IDVD OneStep not consistently burning the full file

Question

We are using a process at work where the user uses an external drive to capture a meeting with a camcorder (straight to the drive)that varies from 30 minutes to 2 hours in length. The files are quicktime files and using the OneStep process it is pretty simple for our users to create the DVD with minimal intervention. The problem is that recently (or they never noticed it before), the DVD created is only 30 or so minutes long when the source QT file was 60 minutes long. There is plenty of disk space on the both the external drive and the laptop. I've tried different brands of media, blown away the plist, etc. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. iDVD is at the latest rev (7.0.4 I believe) and I'm running out of ideas to try short of going back to an earlier version of iDVD. Has anyone seen this kind of problem or have any suggestions? Thanks.

Answer 1

It sounds like you are not using the correct encloding setting for the ;length of movie:
iDVD encoding settings:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/7.0/en/11417.html
Short version:
Best Performance is for videos of up to 60 minutes
Best Quality is for videos of up to 120 minutes
Professional Quality is also for up to 120 minutes but even higher quality (and takes much longer)
Professional Quality: The Professional Quality option uses advanced technology to encode your video, resulting in the best quality of video possible on your burned DVD. You can select this option regardless of your project’s duration (up to 2 hours of video for a single-layer disc and 4 hours for a double-layer disc). Because Professional Quality encoding is time-consuming (requiring about twice as much time to encode a project as the High Quality option, for example) choose it only if you are not concerned abo
In both cases the maximum length includes titles, transitions and effects etc. Allow about 15 minutes for these.
You can use the amount of video in your project as a rough determination of which method to choose. If your project has an hour or less of video (for a single-layer disc), choose Best Performance. If it has between 1 and 2 hours of video (for a single-layer disc), choose High Quality. If you want the best possible encoding quality for projects that are up to 2 hours (for a single-layer disc), choose Professional Quality. This option takes about twice as long as the High Quality option, so select it only if time is not an issue for you.
Use the Capacity meter in the Project Info window (choose Project > Project Info) to determine how many minutes of video your project contains.
NOTE: With the Best Performance setting, you can turn background encoding off by choosing Advanced > “Encode in Background.” The checkmark is removed to show it’s no longer selected. Turning off background encoding can help performance if your system seems sluggish.
And whilst checking these settings in iDVD Preferences, make sure that the settings for NTSC/PAL and DV/DV Widescreen are also what you want.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US