iDVD no longer burns, El Capitan

i, too, switched themes from Revolution to a different 7.0. I'll try older. The slideshows are like 50 to 70 each. 2007 iMac, 4 GB RAM, 200+ GB free space. Re-created the project, changed the audio tracks, turned off transitions, even changed around the slideshow and menu orders, but it's always the same, it seems to "randomly" freeze somewhere in the first batch of encoding the slides. I never had any issues until i upgraded to 10.11.

i just switched to a 5.0 theme that's always worked in the past. Same freeze. First batch of slide encoding, 10 of 302 total. The report dump is huge, but it's smart enough to know it's an "Event: hang". Just looks like a good ole fashion thread lock.

Update: I tried burning again today with an older theme, Parchment, @ 4:3 and it froze on slide 11. Deleted that slide and it went thru. Added more slides, now at 68, and all is well.

Then I added the #11 slide back and it saved to disk image just fine. Switched to 16:9 format in Parchment, tried again and it froze at slide 44 of 69.

Lastly I changed themes to Revolution, 4:3 and successfully saved to disk image. Changed to 16:9 and it froze, this time at #66.

It appear that the widescreen option in iDVD isn't friendly with El Capitan. To be fair, the images were not cropped to the 16:9 aspect ratio so don't know if that would affect the compatibility.

I switched to a 5.0 4:3 theme and re-saved the project and it made it past the first batch of slide encoding, about 181 of 302 and then froze. Trying multiple times it freezes on no particular slide. It just seems 10.11 has exposed a race condition leading to a thread lock. If it works for someone it's just pure timing luck.

Same problem, also on 2014 27" retina iMac. Seeing the same random freezing as it was attempting to render images in a slide show. I copied the project and all assets to a 2009 iMac still running 10.10.5 and burned the DVD with no problem. I noticed that it rendered the images much faster than had been happening on the newer, faster machine, even before the freeze happened. I guess I won't be upgrading that other iMac!

The only workaround I have found, since i believe this is a real thread lock bug, is to export your photo slide show from iPhoto as a 1080p slideshow .m4v file. I then just add that .m4v file as a movie menu item in my iDVD project. I used my same theme and even 16:9. I created my usual main menu screen and just added each .m4v movie link per slideshow i had exported from iPhoto. Save as disc image and it works because the blocking issue was encoding a slideshow in iDVD. This workaround there are no slideshows, only "movies" and they are a different encoding asset. Then just double click your .img file and it will mount, then just right click the mounted image and burn to disc.

Old Toad..

Seems you have a strong knowledge and just found this thread (I've been posting in another). I have the same issue with iDVD under El Capitan but not for slideshows (although will now try that as well). My issue is that I cannot get ANY file created with chaptering to render under iDVD now. Have used other themes besides Revolution, deleted Prefs, ran permissions check, ad nauseum. I can take the video as is, take to an older Snow Leopard machine I've still got and it burns to Video_TS just fine. Also did this without issue before upgrading my two newer Macs to El Capitan from Mavericks (skipped Yosemite). I've tried different codecs out of iMovie 11 and FCPX to no avail. As some have said the Roxio myDVD is nothing in comparison. Have also tried a movie with no transitions, no chapter at the start, and that even fails.. :-( Movies and chapters work fine with QT (old and new). Any thoughts are appreciated.. any suggestions for a solid replacement are likewise appreciated.. Guess if I have to will build a Mavericks image on a small SSD and boot from there to get the Video_TS files (which the latest Roxio Toast seems to have left out as a choice as well).. :-( I've also heard (from Apple) that iDVD may not run at all under Sierra...

Thanks.

iDVD does have issues with El Capitan. If you want to continue your movie-making on a Mac, I would strongly recommend using OS 10.9.5. You'll find iDVD as well as iMovie HD 06 work perfectly with 10.9.5.

You can partition a single hard drive, or use a separate hard drive as I do.

I'm trying to do the same thing but all the tech support people have suggested sounds too hard for me. Can you from El Capitan back to Yosemite?

@taniadvd - I'm not aware of a way to go back unless you have a full back up or time machine from your last Yosemite build. I just got a small 120GB SSD and loaded Mountain Lion on it, reinstalled the iLife suite and boot my Mac Pro from that when I need to use iDVD. The system still sees all my other external drives where images and movie files are stored.

I've not found a alternative as of yet for some of the full featured aspects of the package. Fotomagico does a great job for slideshows if you're only using that part. Roxio has myDVD but it only works on more simple DVD builds and I've yet to get it to recognize chapters inserted with FCPX or iMovie.

This is one of the best posts out there. Thank you all for your time and dedication.
Ray, I know this is 2 years later but, what did you end up doing?