Q: Does anyone know if iDVD works with El Capitan?

Hi Johnnyxray210

My questions were directed to Ziatron which is possibly why they didn't make sense to you. Sorry if there was any confusion.

I am just about to wash my hands of Apple. I had my heart set on a new MacBook Pro when it has an update, but I still need to use iDvd and I have no access to the Cloud as it is blocked by the NSW Dept of Education, so expecting people to use other methods to show films and DVDs is not going to happen. Very frustrating Apple. You sure know how to get rid of loyal customers.

There are 3rd party apps at the App Store that can create and burn simple video DVD discs.  Also Toast has that capability.  If you can live without the more elaborate and animated themes of iDVD they would be a reasonable replacement.

Hey OT,

I've been reading your posts across all platforms, and I FINALLY FOUND a way to still burn DVDs with El Cap.

You were the man in figuring it out...!!

Basically, I had to ONLY use 6.0 Themes that ARE NOT Animated.  I also could not use slideshows.

If ALL I use is an iMovie (or any mp4) with a nonanimated theme, then it'll burn.  Still blows, and not as awesome as the 7.0 Themes, but better than nothing...  Sigh...why did ever upgrade to 11.....

But hey, thank you!

If you can live without the more elaborate and animated themes of iDVD they would be a reasonable replacement.

The solution in our organization was to set up Macs dedicated for movie-making.  (  The same thing can be accomplished by partitioning your hard drive. )

We are using OS 10.9.5, iMovie HD 06, and iDVD to make M-DISC DVDs.  Everything works flawlessly.  On the same machines we use QuickTime and Toast for making our M-DISC Blu-rays.

I am running OS X El Capitan 10.11.4, iMovie 10.1.1 and iDVD 7.1.2.

I created a video in iMovie of 1hr. in length. Exported it to a file at 720p, created a project using the Revolution 7.0 theme, and imported the video file but as others have reported it kept failing encoding the menus when attempting to write the DVD. Following the advice on this forum I disabled the drop zones, intro and outro and set the loop duration to zero but it still kept failing to encode the menus successfully. Finally I removed the Revolution audio track from the Menu Info window and hey presto I was able to write the DVD successfully.

I then started adding the features back in one by one to establish what works and what doesn't. I re-enabled the drop zones and related graphics, dropped a still image into the drop zone, enabled the intro and outro and set the loop duration back to 30 seconds and it all works fine. So it seems the only feature that stopped me from creating the DVD was the audio track in the animated menu. The resultant DVD plays in both DVD Player on the iMac and in my Pano BluRay player with excellent picture quality.

Hope this adds to the discussion and helps some people trying to work with iDVD. It's an excellent product when it works and Apple's decision to withdraw support seems to show they are totally out of touch with their user base on this issue.

Thanks for the feedback.  Did you try to add your own audio track to the menu?

No I didn't. My assumption was that any audio track is the same as any other and would therefore fail. Thinking about it that is patently not true so I will test that out and report back.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi Old Toad,

I tried loading my own audio track to the menu and it failed on the burn as previously with "Error during rendering/encoding There was an error during rendering/encoding of the menus/slideshows. The burning process has been cancelled".

I also noticed that the audio track does not play i.e. there is no sound out of the speakers on playing the animation, or previewing the DVD Playback.

What are some apps that will do what iDVD does?

Go to the App Store and do a search for DVD.  Some are free with more advanced versions for a prince.  You can read about each at the app store to see which might be the one best suited for you.  I still use iDVD.  The free apps will create a video DVD but are limited to the themes and menu options.  For a simple, one movie video DVD they might be sufficient. You'll have to test them to see. 

If you create disk images, i.e. .dmg or .iso files, you can play them with DVD Player to see how they look without having to burn to disk first.

" no it doesn't "seems to be the most realistic answer, sadly. However I managed to get a decent iDVD project with the following method.

Using one of the 7.0 themes, Bands, did not work.

I used one of the 6.0 themes, On the Road,

1) did not include music/intro/outro, and added just 2 videos in the animation menu on the first page of the project

and managed to export it to a disk image. Then a right click on this file and I was able to burn it to a DVD (only at 8X speed, but this is the new burning tool of El Capitan, you cannot burn from the Disk Utility anymore).

iDVD is a great tool for film editing, and I wish Apple didn't waste their time ruining software that made our macs the best Swiss knives for many cool uses. iDVD is nearly gone, while (strangely) iMovies will continue to operate, iPhoto's replacement is a joke, and there's hardly anything we can do with the new Disk Utility.

Wish I could go back to Snow Leopard, and this update will definitely be the last unless I see some serious advantage to it!