Thanks to all, but giving up on Mac and going back to windows. Had enough!!

Question

Thanks to all who have tried to assist with my issues with Mac movie and burning.
In short, I have made a 105 minute movie which includes photos with transitions, video, some titles and backing track, music. When I "share" the movie to Quicktime, it plays just fine. When I create a DVD in IDVD and then burn to a blank DVD, it does not play correctly on DVD players.
Specifically, the sound track is erratic in volume, cuts out in parts, or the DVD crackles up and is jolty.
ALTHOUGH it does play just fine in the Mac DVD player (not much good to those smart people that don't have a Mac).
Based on a lot of feedback on this forum I have tried:
- creating disk image (works fine) but has same issue during play back on standard DVD
- using verbatim quality disks
- using professional quality in project properties
- Simplifying the menu option
- Ensuring I avoid drop zones when putting movie into IDVD
- Ensuring I have minimum 25GB of free hard disk space (actually have over 140GB)
- and most recently, changing the BURN SPEED to 1X.
Changing the burn speed to 1X did actually mean that the DVD played back fine on one of our DVD players. ALthough subsequent copies have cracked up a bit towards the end of the DVD.
When we try it in different DVD players, we tend to get different issues!!!!
Given that we are wanting to distribute the DVD to other families, we do not know what they are going to get. ie. it plays back differently on each DVD player we try.
Never used to have same issues with windows, plus find IMovie very limited in what you can do.
Back to windows for the next DVD, write this one of as a bad experience and a waste of money buying the IMac. Will NOT be recommending Mac at all.

Answer 1

How new is your iMac? I wonder if you have a bad burner. What you describe in terms of different players playing discs differently is really odd. I have authored over 40 DVDs of family stuff, DVDs for the soccer team I coach, etc. all on the Mac and without any problems with any player I've tried, and family members have used them as well without problems.
If you just bought the iMac you might consider seeing if they will replace the superdrive, though it sounds like you have made the decision to go back to Windows. From everything I hear (and no, not just from Mac people), Windows software is very challenging to use and yields very limited results - but good luck to you if you go that route.