Is iDVD compatibility with Yosemite?

Yes it is. See Old Toad's post at the end of this thread:

Can't Find a update or latest Version of iDVD to Download or a Compatibility to Yosemite

It worked flawlessly for me in Mavericks. Since changing to Yosemite it is buggy. If it is a small movie (50MB) it works fine. If it is a large movie (800MB) I get an error during encoding.

I have had to resort to loading the movie in iMovie, then exporting it to a lower resolution, then put the lower resolution version in iDVD, then burn it. This works, but it shouldn't be necessary. And the lower resolution is not acceptable.

Have you successfully used the same 800 MB movie under Mavericks with iDVD? And what is the playing time of the movie?

Hi, OT.

Yes, I've burned this movie numerous times for friends under Mavericks. But this isn't the only movie it happens with.

It's 837.3MB, 59 minutes.

I have another that is 2.6GB, 62 minutes that I also burned before, but I get the same error for both.

I haven't tested to see if there is a breaking point like what size file works, and what size file doesn't.

Any help appreciated.

837.3MB for 59 minutes is incredibly small. What format are these files in?

Formats supported by iDVD 7:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/7.0/en/6655.html

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

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.

Thanks.

Okay, this is pretty weird. I tried doing this previously based on one of your posts in another thread advising to save as a disc image first. When I tried that I got the same encoding error message.

But just to be thorough, I tried it again just now. And it worked!!!!!!!! Nothing substantive that I can think of has been changed on my computer, so it's one of those mysteries.

Thanks again for the help.

Did you clear any space up on your boot drive recently? It's recommended to have a minimum of 20-25 GB of free space when encoding with iDVD.

No, I have about 175GB of free space. I occasionally repair permissions, run repair disk, and reset PRAM, so maybe something there needed fixing.

If it's a long project it's also recommended to turn off all Energy Saving and Screen Savers during the encoding process.

I recently updated to Yosemite. And since, I have encountered a problem with moving movies to idvd. I get a pop-up ' atos needs to take control of another process for debugging to continue...' When I click cancel (several times) it shuts down idvd. I have avoided upgrading to imovie 11 because of bad reports (thinking that may resolve the problem). Any advice?

I have encountered a problem with moving movies to idvd.

How are you moving movies to iDVD? They should be exported out of iMovie 10 as SD 480p:

Then added manually to the iDVD menu window being careful to avoid any drop zones.

The latest version of iMovie is 10.0.6, not 11. Where are you seeing iMovie 11?

Thanks for your help. While in imovie, I went to Share>Media Browser, then selected large (960x540). Next I opened idvd, selected New Project, picked a theme, then Media> Movies; a drop down list appeared from imovies folder and I selected the movie project I wanted, installed and then burned. Worked great until Yosemite. I just tried Share>Export, then placed on desktop and dragged to idvd. It worked and I didn't get the pop-up. Do you foresee any problems with this method? I have imovie version 8.0.6. I see the newest version listed as imovie '11 (I assume referring to ilife 11). As you may guess, I'm a creature of habit and dislike involuntary changes. Thanks again for your expertise!

IDVD worked pretty flawlessly before Yosemite. The added workaround of having to take a movie already formatted as .m4v, and having to import it to iMovie then having to share it back, in order to then drop it into iDVD is a pain in the ***. I used to be able to just drag the original .m4v movie into iDVD then burn away.

Since Apple no longer offers iDVD, I think they will probably not devote any resources to fixing what they broke with the Yosemite release.

As a test try using the 480p size movie in a new project and save it as a disk image. Play the disk image with DVD Player.