iDVD hmm not sure about this

[azza2988]

hi ppl, i wonder how long should it take to do a dvd with iDVD? i got 3 video files around 366mb each it says going to take around 5 hours is that right? i got imac i7 thought bit damn long, on my vista laptop i can do same dvd in around a hour easy and a lot lower spec than my imac

 

[spinnerlys]

Are those 366 MB files highly compressed videos, .avi or .mp4 (Divx/Xvid or H264) for example?
How long in minutes are those videos?

Have a look at Activity Monitor ( Applications / Utilities / ) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see how much CPU iDVD uses.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

"How to maximise your MacRumors troubleshooting experience" created by mad jew in 2006​

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Have you also taken a look at MRoogle, since that question may have been asked several times?

Example: iDVD takes 5 hours to make a DVD with 3x YY min of video on an i7 iMac

 

[azza2988]

there all xvid is that why they take ages on the mac? on the activity screen it showing around 300% cpu

 

[spinnerlys]

there all xvid is that why they take ages on the mac?

How long are those videos? Each is 42 to 45 minutes I suppose? Any you want to burn it to a Single Layer (SL) DVD (4.7GB, 4.37GiB), thus 126 to 135 minutes of video are crammed into 4.7GB? If that is so, then iDVD needs to work very hard, as the MPEG-2 codec is not as efficient as the MPEG-4 codec variants (like Xvid or Divx or H264), thus it normally takes up more space (150 minutes on 8.5GB/7.9GiB).
Have you also taken a look at Activity Monitor or "How to maximise your MacRumors troubleshooting experience"

 

[azza2988]

yea roughly around 45mins each, i put on professional quality to fit on single dvd the others make it too big and doesnt fit

 

[spinnerlys]

yea roughly around 45mins each, i put on professional quality to fit on single dvd the others make it too big and doesnt fit

What does Activity Monitor say (three times the charm?) during the encoding process?

And again, 135 minutes of a SL DVD is too much, unless you want low quality, something Professional Quality seems to be the opposite of.
Either use Dual Layer (DL) DVDs (8.5GB/7.9GiB) or only take two videos for an SL DVD or choose a lower quality setting.

And have that look at Activity Monitor during one of those encoding processes to see if it takes advantage of all the four cores.

 

[azza2988]

i got it on now the most its been is 322 and keeps average of around 320 - 300 cpu

 

[azza2988]

its just dropped from 5hr 30mins to 1hr 49 mins