HT1583 When burning a DVD of photos and music from iDVD, the photos blur right before the transitions and the music has about 5 second glitches here and there before the music starts again. Is there any way to burn the DVD without this happening?

Question

Each year I am in charge of making a slideshow of photos and music for my annual company meeting. I always use iDVD to set up my photos and music and then burn the DVD to play at the meeting. Every time I burn the DVD, it blurs right before the transition of the photo. It has always done this and I'm not sure why. It will also make the music glitch in a few spots for about 5 seconds or more. If I burn another DVD to try it again, the glitches will still be there, but in different spots. I've tried the highest quality of DVD's possible and this still happens. What can I do to fix this problem?

Answer 1

Try disabling transitions altogether!
There is a technical reason that this breakup happens - it is to do with how slideshows can be saved within the DVD specification, they can either be recorded as 'video streams' or as a collection of 'still images'.
When you add transitions iDVD has no option but to use a video stream, this can result in terrible 'breakup' because the mpeg 2 encoder isn't designed to handle scenes that are static with a sudden short change. You can see 'artefacts' in the video stream…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact
'Still image slideshows' avoid the issue altogether by only showing a static image, no video compression is used & because the scene doesn't transition so it shouldn't breakup.
NOTE: Music on the slideshow is irrelevant, both types can use a soundtrack.
I cannot remember if it is possible to force iDVD to only make still image slideshows, I always use DVD Studio Pro to correctly setup DVD's. I'd suggest you use the option to save the DVD to a disk image & then open that disk image so that DVD Player can preview it, that should save on the number of test disks you burn.
If you cannot make it avoid using video streams you may be ether off making your own video slideshow in iMovie & then import that into iDVD. It may eventually look better despite being a video stream!
iDVD isn't really condusive to professional levels of control.