Q: There was an error during movie encoding

Good evening, John.

Interesting process -- I hadn't heard of animoto.  For me, this iDVD encoding error message usually means there's an incompatibility in my process -- but with such a good track record, it sounds like something changed at animoto? or an iTunes upgrade? any changes to your System or iLife software?

If you can double-click and play the mp4 file you downloaded, then animoto isn't likely to be the problem (make sure it's an mp4 file and not the ISO version from animoto).

If you can play the file in iTunes (I'm not sure why iTunes is necessary in the process), then probably iTunes isn't introducing the incompatibility.

What if you drag the mp4 and drop it on an iDVD menu (and skip iTunes)?

MPEG Streamclip can transcode (reformat) your mp4 file into DV Stream (.dv) which is a native iDVD format.  Streamclip is free and perhaps iDVD will handle the .dv file better than the mp4 version.

John

Did you by chance make any edits to  the video after it was added to the iDVD project?  If you did that triggers a bug in iDVD.  You might fix it by going to the Advance menu and selecting delete encoded assets.

Then follow this workflow to help assure the best qualty video DVD:

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, launch DVD Player and play it.  If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding is 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.

If that fails the surest method is to start a new project and add the media anew.

OT

Ok So i have resolve the problem. for anyone to use IDVD you have to render in to the default quicktime format in order for your movies to be compatible to encode i only use Final cut pro 10 when rendering i render to default  to play only in apple products that my friends, resolves your incompatibility of encoders have a great  day.

I also received this error when trying to burn a disk image where the iDVD project had a total of 3 video's. All were created in Final Cut Pro X. To troubleshoot, I added them in one at a time and tried creating the disk image again until I found the video that was causing the issue. It was a photo slide show I created in FCP. I tried exporting it in every format (Pro Res, mp4, mkv, m4v) including using Streamclip 1.9.2 and saving as a .dv file as well as Handbreak. The burn would fail every time. I finally just tried adding in audio to the slide show in FCP and just lowered the volume to 0. Then exported to ProRes (.mov). This resolved the issue. Researching more into this a found that when iDVD is encoding it will look for audio and fail if there is no audio found.

finally just tried adding in audio to the slide show in FCP and just lowered the volume to 0. Then exported to ProRes (.mov). This resolved the issue. Researching more into this a found that when iDVD is encoding it will look for audio and fail if there is no audio found.

Yes.  It was found in an earlier topic that video without audio would give the multiplexing error.  Glad you discovered the problem and got a fix. 

You fixed me!!!!! Added a clip or two and lowered the sound (I don't want sound)!! Totally worked~ Thanks~

Tried and Tried... and tried... same error message! As noted below in the replies... I simply added a video clip in the original iMovie (reduced the volume to zero) and saved it to my "theater" in iMovie then to "File"... Then opened idvd and imported this file. Worked well!