iDVD4 background encoding w/ 2 hour movie HELP

[NP3]

I just picked up iDVD so i can burn a (couple minutes under) 2 hour home movie. Its a lot faster than version 3 BUT.....

In preferences, i noticed when its in the 2 hour "best quality" mode background encoding is grayed out.
I'm running a slow machine (G4 sawtooth, yes, i know its very slow for dvds, but i've done it before, i'm patient :) ) and i could benefit from background encoding :).

Anybody else see this or did i miss something?

[wbrowne1]

I could be wrong, but...

I believe that the new option (Best quality) is a Variable Bit Rate encoder, or at least one that can adjust the compression ratio to any duration, rather than only 60, 90, or 120 min.

This means that once your project is complete, it will put all your footage together and figure out what level of compression will use the whole disc to hold your movies.

At the very least, for any given movie length, the least amount of compression needed to fit the movie on the disc will be used.

Unfortunately, iDVD must look at the entire set of contents for the disc before figuring out how much to compress the video = no background encoding :(

In the end, the results will be worth it, but given your sawtooth's um... 'maturity' it will come at a bit of a penalty.

hope that helps. :)

[NP3]

ohhhh ok ya, that totally makes sense. Didn't think of that. thanks. :)