Burning hangs up at "Encoding Audio"

Hello Folks,
I have a 28 minute iMovie with video, photos, and audio. When I try to burn it on iMovie, it stops at the "Encoding Audio" stage, and I have to force quit. I can't find anything wrong with the iMovie file, as it plays fine in iMovie.
Any ideas? I sure need an answer, as this is an important video project.
Thanks,
Kevin
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.9)

If it takes several hours, then I would suggest the following workaround - export your iMovie as a Quicktime movie using either "Full Quality" or "expert setting". Then import it into a new iMovie project, add chapters - if any, then export to iDVD. The Encoding Audio may occur but only for a few minutes.
Another trick is to export back to your camera and then import from the camera into a new iMovie project, add chapters, export to iDVD.
When we add audio to an iMovie project, it takes iDVD a long time to render the movie. Exporting to Quicktime or your camera combines the added audio to the video. For some reason, this makes it easier for iDVD to prepare for burning.
Do a search in this forum for "audio encoding" to read all the posts regarding this problem.

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IDVD5 hangs up on encoding audio of project

Trying to create DVD from iMovie but always hangs up when commencing to encode audio. Settings are on Best Quality/Pal. Have deleted preferences etc in iDVD. Any ideas please?
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Hi Ossie!
This question is in our Top Ten!
It is probably not 'hanging'. Disregard any messages that iDVD is not responding. It is.
Encoding audio is the slowest part of rendering, and can take many hours. Great patience, even an intermittent alternative hobby, is called for.
Make sure no other application is running, make sure you have not set the hard disk to go to sleep and that the screen saver will not come on. Leave it overnight, or have a 36 hole game of golf.
Sooner or later iDVD will finish!

Help.....IDvd Burning is Stuck at encoding audio

Buring idvd and its stuck at encoding audio. - what should I do???? Afte spending so much time on this.
Very dissapointing its taking very long much longer that idvd4. Purchase upgrade for improvement not for headaches.

I'm not near my Mac right now, but I think its in the project info window. I believe it comes up when you 1st ship your movie to iDVD. There is a a drop down style menu with 2 choices. I do not know if you can change this setting once you are past it. You may have to re-enter iDVD through iMovie and start over.

Hangs up on encoding audio

processes fine through to movies, then hangs up on audio. i've made a dvd from this imovie file before on a G5 just fine. for some reason, it won't work on my G4 powerbook.
any suggestions

Len Goff, "iDVD 5 appears "hung" at audio encoding", 11:41am May 11, 2005 CDT

When Burning IDVD hangs at Encoding Audio

I have a 2 GHz PowerPC G5 iMac
1.5 GB DDR SDRAM
SuperDrive - Double Layer dvds
This is my first time using IDVD - I have a 2 hour movie that I am trying to burn.
It hangs and gives me the multicolored wheel when it is trying to encode the music during the burn process. It took about 5 hours to get to the point that it is now, and then an extra 3 since the multicolored wheel has been up. I have read other posts and some say, let it spin, and eventually it will finish. But I am not sure if they mean when the multicolored wheel is showing. Does anyone know what I need to do? I am desperate for HELP!!

Strange how I can't edit my post now even though it's only been half an hour...
I checked on the progress of the burn and the audio was finally encoded after about five to ten minutes of the "spinning lollipop". It said it was encoding the audio and seemed to hang, but when I went back to check on it the DVD was already burned. I looked for other advice on these boards and people recommend taking the MOV file from your iMovie project and dumping that directly into iDVD instead of exporting from iMovie to iDVD. To do that, control-click (or right-click) on your iMovie project icon in the Finder. Go to Shared Movies > iDVD and find the MOV file in that folder.
Many people have had this problem with iDVD hanging at the "Encoding Audio" stage, but if you leave it long enough, it will eventually finish. I think it's just a bug with the progress bar.
Good luck.
P.S. the movie that I was burning is only about 7 minutes long. I had first tried burning it from my PowerMac G4 but moved to an iMac G5 for my final attempt at burning and it now works. The first time around on the G4 the audio never finished encoding but after moving the iDVD project (and all the support files), it burned the DVD without any problems.

