Error 34506 in iDVD - same as many others

Question

I have 127GB free space on the hard drive. All software is fully updated.
I too am having problems burning DVDs in iDVD. I have confirmed that the drive works Ok by creating a small project of a few slides in iMovie, and burning it successfully in iDVD.
I have created a 20 minute project in Final Cut Express HD (3.0.1) from DV imported direct from the camera and edited. This was exported as a Quicktime movie both as a reference movie and a self contained movie, with and without chapter markers. These were imported into iDVD and burns attempted.
At the end I got the message ‘Burning finished - Errors were found during the burning procees, The error #-34506 was reported’. The disc was ejected untouched. Occasionally I get a message ‘Multiplexer error’
I’ve tried various suggestions on the discussions pages such as dumping the cache folder (manually and using Onyx), iDVD plist, repairing permissions and restarting, but to no avail. I’ve tried creating a disk image in iDVD but get the same error code.
I use the same process at work on an old 800MHz iMac quite successfully. The only differences are the iMacs and the fact that I use Final Cut Pro at work. I’m puzzled.
Help!
iMac 20" 2.1GHz PowerPC G5   Mac OS X (10.4.3)   1.5Gb DDR2 SDRAM
iMac 20" 2.1GHz PowerPC G5   Mac OS X (10.4.3)   1.5Gb DDR2 SDRAM

Answer 1

This is the most promising thread on the 34506 error for some time, but could do with some fleshing out...
How should a iMovie/iDVD user go about deinterlacing a project?
I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to burn a number of slideshows to DVD with the following workflow:
1) 12 slideshows created as individual iMovie projects and output as full quality Quicktime.
2) Final iMovie project made by importing all 12 Quicktime files. Chapter markers placed at the start of each section (except at the very beginning).
3) Sent to iDVD using the iDVD button in iMovie. Theme and menu pictures added.
4) Create a disk image.
Obviously step 4) doesn't work right now (34506 error), although I can preview the final product in iDVD just great.
If I follow the way the latest threads are going, I should like to add a step between 1) and 2) to deinterlace the Quicktime movies and possibly change the output quality in 1). How should I do this and what programs should I use to get a good looking result?
Just to explain a bit about why I am using the workflow above: my project involves more than 1000 photos with transitions between each. My first attempted iMovie project used all the photos in one big project but iMovie became pretty slow and kept crashing. Splitting the show into smaller sections (~5-10 minutes running time each) alleviated the speed and reliability problems in iMovie but I wanted the option of viewing all the slide shows together as a single movie, hence the conversion to Quicktime files which I could easily handle in iMovie.
I noticed some time ago that if I output each of the 12 smaller projects as DV quality Quicktime rather than Full quality I could complete my workflow and produce a final DVD. The problem was that the resulting picture quality was awful when viewed on a TV, with a very low resolution. Some of the individual Full quality Quicktime movies can be written to disk through iMovie/iDVD as described above and the resulting disk looks great on TV - I just can't put all the movies together. I guess I could laboriously go through and work out which individual JPGs are causing the 34506 error by repeatedly dividing the movies but it would be far better if there was a single step that could be applied to every movie which fixes the problem - and deinterlacing may be that step.
Sorry for the long post, but I hope someone can help!
Simon