Choppy playback/pixelating but previews and plays on compter fine.

Question

I have been hunting through the forum answers but..........my project has been edited/saved multiple times,(trying to get a successful burn!). It is from iMovieHD, runs56 minutes with 26 scenes. There are a few iTune tracks on a like number of clips and finally there are titles at each chapter break. No chapters within the first or last clip.
Consistently, the skipping/freezing/pixalating tends to occur towards the last 1/4 of the burnt DVD.
Too large at 10.1 GB, if attempting to share as QT Full Quality but apparently is only 3.7 GB when shared to iDVD.
An ealier post suggested that- "Also, you can use DVD Player to play the virtual disk to check your iDVD 5 project before burning to DVD. Launch DVD Player. File/Open VIDEO_TS (Open DVD Media... in Player 4.6). Find the VIDEO_TS folder and open that. (The audio folder is for DVD-Audio disks.)"
When I open iDVD 5.0.1 and try to get into the VIDEO_TS there are multiple folders and none that I can figure out how to "play/view".
I am using Verbatim-R. I have tried:
-waiting until the "status" bar indicates "done" and then burned using the iDVD burn button
-deleted the com.Apple.iDVD.plist file
-re-booted
-thrown away a stack of "coasters"
-spent too many hours reconstructing the "project" with it's drop zones
-family is getting tired of listening to me state "This time it will work"
-saved as Disc image and burned from Disc Utilities (but didn't wait until the status bar had finished. Just found out about that suggestion.)
So wise ones.
Should I wait for the "status"bar to show done and then save as disc image and try that again?
Haven't yet used Apple-R DVD, should I?
Thanks all

Answer 1

Consistently, the skipping/freezing/pixalating tends to occur towards the last 1/4 of the burnt DVD.
Could be media or burn speed isues.
Too large at 10.1 GB, if attempting to share as QT Full Quality but apparently is only 3.7 GB when shared to iDVD
Sounds like the 10.1 GB file is your DV Stream content out of iMovie - this isn't designed to be played in DVD players. iDVD takes this content and MPG-2 encodes it down to something that DVD players will play.
"Also, you can use DVD Player to play the virtual disk to check your iDVD 5 project before burning to DVD. Launch DVD Player. File/Open VIDEO_TS (Open DVD Media... in Player 4.6). Find the VIDEO_TS folder and open that. (The audio folder is for DVD-Audio disks.)"
iDVD ISN'T a DVD Player application! You should have Apple's DVD Player application in your Applications folder - THIS is what you want to use to playback the image file.