iDVD G5 Really really slow

[gallagb]

ok- i've browsed the forums a bit-
here's my issue and here's my machine

updated iDVD 4.01 or whatever the latest is (not the new iLife)
Dual G5 1.8
2.25GB ram
Superdrive internal...etc
(not sure on speed)

trying to burn a movie- made in iMovie
i acctually have 2 different films i'm trying to burn
one 44 odd min
the other 21 odd min

and the prbm is that it takes FOREVER-

i've browsed the forums and found people are saying that their machines do this from 4-7 hrs
when the video is longer than 1 hour
(in other words the encoding process takes time once you hit 'burn' if the video is longer than an hour)
i get this-

however- both of mine are UNDER an hour
and it seemingly takes forever

i havn't acctually successfully burned a DVD yet
some other co-workers who have used the machine- have left it running overnite to burn a video just over an hour and it just kinda froze.

any clues, hints, ideas to make things faster?

how long should it take for a 45 min movie?
w/ no real fancy stuff (songs in menu's...etc)

thanks!

 

[bigandy]

i've used iDVD on a few different machines, and it's a get a cup of tea job. but not just that. it's go for a 200 mile round trip for a dinner job.

it takes aagggggggeeeesss to encode the menus and dvd video.

just sit on your hands, let it do it, it'll be fine. just slow.

from my experience, the encoding takes 2.5 times the length of your movie, if you're using a fast machine, longer on a G4 etc etc.

 

[djbahdow01]

If it takes a long time to encode and stuff there are a few things you could do.
1. Let the movie encode in the background and then hit burn.
2. If the burn seems to hang at step 3 or 4, cancel and try to burn it again. Sometimes it burns in no time at all.

I should know i tryed to burn an 8 minute video and it took 6 hours and it still didn't burn it. I canceled and then hit burn again and it pumped it out in like 15 minutes. Granted that 8 minute video was the first time i used iDVD but I don't think it should have taken that long. I have done a 59 minute video and let it background encode, and then burn and not sure how long it took as i just walked away from it to let it do its business but it went on the first try.
BTW im working on a Dual 2.5 with 512 Ram. So i have the speed.

 

[Jovian9]

If your DVD is going to be longer than an hour then you will have to hit burn and let it encode and burn. When I do this on my 1.8GHz iMac G5 with 1.5GB RAM it usually takes 4 hours. I set the processor performance to highest and let it work without ever using the computer. I had a lot of problems trying this on my iMac G4 with 768MB RAM with iDVD4.

If your DVD is less than an hour let it fully encode before you burn. Check the status and after it has finished encoding save it and click burn. Usually takes around an hour for me.

I always save my media files and iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, Audio, Video, Photo files on a seperate partition or external hard drive. My OSX partition does the work while the others hold the media.

 

[Horrortaxi]

You don't have a problem, it just takes a long time to create a DVD. Most of the time is spent encoding your assets and multiplexing. The actual burning is just 30-40 minutes at the end of all that.

4 hours sounds about right. It doesn't matter much whether the movie is 50 minutes or 70. There's not anything to do to speed it up. Just be patient.

 

[gallagb]

just sit on your hands, let it do it, it'll be fine. just slow.

will take the advice

thanks all

thanks for the pointer bout puttin the processor on max- i hadn't thought of that- maybe it'll help a ton

 

[gallagb]

quick update

basically: it worked!
and you all were right

just sit tight

so- thanks for the pointers!

 

[Daveway]

So is iDVD5 faster than 4? iDVD 4 is painfully slow.

 

[veedubdrew]

The interface is faster, but encoding still takes a long time. The biggest benefit is that iDVD 5 gives you very accurate progress meters so you know exactly where you are in the encoding process. Some of the more elaborate menus take longer than the following video to encode (didn't know this before the progress meters). iDVD 5 even shows you each frame that it's working on in a little thumbnail window. It makes authoring DVDs much more palatable. You can also "burn" an iDVD project to a disk image, and burn the image to disk (very fast) whenever you want. I like this method a lot better so that i don't make a $2 coaster when trying to burn a DVD.

-Drew

So is iDVD5 faster than 4? iDVD 4 is painfully slow.

 

[maya]

That is why Apple released the Mac mini, so you can encode iDVD projects.

 

[zimtheinvader]

DvdSP!!! 10minute build/burn!!

Wow, I thought it was just my machine being a Rev A or 10.3 or something, its intriguing to know idvd takes forever on other G5s as well! I could have sworn that there's also minimal performance improvement in imovie on my G4-800 vs the PMG5-2.0...

Anyway, I would highly reccomend Apple's Dvd Studio Pro as an alternative on the G5 duals. Fast as hell+no freezes/instability/locking up Powermac!!! Really its simply amazingly fast and efficient by comparison, visably playing to the advantages of dual G5s.