How long does it take to burn a DVD on average?

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Level 1

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How long does it take to burn a DVD on average?

I'm burning a DVD that I created on iDVD. It is taking quite a long time to complete. It is just on the second bullet - Process Menus and seems to be stuck in the middle of Rendering menu video asset.... Rendering menus (2 of 3). This is a simple DVD with one photo as background and a movie (slideshow made in iPhoto with 39 photos) and runs about 4 to 5 minutes. Is it stuck?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Jan 5, 2007 7:22 PM

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Answer 1

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Jan 5, 2007 7:28 PM in response to AppleConvert

How long?? It all depends - from 20 minutes to a VERY short and simple project to MANY hours (20+) for a complicated project.

If you want to create DVDs, you must be patient!

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Answer 2

Jan 6, 2007 7:57 AM in response to F Shippey

Search the forum for "audio encoding" and you'll find that you are not alone. Once you do your research of the forum, you will find several work arounds. This problem occurs when you add audio tracks to the movie.

Workarounds: Export your completed iMovie project as a Quicktime movie at full quality or export to a camcorder, then import back to a new imovie project, add chapters, and proceed to iDVD. Burning will be much quicker.

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Answer 3

PT

Level 7

20,904 points

Jan 6, 2007 12:33 PM in response to AppleConvert

As a point of reference, my 1.25GB G4 eMac with 1Gig of RAM tends to take roughly 3-4 times the length of the project. So when I create DVDs of my one-hour home videos, it generally takes 3-4 hours from the time I tell it to start until the finished DVD pops out.
If your iMac is a faster G4 or a G5 is should take a shorter amount of time, where as if you have an older, for example, 800MHz G4, you can expect it to take longer.
On my setup, your project would take roughly 20+ minutes Burn time of the DVD doesn't change, so on short projects the burn time of the DVD itself becomes a significant factor. In other words, if the DVD takes 8 minutes to burn, then that time is nothing compared to a three to four hour encoding time for a one hour movie. But if the project is only 5 minutes, then the encoding might be done in 15-20 minutes but the DVD itself will still take 8 minutes to burn.
Patrick

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Answer 4

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Jan 6, 2007 12:57 PM in response to PT

PT,

The one 'wild card' in all this is the audio encoding issue. Let's keep our fingers crossed for MacWorld.

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Answer 5

Jan 6, 2007 3:29 PM in response to F Shippey

My 5 year old iMac (800 mhz) takes 3 hours to create DVD using iDVD2 whereas my G5 quad processors takes a lot longer for a one hour movie containing additional audio. Doesn't make sense that it takes longer with all that horsepower - but that's the way it is. I hate using the camera method (unnecessary wear and tear) but time is money.

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Answer 6

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Jan 6, 2007 3:49 PM in response to Milton Laughland

Things seemed to slow down with the G5s. Let's hope we will all be surprised at MacWorld next week.

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