Audio Encoding Spinning Beachball

For the one thousand time:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302988

And again... Don't only watch your Activity Monitor. It CAN tell you that things are working, but it can also give you a false "not responding" indicator. When waiting for audio encoding, which seems to be the biggest issue right now with the recent upgrades, look at your tempmovie file. It is found by looking at your dvdproj file, control click, ask it to show contents, then navigate through the folders til you get to the audio file. The first file that is created during audio encoding is "tempmovie". If you keep playing hide and seek with it in and out of the dock, you should see it get bigger. Once that file is made, it starts to make the "current audio" file. It will reach the same size as tempmovie. Once that is complete, it magically becomes your audio file and both temporary files disappear. At that point it usually switches over to the burn process.

I was suffering very long audio encoding times with a 19 minute movie. For my recent 40 minute one, I bypassed the direct iMovie to iDVD process (the one that is supposed to work with iLife) and instead exported to full quality DV, then reimported to iMovie. Added my chapter markers and shared to iDVD. Audio encoding took all of 20 minutes max. I suspect that the export to full quality DV took care of much of it.

Terri

Well my Dual G5 with only 1.5GB of RAM has still been rock-steady with both iDVD6 and the Quicktime updates.

Basically, don't upgrade your software if it's working, because then it won't work. Let others beta test the problems first.

Or make sure you have stand-by hard drive clones with the old software ready to un-upgrade. I always have a cloned backup (pre-upgrade) in case there is some glitch. This is really the single most important thing any computer user on any platform (Mac/Windows/Linux/OS2Warp...etc.) should do, but it far too uncommon. Things on Macs, as much as we want to believe they "just work" , sometimes they don't, and a clone is a giant "un-do" for your computer. Don't leave your system without one. Priceless.

buy a new Intel PC, I mean Mac, that will be obsolete by September when the new Intel chips come out that will require a new upgrade.

While a dual G5 should be far from obsolete, Macs have a great track record of NOT becoming obsolete. My 9600 with a G3 upgrade is running 10.3, and my G4 TiBook is still going strong, both very useful machines. Do I run iDVD6 on it? No, nor would I expect to, but iDVD3/4/5 run fine, albeit slow. Yes things are fastest on the MacBook Pro!

No doubt, iDVD needs to improve it's handling of audio and the spinning beachball issues. Just a warning about 12 bit audio would be huge.

I've used every iLife version, and they've worked great for me, save a G5 specific issue when iDVD4 came out. Doesn't mean you're not having real problems, but it also doesn't mean that all iDVD QT G5 users are having the same issues.

G4 TiBook is still going strong

I still miss mine... 😟

Well, I can't honestly say that I still USE all of my Macs, but starting from my first purchase in 1983, I have 'em all. Starting with the Apple //e, LCII (80GB HD + colour screen!!), first PowerPC 66, PowerPC G3 256, G3 laptop 333 (still runs powerpoints ok...in a pinch), G4 (still friendly and used), G4 laptop and G5 dual 1.8. What more could a girl want? 🙂

Unfortunately the G4 was pre-superdrive so had a short lived romance with the family as we could not use it to burn with iDVD. But with multiple users in the house, MSN works just fine.

The G4 laptop worked fine with iLife 05, but haven't had cause to try anything through it recently as the G5 seems better suited to the task.

cheers

Terri

I have 'em all.

No poor schools there to donate to? 😉

I "got rid of" a IIsi and a 7200/90, and a beige G3 desktop....the G3 is still in use by my sister in law. I did throw away the IIsi adn the 7200/90

beige G3 desktop

My daughter-in-law still uses mine. Connected to a really nice Sony CRT monitor that cost $850 then. Hard to find those anymore... 😉

Schools don't really want anything "old". It is too much trouble to be running machines that don't have up to date OS. The old machines cannot run any new programs properly. No, I think someday I will set up a little museum 🙂

I actually went on Ebay a couple of years back to buy old games for my then 5 year old. She had use of one of my older PCs (Win 98) and nothing I could buy that was current would work on it!

I have almost every original Mac program that was sold for the LCII. I had to buy an external 170MB HD for it as well as a CD drive to expand the 80 - those games were so large. It was really cutting edge.

Terri

Along with many others in this thread, I was experiencing all the difficulties burning from iDVD that are explained in the link( http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302988 ). iDVD seemed to be permanently stuck and totally non-responsive. Maybe if I had waited overnight it would have eventually worked, but after finding and changing a snippet of music in a menu file from mp3 to AAC, everything moves right along. Check those music files!

Glad you found a solution.

Exporting to Full Quality DV often solves problems, and was listed in the troubleshooting link I provided in my first reply to your original post.

was listed in the troubleshooting link

One reason you see me post only a link at times. Don't want to confuse with details. 😉 😉

Yes, I had also posted on a few of these threads the "export to full quality DV, reimport to iMovie, add chapter markers, then into iDVD, don't use MP3 in iDVD solution"!

Works for me. Until they release some updates that specifically state that this problem has been addressed, and solved, the above is my burning protocol!

regards

Terri

Yes, I had also posted...

Ive noticed. 🙂