Encoding Audio - Solution that worked for me

Hi all,
As some of you may or may not have known, i was having trouble with my iDVD project hanging at the encoding audio stage for about 24 hours.
Yesterday i decided to try out a suggestion that i had seen on another thread somewhere. Appologies as i cannot recall where i saw it. However it worked for me.
This is what i did
I saved my iMovie project as normal (containing 160 clips and 5 songs from my iTunes library) and then closed iMovie.
I then opened up iDVD and chose 'new project'. I selected the theme i wanted, and then i opened up the 'DVD map' function. I then clicked the plus sumbol and chose 'add new movie'. I then opened up finder, browsed to my iMovie project file and dragged it into the tile i had just created.
All the scene menus populated as it would have done if i had 'exported' to iDVD from iMovie. I then added some background pictures etc, and burnt the project to 'disc image'.
The audio encoding part hung for about 2 hours as normal with the beach ball of death but i could see that the iDVD project file in finder was getting larger (a helpful tip that several of you taught me).
Then the beachball dissapeared and the encoding bar began to fill up blue. And then the image was created.
All in all it took 4 hours which, for a workaround is fine by me (although a fix would make me happier)
So i think the trick was to not use the 'export/share to iDVD' option in iMovie.
On a side note. This method also eradicated the audio lagging that i was experiencing before where the songs at the end of the project were suddenly 2 seconds behind the film when viewed in iDVD.
I hope that this method works for others experiencing this frustrating problem.
Kind regards
LJ

Hi M
Thank You for stating an advice I often give as so many else does.
Nice to see that it works for You to.
And a good and well writted description !
All Good Luck !
Yours Bengt W

IMovie hangs at Encoding Audio

Is it normal for iMovie 6 to "hang" when it is going through the "encoding audio" portion of a burn? Each project I've done has the "spinning beach ball of death" during the process. Anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. The last project I tried to burn I aborted after 90 minutes.

Hello, tarkin,
You are correct....many posts in iDVD over the past regarding the lengthy audio encoding. I think it is a concern mostly because it LOOKS as if nothing is happening for such a long time. And, of course, your own system configuration makes a lot of difference. I have learned over the past 3 years that with my G4 iMac and 512 RAM, it will take about 12-14 hrs for a nearly 2hr movie to finish encoding and saving as disk image. I burn from Disk Utility and after the encoding is done, the burning seems to be very quick.

Can't burn iMovie to iDVD (not responding) - after "Encoding Audio"

Hello,
I have a similar post in the iDVD board, but thought someone in this section may be able to help as well.
I have a 15 minutes project (almost 2 GB) iMovie show that I've attempted to burn to DVD through iDVD (4 times with the same problem)...
It goes through the "encoding menus" and videos, but gets stuck on "Encoding Audio" and in my Force Quit window says (Not Responding). I have almost 12 GB free on my PowerBook G4 and successfully burned a test DVD of this last week before completion (when I only had 7 free GB - I also added on another 2 minutes since then)...
Any help or ideas? I need to get this done ASAP...
Thanks
Chris

Chris, what I've found is that patience is the key here. You really can't count on the progress bar to let you know how far along in the process you are. I've run into the same problem as you. When the burn symbol stops spinning and you get the beachball/lollipop don't rush right off to force quit. Just because the force quit menu shows that iDVD is NOT RESPONDING does not mean that all is lost. What made me realize that iDVD was still working was the Activity Monitor located in your Utilities folder under applications (applications/utilities/activity monitor).
Do yourself a favor and run this app while burning you project. When you get to the point where it appears to hang on you check the status of iDVD in the activity monitor window. More than likely it will show that iDVD is still using a good % of your CPU (%CPU column numbers will constantly change as iDVD demands more or less from your processor). You may also notice that it may show that iDVD is not responding (as well as a couple other processes that are related to the prog), this doesn't mean a thing because iDVD is in reality still chugging along. Of course if the %CPU column is showing 0.00 then iDVD has indeed stopped workin in which case you do have some issues.
Hope this helps

