IMovie-iDVD encoding error

Hi All,
Same story/different plot involving "there was an error during movie encoding". I made an iDVD from iMovie clips and extra .mp3 music clips. This DVD got burned and worked first time around. Then the DVD got a scratch and won't play from a certain point forward.
So when I resurrected the iDVD project, iMovie files, music, etc. it no longer works. Now it just says "there was an error during movie encoding". I'm not missing pieces of the puzzle because when I preview the project in iDVD, all the music, etc. is in place.
I have gone through the discussions over and over and changed things like clicking on and off "encode in background", changed from NTSC to PAL, deleted encoded assets, etc. The only effect these solutions have had is cycling through the movie longer but still eventually popping up the error message.
Unfortunately because I had already made the DVD, I had put it onto my external harddrive, so now I can't find my original iMovie project to re-export it to iDVD (even though the project is obviously somewhere).
Extra details: buring on a double-layer disc, project size 4.56GB, 21GB available on hard drive, using iDVD 7.1.2, Mac OS 10.6.8, 3GB RAM, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.
Any advice would be super helpful, it's almost more frustrating to know it worked before, but not anymore.
Thanks!

So when I resurrected the iDVD project, iMovie files, music, etc.
Did you make any edits to the project before trying to reburn it?  If so that creates a problem with iDVD preventing a successful encode.  It's best to start over with a new project and add the media, i.e. movies, stills, etc., again.
Then follow this workflow to help ensure the best quality final product:
Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the  File ➙ Save as Disk Image  menu option.  This will separate the encoding process from the burn process. 
To check the encoding mount the disk image and launch DVD Player and play it.  If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding was good.
Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality.  Always use top quality media:  Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.
Will the DVD disk play on your Mac with DVD Player?  Sometimes the Mac is more forgiving than set top DVD players.  If you can try to create a disk image of the DVD disk with Disk Utiltiy.  If you can then play it with DVD Player to make sure it plays thru completely.  If that's successfull then you can burn a new disk with Disk Utility.
OT

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