I've reduced my project size to "high quality," with a resulting 2.42GB size and 78 minutes project time. With my 4.7GB dvd, I should now have more than sufficient space, but I still get 'Your project exceeds the maximum content duration."

iDVD is not concerned with size, just length.

iDVD encoding settings:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US

Short version:

Best Performance is for videos of up to 60 minutes

Best Quality is for videos of up to 120 minutes

Professional Quality is also for up to 120 minutes but even higher quality (and takes much longer)

That was for single-layer DVDs. Double these numbers for dual-layer DVDs.

Professional Quality: The Professional Quality option uses advanced two-pass technology to encode your video (The first pass determines which parts of the movie can be given greater compresson without quality loss and which parts can’t. The second pass then encodes those different parts accordingly) , resulting in the best quality of video possible on your burned DVD. You can select this option regardless of your project’s duration (up to 2 hours of video for a single-layer disc and 4 hours for a double-layer disc). Because Professional Quality encoding is time-consuming (requiring about twice as much time to encode a project as the High Quality option, for example) choose it only if you are not concerned about the time taken.

In both cases the maximum length includes titles, transitions and effects etc. Allow about 15 minutes for these.

You can use the amount of video in your project as a rough determination of which method to choose. If your project has an hour or less of video (for a single-layer disc), choose Best Performance. If it has between 1 and 2 hours of video (for a single-layer disc), choose High Quality. If you want the best possible encoding quality for projects that are up to 2 hours (for a single-layer disc), choose Professional Quality. This option takes about twice as long as the High Quality option, so select it only if time is not an issue for you.

Use the Capacity meter in the Project Info window (choose Project > Project Info) to determine how many minutes of video your project contains.

NOTE: With the Best Performance setting, you can turn background encoding off by choosing Advanced > “Encode in Background.” The checkmark is removed to show it’s no longer selected. Turning off background encoding can help performance if your system seems sluggish.

And whilst checking these settings in iDVD Preferences, make sure that the settings for NTSC/PAL and DV/DV Widescreen are also what you want.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US

Hi

In Apple lingo !

• BEST - is not Best - but far away from it !

Do not use Best Quality - or -

Bers Burn Speed

Result might well fail

I only use

• Pro Quality Encoding (if material is more than 45 minutes)

• x2 or x4 in Burn Speed - NEVER ever more

Yours Bengt W

Pro Quality will take same as High Quality = Max 120 minutes = Movie + Menu time on a SL-DVD and about x2 on a DL-DVD.

iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones

• Professional Quality

(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)

• Best Performances

(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)

• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)

(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above

Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.

About double on DL DVDs.

I always use Pro Quality - Yes my movies often close to 120 minutes - YES I use a very very simple Menu (Brushed Metal from Old Themes - NO animation and NO audio on this - I turn it off)

Yours Bengt W

How much free space do you have on your hard drive?

Follow this workflow to help ensure the best quality final product:

Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.

To check the encoding mount the disk image and launch DVD Player and play it. If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding was good.

Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality. Always use top quality media: Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.

OT

Good afternoon,

Perhaps this will help clarify Bengt's suggestions. You said -- "High quality" is my only option," for a 78 min video, but actually, "Pro" is another option which works, and which Bengt recommends (if you have a version of iDVD which includes the "Pro" preference).

Is it possible the video was added twice to iDVD?

Since it sounds like a straightforward project, what happens if you start a new iDVD project (skip the music and photos for this test); first set the preferences to Pro, and then add just your video? If this works, close the test project without saving and go back to your original project and try deleting the video, and using the iDVD command to delete encoded assets. In theory, this should preserve much of your original menu setup, and then you can add the video back into that project.

John

How much free space do you have on your boot drive?