IDVD does crash when encoding audio

I have been reading a large number of posts regarding iDVD freezing, having a spinning beachball, and hanging while encoding audio. I have not been able to find a post where it discusses the crashing/unexpected quitting of iDVD. I have tried a couple of times to get the burning process started, as I thought it may have been a small glitch, but to no avail.
Should I follow the steps marked out in:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=335417&tstart=30
I usually complete the final process of iDVD with all Energy Saving and Screen Saver preferences set to "Never". I usually would delete encoded assets, but I did not have time before I went to work to try a third time.
This is the first time it has happened to me and I have completed about three projects successfully since updating to iDVD 6.0
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Rodger

SUCCESS (But it took a while!)
When I arrived home form work, the first thing I did was to remove Flip4Mac using its uninstaller. This had no effect. iDVD still crashed bringing up the crash report dialogue box.
So I followed the instructions from http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=335417&tstart=30
I also repaired permissions (nothing to report there) and deleted encoded assests. Finally, I replayed my DVD project in the iDVD's preview/test section. The audio was out with the video. For some strange reason, my brain told me that the syncing between audio and video was the main thing to blame. So, I had a quick think and decided to remove all the fade ins and fade outs from my original iMovie project, remove all chapter markers, save the project, replace the chapter markers and then open the original iDVD file shared from this iMovie project. Then, clicked OK to update file to match, deleted encoded assests.
I do not know which part worked for me, but I woke this morning with a completed DVD (which is still to be tested in a DVD player).
Thanks for all the assistance and advice, I'll keep this post unresolved in case someone else has a full crash of iDVD.
Rodger GW
PS I think Apple are a little sick of seeing my crash report coming through with the answer to "What were you doing when the application crashed?" being "Just trying to encode audio!!"
RGW

IDVD 6 Encoding Audio....

I've spent most of this week trying to burn my iMovie film to DVD, and like many people on this forum, and other areas of the internet, I'm unable to do so with iDVD 'locking up' at the encoding audio stage.
I know its not the machine or RAM, as my iBook also does the same.
I'm sitting here having now waited 24 hours for it to finish - but it hasnt.
I know its doing something, as I've opened the package contents of the iDVD file and I can see 'tempmovie.mov' very slowly increase in size.
But I've burned many films before (in previous ilife verions), and to wait for such a long period is not right.
My last major project involved the burning of an AVI type file of 90 minutes, and it took a single overnight processing session to sort that out.
It must be the fact its an iMovie film thats causing problems, but can someone advise me how to speed it up ?
I am assuming it will finish, and I'll have a pristine DVD (lol)
If you use google you will see that many people have the same issue, as on this forum. Some people have speculated its MP3, or other audio issues on the iMovie soundtrack, but until someone can say and publish definitively what it is I (and many other) apple users are unable to burn their DVD's.
Any help from anyone would be appreciated, but none of this trash the preferences or whatever as that does not work.
Its a bug, and the sooner a patch is released, the better we will all be.
Thanks
iMac Flat Panel & iBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)
iMac Flat Panel & iBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

The same effect on a brand new MacBook! iDVD 6.02 is hanging. Spin Ball does't turn anymore. Terminal >top shows 100% on the processor.
Processes: 85 total, 3 running, 82 sleeping... 284 threads 16:38:22
Load Avg: 0.99, 1.12, 1.10 CPU usage: 53.4% user, 8.5% sys, 38.1% idle
SharedLibs: num = 181, resident = 42.6M code, 4.83M data, 6.76M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 12645, resident = 339M + 21.1M private, 125M shared
PhysMem: 107M wired, 443M active, 459M inactive, 1011M used, 13.0M free
VM: 8.13G + 129M 37788(0) pageins, 888(0) pageouts
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
688 top 13.9% 0:01.73 1 18 22 1008K 296K 1.41M 26.9M
374 iDVD 100.3% 62:46.50 18 257 1131 78.9M 30.0M 76.4M 303M
Regards Rolf
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1G Ram

Encoding audio - beachball of death

I am trying to use idvd to burn an image from my imovie project. I've tried this twice now, and am completely frustrated.
iDVD encodes the video, then encodes audio, and gets about 95% complete, and then In get the beachball of death. I can't cancel, etc., and have to force quit, losing all the encoding So much for a stable operating system.
Is there a way to tell what is the problem with the audio?
thanks

I agree with Mr Shippey.
This question is frequently asked!
iDVD is probably not 'hanging'. Disregard any messages that iDVD is not responding. It is. Do not force quit.
Encoding audio is the slowest part of rendering, and can take many hours. Great patience, even an intermittent alternative hobby, is called for.
Make sure no other application is running, make sure you have not set the hard disk to go to sleep and that the screen saver will not come on. Leave it overnight, or have a 36 hole game of golf.
Sooner or later iDVD will finish!

