IDVD won't ecode audio, 'not responding' = force quit

Question

IDVD 6 /10.4.7/MACPRO
iDVD won't encode audio portion from iMovie had off.
original iMovie from DV camera, iMove encodes QT, etc
iDVD encodes video ( as noted by time bar) but when it gets to the audio portion it stops responding and then I have to forcve quit.
repaired persmissions, and delited the iDVD.plist
any thing I can do? iDVD 6 is the first time I used this after update

Answer 1

Scooper,
iDVD is "not" slow (nor fast) encoding (actually transcoding) audio. iDVD relies on the Quicktime framework. iDVD invokes an external library from the set of resources provided by QT.
If the encoding appears to be slow. It may find its root in various origins. First, MacOSX is a Unix system. Unix is not "preemptive". It means that access to resources occurs thanks to a "good will" mode between processes (to make things short). So, it may appear that some processes are stale, but things are usually well under control (by the kernel). So, don't be hasty in killing a process reported as "not responding".
If you consider that the encoding process takes too much time, there are ways to make things better. First: More RAM. No workaround to that. Give some room to your Mac. Keep also in mind to keep free room on hard drive at least equal to 2 1/2 times the amount of RAM of your system. The Unix kernel of your Mac handles a "swap" that is used to virtually create an amount of RAM larger than what your system physically has. The kernel simply uses your hard-drive as buffer to store copies of RAM blocks occupied by portions of code or data not currently active. If all this is too small, the kernel will spend an awful amount of time dealing with the short space (RAM + free disk space for swap).
One way to figure out if you're in such case is to use one of the many administration tools available to you. Open Terminal (or a X11 xterm) and type 'top' (without quotes).
Check the last line of the header for the "pageouts" indicator. If the number in parenthesis is not zero (0), repeatedly, it means that your kernel is swapping memory block from the physical RAM to the virtual RAM stored on the hard drive (swapping).
Hit 'q' to quit top. You can also try 'top -o cpu'. This will get you which process is currently running requesting the most CPU resources. Normally, on a Unix system, if one process needs CPU and is mostly the only one at the moment asking for CPU, it can be allocated most of the available CPU time and jumps to over 80%. If you consider this "abnormal", just look at the "Load Avg." indicator. It tells you how many processes are "waiting" for their turn to access the CPU - it's averaged throughout the time, through 3 numbers. Remember the "good will" mechanism. If it remains low (up to 3, for a household Mac), then, do not worry. If it goes above, then try to quit some other user applications. An idle system reports numbers below 1.
These few sysadmin tips will tell you a lot about your system's health. Perhaps, you'll figure out by yourself what's wrong. For sure, not iDVD
Try perhaps upgrading to QT 7. There are benefits to that.
T.