iDVD doesn't finish burning. Also "Untitled DVD.fpbf"

[dudleybrooks]

(Snow Leopard 10.6.8)

When I used iDVD a month ago, every time I would attempt to burn, it would eject the disk near the end of the procedure and I would have to cancel Burn and start from scratch with a second disk to get it to complete correctly. This happened repeatedly; it was as if odd-numbered attempts would fail and even-numbered attempts would succeed. Meanwhile the disks which had been ejected before completing would show up as being named "Untitled DVD.fpbf" when I reinserted them.

Today when I try to burn from iDVD, *every* time I try, the disk is ejected before the burn completes, and *all* disks show as "Untitled DVD.fpbf" -- including an entire brand-new box of DVDs. (CDs also show up as "Untitled DVD.fpbf". And perhaps they were all showing up that way a month ago but I only noticed it when iDVD ejected them early.)

From other threads I learned that fpbf indicates a burn file, so I thought that maybe iDVD is creating/showing the disk as a burn file, and if I right-clicked it and selected Burn, it would finish burning the DVD. But instead I got the warning message "Are you sure you want to create an empty DVD?"

If I drag files to the empty DVD (or CD) and then click Burn, it works fine. But I still can't get iDVD to actually create a disk, either as a physically finished disk or even as a burn file. What gives? How should I now use iDVD?

 

[lmontoya30]

I have had same issue with mixed results on solution

Something I have done to get it to burn correctly is delete the project. And start from scratch. This has worked 95% of the time. Make sure you make any project info changes first.

My issue right now is burning a double layer DVD. My project file size is 4.4GB and I am having the same issue you are with this big project.

Hope my info helps and you are able to burn your projects.

 

[dudleybrooks]

I don't understand. If I delete the project and start from scratch, how (and why) do I "make project info changes"? In other words, how do I save the changes other than in the project itself (which I am deleting), and, if there is some other way to save them, how do I use them if I am starting from scratch?

 

[lmontoya30]

What I mean is to make any changes in your quality or DVD size options first. This is located in the Project info screen. This should be done first thing before adding any files to the project.

Other wise just delete the project and start from scratch.

Hope I made myself clear.

 

[dudleybrooks]

OK ... but why?

 

[lmontoya30]

Because that what has worked for me.

I have had projects that I have had to change the quality to make it fit. And the same goes for the DVD blank disc size.

 

[dudleybrooks]

Ah! OK. However, that's not the problem I'm having; the projects I couldn't burn were tiny.

And now it turns out that iDVD is probably not the problem anyway; the last paragraph in my initial posting is no longer true: I can no longer burn a DVD no matter how I try, either dragging and dropping and trying to burn, or trying to copy a disk by making a disk image and trying to burn the image to a new disk.

I won't know whether the problem is the DVD burner or the OS (that .fpbf extension on every blank disk) until I find someone else with a Mac and try burning those same disks on his burner. I do know that the behavior of the OS calling blank disks "Untitled DVD.fpbf" began at the same time as the inability to burn files from iDVD.

 

[lmontoya30]

One last thing that might help

I had an issue like you first mentioned, and I got it to work yesterday.

Here is what I did.

(Ok I got it to work last night.
Here is what I did and it worked.

I deleted all the previous encoding that was done.
I saved it and waited one day.
The next day I created an image file of it, instead of burning it.
The next day I just tried burning again from the iDVD screen. And it worked.
I did not burn from the image file.
I do not think that the waiting days inbetween made a difference.
But this is how I did it.

The burn took less than two hrs on a double layer DVD, the file size was 4.4GB. And it worked in my DVD player.)

I would advise you to buy a Blank DVD from ebay and try it then. I have bought my DVD's from ebay and they have all worked. Do it might not be that.

 

[mchalebk]

I don't have any suggestions for these specific issues. However, I do have a suggestion that might help limit the hassle with burning DVDs with iDVD: have iDVD create a disc image instead of actually burning the DVD. (I think it's Save as Disc Image under the File menu.)

This way, iDVD will do all the hard work of rendering the video, and you then use Disc Utility to burn the disc. This really cut down on the number of times I wasted blank discs and, if something goes wrong with the burn at least you don't have to re-render the video(s).