Why is it taking SO long to export?

Question

I have trying to export a project for a week now. This is footage that I got from my Canon HDV camera. It is something that I got off of my DVR. Quality looks fine on my computer but by the time that I get it to a DVD it looks awful. First thing I tried was to just put it on the media server to get it to iDVD. I used the medium setting. Took 2 hours to export a 40 minute project. So after doing that with another project I exported them to iDVD. It told me I had to have a Dual Layer DVD just to fit two 40 minute videos, plus it had to encode them. So I thought I would try to just use Quicktime export. I made sure that it was not being compressed by Quicktime. I start to export and it take about 40 minutes, then that bar disappears and a new one begins to creep across, it says the estimated time is 5000 minutes. Granted it is counting down pretty quickly but I come back about 30 minutes later and it is only about 10% of the way done.
I'm getting really frustrated here. I should be able to fit full quality video that is only 80 minutes on a standard DVD. Even if I can't I should be able to fit 80 minutes of full video on a DL DVD without compressing it. Why is this so hard? Any ideas?

Answer 1

Took 2 hours to export a 40 minute project.
Previous version of iMovie rendered each transition, title, special effect, as a physical file (which is why rendering took so long), stored it in your project, updated a "reference" file which represented the current status of your timeline. iMovie '08, on the other hand, performs all of it rendering at the time of export and then compresses the file for your selected export specification.
So after doing that with another project I exported them to iDVD. It told me I had to have a Dual Layer DVD just to fit two 40 minute videos, plus it had to encode them.
Sounds like you forgot to change your iDVD output mode from the 60-minute HQ mode to the extended 90-mode here. Remember iDVD encodes to MPEG2/PCM and not MPEG2/AC3.
I start to export and it take about 40 minutes, then that bar disappears and a new one begins to creep across, it says the estimated time is 5000 minutes.
First bar was probably for the "menu" and the second was probably for the movie content. BTW, do you have have iDVD set to encode in the background or to begin encoding only when you manually start the burn process?