IDVD hangs at encoding assets

Have you edited any of the videos in the project after they were added to the project? If so create a new project with the same assets and try again.

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.

I agree. iDVD was the simplest way to make a custom DVD with Chapters and menus on the planet. I now have to stumble around with Encor or Toast or Wondershare just trying to make a DVD that looked to my customers like a lot of work. Without iDVD it is a lot of work.

By the way, the DVD maker in FCPX is awful. There have been a few recent improvements, but Apple continues to act like no one is doing DVDs. I still make several months of income from my DVD productions and we are in 2017.

Try creating a new iDVD project. Then go back to iMovie and share out your movie at 480 or 540. Drag the newly shared movie into iDVD. Try to burn again. I had the same issue as you, and the above solved it for me.

It seems that 720 and 1080 movies cause rendering problems with iDVD, that was designed for 480 movies. iDVD will render a hi def movie to 480 but has trouble doing the rendering to reduce it to 480. iMovie can do a better job at the rendering, so you want to share out at 480 or, if not available as a sharing option, then share at 540. You won't lose any quality doing that, because, as I said, iDVD will reduce your hi def to 480 anyway.

-- Rich

Thanks Rich that was a lifesaver. I exported the video in 540 from iMovie and then brought it into Idvd and it saved to disk image without issues. I then burned the DVD and there seems to be little if any loss in quality. I was ready to give up so thank you very much. Ron Taube

Did anyone resolve this issue?

You are welcome. Glad I could help.

-- Rich