-34506 Error is Driving Me Potty

Question

Hi
For weeks now I've been trying to burn an iDVD project and getting the dreaded -34506 Error.
Originally the project had a main movie, two additional movies and two slideshows, and by process of elimination I've boiled it down to one of the additional movies that's causing the error.
I've scoured this Forum and taken into account all the advice re -34506 and nothing works for me.
The iMovie project is only 575MB and less than 3min long.
There are no chapter markers.
I've tried both Best Performance and Best Quality
I've tried creating a new iDVD project, using the default theme.
I'm on iDVD 6.0.3, OS 10.4.8, Quicktime Pro 7.1.3
I've tried
dropping in the iMovie file
sharing the iMovie file as a Quicktime dv file and dropping that in
saving the Quicktime file as a mov file and dropping that in
all give the same error.
The only thing different from the many iMovies I've created is that I used a third party transition - I thought maybe that could that be my problem?
So I tried dropping the Quicktime dv file into a new iMovie project (so in effect the transitions are embedded in a single movie clip) and sharing that back out to iDVD but still get the same error.
Could there still be some encoding from the third party transition in the Quicktime file? If so is there anything I can do to make it work - I need those transitions.
I've been spending way too much time on this and my brain's full, would be glad of advice.

Answer 1

Sorry it took me so long to get to this forum, and thanks Sue for pointing me this way.
Happily, the problem was resolved - it appears to have been a permission problem. Although it probably bores most people, please allow me to explain what an iMovie plug-in can, and cannot do.
Basically, duing a rendering pass (i.e. when you press 'Apply') iMovie calls the plug-in for each frame of the clip. It passes the plug-in an image (the current frame), and expects an image of the same size passed back after processing is done. That's it. A plug-in can modify the image, but nothing else. A plug-in can't drop a frame, or add a frame, or change the frame's resolution. It can't access anything in the clip beyond the current frame, and a few simple settings. A plug-in certainly can't write to the clip itself.
Even though this severely limits what a plug-in can do, it also simplifies debugging. If, like in this example, iDVD pops up an error, we can be quite sure that it's not the plug-in, because a) iDVD does not call the plug-in (the plug-in can only be called from iMovie), and b) since plug-ins can't write to disk, and don't have access to the clip, there is no way the plug-in has messed up the clip's source data.
If a permission problem crops up, there are many possible reasons. Sometimes, the source material was copied from an archival CD burned with PC software (that, if you are unlucky, has some very funky permission codes set). Most of the time, though, iMovie simply messes up when it get confused (believe me, this happens a lot, in iMovie 5 ususally after you have played with audio settings). In that event it doesn't really matter if you applied a transition, an effect, or a title - the permissions get shot, and you need to repair them. What is a bit disconcerting, though, is the fact that permission problems are difficult to spot. 'Error -34506' certainly wasn't in our data base, even though other permission-related error numbers are.
Finally, a short 'hi again' to Klaus1. Thank you for providing feedback on this issue. If you allow me a small correction to your comment: Our plug-ins do work with iMovie 6. They do not work with Intel-based Macs. Some of our plug-ins do not work well with Tiger. Luckily, you can test that before you buy them.
Good night everyone, and have a nice sunday!
-ch
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