IDVD Burns Once, But Not Again

Question

I think I might be adding to the whole "iDVD not burning in the last minutes after hours of waiting" theme. The trouble the last couple of days I have been having is I get the first disk to burn and everything looks good. When it asks if i want to burn a second one, I say yes and put in another DVD (Sony). Then it starts to burn and just before the end (a minute or so away) and the whole thing freezes. It ejects the disc unburned. So I am totally stumped. It has done this twice now. I will look for a cleaner, but is there another issue? Thanks everyone. - Carlyle

Answer 1

Can you save your iDVD project as a disk image file?
From within your iDVD project, go to File->Save as Disk Image
This process looks like the burning and will take just as long for the encoding, but the end result is a disk image file, not a burned DVD disk. There are several advantages to saving your iDVD projects as disk image files.
It is more efficient and less stress on iDVD to burn your DVD disks from a disk image file.
You can save a disk image file and safely delete your iDVD project and all the media used in it since it is all encoded into the disk image file. This can save you drive space because usually a disk image file takes up less space than the project.
A disk image file can be transferred to an external drive or another computer.
It is a great backup for your project.
Many people have saved only the iDVD project and deleted the iMovie used in it and have been bitterly disappointed to discover that the iDVD project is useless without its media files available. An iDVD project should be thought of as a container with references to its media that iDVD pulls into the project just for the burn, but does not keep them there. The movies, photos and audio files remain where they are. If you move, change, rename or delete these, iDVD will not be able to locate them.
To create a disk image file:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/7.0/en/6733.html
If the file is successfully created, you can test that it is ok by clicking on the file to mount it (you don't have to do anything with the files you see) then opening DVD Player (in Applications). The project should begin playing. If the project plays correctly, then you can burn your DVD disks from it using Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities) following this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2087?viewlocale=en_US
If you are not able to create a disk image file that works, but you do already have a burned DVD-R disk that works, you can use it to create a disk image file and then use that file to burn more DVDs. See this for help with doing that:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2059?viewlocale=en_US
Other suggestions.....
Be sure you have enough free space for the burn. At least 20GB is recommended, but more is better
Use a recommended brand of DVD disk. Verbatim, Maxell and Taiyo Yuden are the most recommended here. I use Verbatim DVD-R and have never had a burn issue with them. I have occasionally use Sonys and they seem ok, too.
Burn the DVD disks at a slow speed to get a more consistent burn...usually 4x or less.
Post back if you have more questions.