IMovie export to iDVD takes FOREVER

Hey kids - need your help.
I've been digitizing home movies from a Sony Camcorder using the XtraView USB for Mac hardware. This produces a (massive) .mov file. I imported this file into iMovie 09 as an event, edited it, put in transitions, etc. I selected Share>iDVD and it exported to iDVD in a reasonable amount of time. In iDVD I tweaked Chapter menus, etc., and burned to disk. No problem.
Now here comes the issue...
Playing the disk back, I realize that I have a really bad interlacing issue. The XtraView HW/SW didn't give me an option to deinterlace, so I'm not terribly surprised, but it's bad enough to not be acceptable. Again, no worries, I used Handbrake to convert the movie to MP4 and deinterlace it along the way. The result was a much smaller, very nice, smooth-playing .mp4 (m4v) file.
When I import this file into iMovie, I can work with it, but the performance is terribly degraded. Not unusable, but noticeably slower. Now, when I've added my chapter markers, transitions, etc. and export to iDVD, it takes 19 HOURS to "Prepare content" and create movie.
I can only assume that this is an issue with the now H.264 file I used.
So my questions are:
- is there a better way to deinterlace the video?
- is there a different format I should be using for the movie file (e.g., FFMPEG?)
Thanks in advance for any help - this previously fun project has gotten incredibly frustrating.
- Roger

OK, I have a bit more data, and some success!
Using Handbrake I converted the original mov files to mpeg-4 files using the ffmpeg codec rather than the H.264, then imported them as events in iMovie. This time they imported quickly, were responsive when edited, and shared to iDVD quickly, completing in under an hour.
So it would seem that it is the H.264 format that does not play well with iMovie. Still curious if anyone has any suggestions/explanations as to why that may be, but at least for now the problem is resolved.

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Check out this article.
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000312.html
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Thinking out loud sort of:
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Hi
Can be a problem that get multiplied and visible when iDVD encode for DVD.
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B. When free space on Start-Up hard disk goes low - strange things like this might occure. I never go under 25Gb free space on this Start-Up Mac OS hard disk !
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Yours Bengt W

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has exported it successfully
has converted it from .m4v to .avi or .mpeg
has successfully burned it to a DVD-Video
has played it in a DVD-video player
tell me what software they used to achieve this.
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tell me what software they used to achieve this.
iDVD.
Apple sells iDVD on disk as part of iLife 11.
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With iDVD you can easily and quickly create DVDs with menus and graphics almost on the level of what Hollywood can do.
IDVD is a wonderful piece of software and well worth the low cost of $40.
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MC623Z-A-iLife-VERSION/dp/B003XKRZES/ref=sr_1_1?ie=U
IDVD remains a popular application in the Apple community. For a variety of obvious reasons Apple would prefer your movies to be stored on the cloud. Many people however prefer to have a physical copy, that they can possess, that is easily playable on over 700 million DVD players worldwide.

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IMovie export to iDVD takes FOREVER

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