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iDVD tries to encode a movie but send error message

I have designed a very simple iDVD project - no fancy menus, submenus, or photos. I have a 110 minute home movie that I want to play on a standard DVD player. The project is standard video aspect, not wide screen. After the app works for a little while it sends this message: "There was an error during movie encoding." I have looked online for others with this same problem, and have found no solutions. I am running El Capitan on an iMac with plenty of RAM. Anyone have any ideas? Or is the movie just too long?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Apr 1, 2016 3:24 PM

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3 replies

Apr 1, 2016 4:46 PM in response to PPalm_1

If you are using El Capitan see this thread:


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7251191


Movie length:


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

Apr 1, 2016 7:53 PM in response to Klaus1

Thanks for the thorough response but, frankly, this did not help me because I tried the different qualities and the it STILL results in an error message. There must be some way to find out what is causing the error. Could there be a problem with the video file itself? It plays correctly using QuickTime, so I assumed it would work in iDVD. It plays correctly in iTunes, also.

Apr 2, 2016 6:25 AM in response to PPalm_1

I have achieved success! I have to tell you that there must have been something wrong with the original video file. I ran it through iMovie first, created a new file, with very little doctoring, and this time iDVD processed the video properly and completed the creation of the DVD.


Thanks for your response anyway!

iDVD tries to encode a movie but send error message

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