Idvd freezing before it starts encoding audio

Hi everyone, i was wondering if someone could help me with a problem i'm having with idvd. Everytime (6 times so far) my dvd is encoding the video it will suddenly freeze just before it starts audio encoding. What does this mean and is there any way to prevent it?

This question is frequently asked!
iDVD is probably not 'hanging'. Disregard any messages that iDVD is not responding. It is. Do not force quit.
Encoding audio is the slowest part of rendering, and can take many hours. Great patience, even an intermittent alternative hobby, is called for.
Make sure no other application is running, make sure you have not set the hard disk to go to sleep and that the screen saver will not come on. Leave it overnight, or have a 36 hole game of golf.
Sooner or later iDVD will finish!

IDVD-IMOVIE - encoding audio

IDVD Application stops responding when encoding audio from Imovie. Any suggestions would be helpful. I've made IDVD projects successsfully before, but can not get this project past audio encoding. I've tried exporting and sharing - but no avail.

iMovie help screen advises - "For the best compatibility with iMovie HD transitions, effects, titles, and the Ken Burns Effect, you should record your video with 48 kilohertz (kHz), 16-bit audio. Check your camera's manual for instructions on setting the audio bit rate and depth."
I’ve experimented with a ten minute movie with added audio. I set the sample rate at 48,000 khz and experienced no audio encoding stalling in iDVD.
So, if you use music you imported into iTunes, make sure the iTunes preference is set at 48,000 khz. The default is 44K.
With your present iMovie project, export as Quicktime and select "Expert Settings", click on "Options", click on "Sound settings" and set the sample rate at 48,000 khz and the sample size at 16 bit. (Also make sure the Video is set for DV/DVCPRO). Once you have this exported version of your movie, insert it into a new iMovie project, add chapters, and then go to iDVD. I can’t guarantee it will work but its worth trying.
Previously, I suggested to people to export to a DV format video camera and then insert the movie into a new iMovie project. It would result in quick audio encoding in iDVD. I recently found that my video camera exports the sound at the 48K khz sample rate, further supporting that the problem maybe the sample rate.

IDVD will not encode audio

Hi,
Just as the topic says, iDVD will not encode the audio......well whats happening is that it says its in the process of encoding....the bar turns grey, and has the loading color wheel thing and thats basically whats happening. Its been doing this for the past hour. I have lots of ram and memory so i dont think thats a problem.....any solutions??
Thanks

This question is frequently asked!
iDVD is probably not 'hanging'. Disregard any messages that iDVD is not responding. It is. Do not force quit.
Encoding audio is the slowest part of rendering, and can take many hours. Great patience, even an intermittent alternative hobby, is called for.
Make sure no other application is running, make sure you have not set the hard disk to go to sleep and that the screen saver will not come on. Leave it overnight, or have a 36 hole game of golf.
Sooner or later iDVD will finish!

Not Responding - Encoding Audio

I created an iMovie and shared to iDVD, played with the theme etc... When I run the 'burn' command the Prepare, Process Menus, Process Slideshows all work but the 'Process Movies' gets stuck when Encoding Audio and the app is the 'not respoiding'.
Anyone else experience this?

Finally got it to work. The only change I made
was
to the Theme. I shot my movie in 16:9 and was
using
a 4:3 Theme in iDVD; changing to a 16:9 Theme in
iDVD
did the trick for me. Hope this
helps...
G5 Mac
OS X (10.4.4)
That's the problem I've had since I got iLife 06
and OS X 10.4.4
I'm trying your solution right now, I'll let you know
if it works for me. Thanks!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4) also
have a G4 eMac and a G3 Powerbook
Well, so much for that idea.
Anyone else have a solution? I never had any problems with Panther or the last versions of iMove or iDVD.This is frustrating!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4) also have a G4 eMac and a G3 Powerbook
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4) also have a G4 eMac and a G3 Powerbook

Burning hangs up at "Encoding Audio"

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