 graphics card was installed and connected. REMOVING THE SECOND VIDEO CARD RESOLVED THE ISSUE. The problem appears to be related to having two graphics cards installed in my Mac Pro. The moment I re-installed the second graphics card, the issue returned.

I opened a case with Apple, and they have collected more system information from me and will attempt to produce the issue in their labs. Their engineering team is out for the holidays, so I will have to wait a bit longer for a response.

The root cause of this issue (having two video cards installed) is very disappointing to discover. I've had issues with iPhoto, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Color with two video cards and triple head display configurations. It seems that disconnecting displays from the second video card or removing the second video card entirely will resolve any video display issues I've encountered.

I'm beginning to think that Apple no longer regression tests any of their consumer or professional applications with more than one video card installed in their system because they would have discovered these prominent issues in their testing. They only sell three different video cards with their Mac Pro, so it shouldn't be that hard to try a couple different combinations of video cards to see that their apps don't work 100% with two video cards installed.

Lesson learned: Don't invest in more than one video card in your Mac Pro. Apple isn't investing in testing more than one video card, so if you run into issues, then you're on your own.

Message was edited by: tonytang.com

dcross Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2008 7:59 PM in response to tonytang.com

That is really wierd....just for fun I pulled out my second video card and put back my original hard drive with my original OS install and iDVD install and ran the iDVD project again to create the disc image. It worked! What has me stumped is how did it work with the fresh OS install on the other hard drive and BOTH video cards installed but doesn't work with the old OS install and both video cards...very strange.

Maybe it has more to do with the old OS install that I am running is an upgrade from Tiger to Leopard and the fresh OS install is a clean install....maybe there is something buried in the upgrade install that trips up iDVD when you run both video cards. Because a fresh OS install will allow you to run BOTH video cards without any trouble...at least for me on my MacPro. Anyone else able to verify this?

Thanks for everyone's help....wish I would have known about the video card issue....would have saved me a TON of time and headache. Hopefully others will benefit from this thread.

Glo H

Level 4

1,541 points

Dec 27, 2008 8:23 PM in response to dcross

Thank you both for that update. This is some information that we need to file away for future reference.

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iDVD 08 Menu White After Burn