Audio encoding hang work around

Question

After scouring this discussion and the internet, it seems the following is true:
1) The source of the audio encoding delay is the conversion of the audio to an iDVD friendly format;
2) There is indeed progress being made even though the activity monitor may say not or you may get a not responding message;
3) There are two work arounds that work well, but with a properly debugged iDVD we should not have to do this nonsense. Here's to iLife '07 fixing this mess, hopefully.
So, as to #1, even if you first convert the audio and then lay down the audio to the iMovie project there are still delays, especially with longer movies. It is quite apparent that this is an iDVD bug as other programs convert audio files quickly. (As to camera audion, you have to make sure you are in 16 bit with your camera.)
As to #2, by looking at the package contents (Command I) you can see the progress of the audio encoding even when you think it is hung and even if you get a not responding message. To do this open your local disk, go to documents which is where iDVD puts them, and look for the title of your project, highlight it and hit Command I. Note the bytes, close the info dialog, and then reopen again. You may need to do this a few times depending on RAM, clock speed, etc., but you should see a change in bytes after awhile. If so, there is progress being made, as painstakingly slow as it may be. (A 1h53m movie took about 40 hours on my G5 with 1.5MB RAM! Not acceptable!)
As to #3, the same thing is being accomplished, by different means. In both case you are creating a new file that handles the audio encoding on the way out and then reimporting with audio encoded. In the first, you export to your camera and then turn around and import into a new iMovie project. Add your chapters and then open from iDVD. Save as a disc image and then burn from the Disc Utility application which can be found under Utilities.
The other work around is sharing to Quicktime and then reimporing to iMovie as a new project, and do the same as above. Following the latter, it took me 40 hours plus before took about 5 hours.
I hope this saves you all some time.
iMac 20" G5 iSight   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   1.5GB RAM, Ext HD 250GB

Answer 1

I think I may have found a solution to my problem. It seems
to be related to how much resources(RAM) I have available to the
program. If I try a lower resolution setting it works fine. If I
set the priority of the program high I can use higher
resolutions.