Failed to burn iMovie project, iDVD  "not responding"

A preemptive thanks for your time.
I am trying to burn iMovie projects through iDVD. I have done this successfully in the past. What happens now is after going through many of the steps up through Encoding Video, the process gets stuck when the status window says "Encoding Audio". No error message occurs or anything like that, the burn wheel stops spinning, and the "multicolored wheel of computer confusion" pops up. Needless to say this means that I am even more confused than the computer and examining the iDVD icon in the dock reveals that it is "not responding."
This same problem happens with two similar projects (one of which was burned successfully in the past.) I am using Sony DVD-R disks. The projects are the typical size for about 50 minutes of edited iMovie project (15GB).
HELP!

As Rich says:
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!
(The current record mentioned here for encoding a DVD with lots of added audio etc is 47 hours!)

Similar Messages

  • 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).
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    GigabitEthernet0/1         10.12.10.26     YES NVRAM  up                    up 
    Serial0/2/0                unassigned      YES NVRAM  down                  down
    Serial0/2/0.602            10.12.15.10     YES NVRAM  down                  down
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    RADIUS (Cisco Aironet)    
    RADIUS (Cisco BBSM)    
    RADIUS (Cisco IOS/PIX)    
    RADIUS (Cisco VPN 3000)    
    RADIUS (Cisco VPN 5000)    
    RADIUS (IETF)    
    RADIUS (Ascend)    
    RADIUS (Juniper)    
    RADIUS (Nortel)    
    RADIUS (iPass)    
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    I meant discussion points. (And NO, I don't want any
    myself, I got plenty already, but the other guys may
    want some...)
    Here's an extract of the e-mail notification
    letters:
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    really help.
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    completely.
    WHY SHOULD I DO THIS?
    In short, here are 3 reasons why it's worth a few
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    Lennart-
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  • DVD burner won't burn iMovie project

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    Click Here
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    Message was edited by: SDMacuser

  • How to burn imovie project on dvd

    Have just switched from PC to Mac - what's the Windows DVD Maker equivalent in Mac environment please ? I have an iMovie project that I'd like to burn onto a disc. Cheers, H.

    Have just switched from PC to Mac
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    shawnabe
    Re: Help - iMovie doesn't react anymore 
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    I had a heck of a time today trying to figure this out, spent about 12 hours. This string helped me the most. I had to go a few steps further to get a total fix for iMovie and my project and thought this might be useful for others who have similar problems w/ iMovie. I have been working on a particularly large project with many, many clips in one Event Folder. Today all of the sudden the sound and playback wouldn't respond when I hit the space bar, I couldn't view anything at all in the window viewer, eventually iMovie wouldn't open at all, and all I would get is the spinning beach ball. Had to force quit a hundred times. What worked for me was: 1. Freed up some space on my hard drive by pulling other events (which were not tied to any completed movies) to external HD. This may not have anything to do w/ the fix, but I ain't leavin it out after what I went through today.
    2. With imovie closed, found where the Event Folder and associated Project I have been working on were saved on the hard drive...in my case I had them saved on the ext. HD. I highlighted the Event Folder and Project File separately, right clicked on each and moved them to trash. Remember-you are not deleting them by moving them to trash, just do NOT hit "Empty Trash". (If you drag somewhere else other than trash it will only create a copy and can take longer)
    3. Followed John's advice above by going to User Library>Preferences folder and dragging the files named com.Apple.iMovie7.plist, and com.Apple.iMovie8.plist to my desktop. For me at this point I was able to open iMovie and navigate through my other events and projects. Space bar worked for sound and playback, viewer worked, iMovie running pretty efficiently.
    4. I then went into my Trash folder, right clicked on the Events Folder and Project File separately and selected "Put Back" which places them right back in former location. I closed iMovie and re-opened.
    What I found is that iMovie was not responding well because I had too many clips in one event folder. And with those same files now back in iMovie it will not take long for it to start acting funky. So I broke the event into 3 folders. While in iMovie I created 3 empty Event folders by clicking on File/new event (you might just need 2). I titled them Sports 1, Sports 2, Sports 3. Even though I still couldn't play or hear the Event clips/ project clips for this project, I was able to highlight approx 1/3 of the EVENT clips (not Project clips) by holding down the shift key and pointing the arrow/cursor across the appropriate clips. With the Sports Project back in iMovie, your Event folder should still show the green and orange highlights for your "favorite" and "imported" clips and should allow you to copy only those clips to the new, empty EVENT folders. Once I had highlighted and dragged the Event clips across 3 new event folders I was back to normal...can play, view, and hear all Event Clips and the Project clips. Best of all, I didn't have to re-start my project - of which I have spent a lot more than 12 hours on.  I hope this helps someone. Thanks to all on this string for pointing me in the right direction.  Shawn 
    I MAC, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

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