transcoding/burning DVD takes 10 hours! whats the alternative?

My 1.25 GHz PB burns a 2 hour DVD in about 5 hours.

Take care that there are no CPU-hungry apps in the background when iDVD is doing its stuff. I usually reboot to make sure there are no rogue processes hanging around before starting lengthy iDVD encodings. I may do some light www-browsing or email but I keep that to the minimum and quit those apps as soon as I'm done. Remember that some screen savers may take quite a lot of CPU cycles, too!!

I also need to make several copies of this movie

It is the encoding that takes time. You can burn several copies much faster, only limited by the speed of the DVD burner and the DVD disk's speed.

Some folks 1st burn a disk image via iDVD 5, then burn it via the Disk Utility or Toast.

Toast may have slightly superior quality MPEG encoder compared to iDVD -- it can also use compressed AC3 audio, so it doesn't steal bandwidth from the video in long DVDs. iDVD has more flexibility when composing the menus so it is a matter of taste which to use.

DVDSP offers MUCH more flexibility in authoring but Toast's MPEG encoder might be just as good as DVDSP's Compressor (this is just hearsay -- I have no 1st hand experiences from those).

Turn off every other app.

Encode to disk image and burn that.

Overnight is actually a reasonable method - it just takes a while without dual processors.

Toast is faster and can turn the iDVD images into DVD's easily. It is also much easier to use for commmon DVD and CD burning tasks. It also converts to DivX and other things.

The good thing is that LaCie supplies a real version (not limited) with the D2 16X drives which are much faster than the anemic PB burners. The Lightscribe DVD's are grossly overpriced though - if you do a lot , $90 for an Epson printer than does DVD's would pay off over time.

You mention that you've thought of getting a LightScribe DVD burner. I just bought a lacie DVD burner myself recently, and was planning on buying one with LightScribe capabalities. However, when I did some research on the matter, I discovered that having the LightScribe technology built into the burner actually slows the burning process, so I opted to get one without it. Also, the LightScribe capable DVDs cost more, and I just don't think it's worth it.

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but I thought you might find the info helpful.

I am also just a beginner, but with the help of this forum have managed to complete several projects now.
I also recommend saving the project as a Disc Image right from the beginning. (Go to the menu, click File, then Save as disc image)
This takes quite long, depending on how many transitions and titles you use, and depending on what other programs you have running at the same time. 10 hrs doesn't seem right for 1.5 hr length film...should be more like 3-4 hrs. Once your image is saved, you can open your Disk Utility Application. You should see your project title on the left column - (if not, you can drag it from wherever you saved it...eg. Desktop). You then can insert a disc and click on burn. THESE copies should only take... 30-45 mins each to burn from now on.
If you don't want to save it as disc image, then just know that the first burn will take a long time - overnight's a good way to do that. The good news is that once the first one is competed, it will ask you if you want to make another copy. The following copies burn much quicker as above w/ the disc image. However, once you close the application, you have to start all over again burning the loooong way. This is why the disc image is nice to have... you can always go back to it and burn quick copies as needed.
I hope this helps...

Lizette you cannot compare your G5 with a Powerbook G4 for time to encode.

I've just recently burned a number of different 1 hour dvds. Each time it takes my PowerBook G4 about 5 - 6 hours to encode them.

This is normal.

Yeah, I've had a similar problem too but in reverse. The DVD plays fine on my PowerBook, and a Cyberhome DVD player, but it won't play on my Sony DVD player. It says that it won't play due to region restrictions. My understanding is that iDVD burns the disk region free. I'm guessing that some DVD players won't play the disk if it isn't encoded with some region as the player suspects it is a pirated DVD.

The iDVD discs are indeed region free. Did you by mistake burn a PAL DVD? A PAL disc won't play in the NTSC players you buy in the USA.

I've tried both PAL and NTSC with the same results. Our DVD player says it will play PAL or NTSC though.

I chose Region 2 (Europe) as I live in the UK. I encoded in PAL. This is correct i take it.

Yes!

The alternative I use is that I bought a DVD recorder with a FireWire input. It will burn a DVD in real time.