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iDVD4 Frustrations!! Can't do a 2-hour DVD!!!

Originally posted by Lanbrown
Blue, green, red what ever for two hours takes less room, then a non-action packed movie, which takes less than an action packed movie. ... My statement is correct.
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I wasn't attacking your comment, I was trying to point out something that everybody here seems to be ignoring--that iDVD has (or should have, if they're using a decent VBR encoder, which I assume they are) complete and total control of exactly how much space any chunk of video will take up on disc. The amount of motion, length of the video, or anything else doesn't enter into it--it decides how much storage space the final result will be.

Quality, of course, can suffer greatly depending on what's on the disc--if there's a lot of fire or something, two hours of video could look awful. If it's all one stillframe, it'll be two spectacular looking hours of stillframe. It could also, if Apple set it that way, fix six hours of fire onto a DVD, it'd just be a blocky mess for the entire six hours.

My point here is, this is a bug, and the bug isn't likely with the encoder itself, and I'll bet it doesn't relate to the resulting file not fitting on the DVD--it's probably something else entirely that only shows up on certain video clips, or relates to something specific in this user's setup/files.

crazyeddie had the best stuggestion--try messing with your source files or something along those lines.

For reference, I love iDVD and use it, and a few bugs in a $50 piece of software that should cost $300 (particularly when you factor in iMovie, Garage Band, etc) isn't surprising. But for those talking software design, take a look at FFMpeg; I can feed it a source file of any length or amount of motion, and tell it to export a video file in a number of formats, including MPEG2, with an EXACT average bitrate (thus resulting file size), and it will do so. The result might be exceedingly ugly, but it's possible to set very strict limits and have them adhered to. FFMpeg is just a $35 wrapper for a bunch of freeware tools.
 
If VBR encoding is used, the software can't know how much space is required until it starts to encode. If the movie the OP was creating took more than 4.7GB, how would it burn it to the disk. He was using time alone as the basis.
 
Originally posted by Lanbrown
If VBR encoding is used, the software can't know how much space is required until it starts to encode.
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Yes, it can. At least, sort of. If it was single pass VBR, as iTunes uses, then you're absolutely right, and I wasn't mentioning that--you set a minimum bitrate (and usually a maximum), and the software increases the bitrate of parts to keep the quality high in those areas. It won't know exactly how big the resulting file will be until it's done, although it can set upper and lower limits.

Two (or-more) pass VBR (which, again, I believe iDVD 4 uses) can choose an exact final file size. It goes through once, finds the areas with more motion and the ones with less, then sets the bitrate for each of those areas to a level that, when you total everything up, will produce a file of exactly [x] bytes when finished.

Again, if you want to see it in action, download ffmpeg and try encoding some MPEG or MPEG2 video; it'll produce a file of exactly the average bitrate you tell it to, so long as you're doing a 2-pass encode.

Maybe I'm wrong about by assumption that iDVD 4 does 2-pass VBR, in which case this "doesn't fit" problem is a lot more likely to happen. iDVD still shouldn't just up and crash--it should say "sorry, this video is too long"--but not fitting would make more sense.
 
Re: Question?

Originally posted by MacAficionado
Can you burn a 2 hour DVD with software that is included with your Windows operating system?

Get Roxio Toast Titanium and you should be able to do it.
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What does that have to do with anything? I love how whenever anybody complains about a feature on Mac software that doesn't work, somebody else on this forum automatically has to play the "why don't you try it on Windows" card.

Save it.

Furthermore, the fact that the software is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things (only $49) is totally irrelevant. It's not an excuse for when it doesn't work properly.
 
I'm not seeing why several people seem to have a need to defend what is apparently a simple and annoying bug in iDVD 4, at least on MattG's system.

This seems to be turning into some sort of weird argument, for no reason at all. He's not trying to do something unreasonable, just asking for some tech help, same as I've asked about Word font problems or instability of an older version of Thoth on dual processor systems.

The response should be either "I can do it fine with everything I've tried, so there's probably an issue with your system--try repairing permissions, or re-doing the source file, or maybe putting the data on a different hard drive." or "Yeah, I've seen that happen too. Apparently there's either a bug in iDVD with near-2hr files, or Apple's claim of 2hrs was a bit optimistic in some cases."

End of story. There's no need to get defensive about what iDVD can, can't, should, or shouldn't do. This poor guy's system isn't working quite the way he expects, and he's asking for help.

It's possible it's a design flaw, in which case Apple should fix it so the software doesn't crash, and maybe put a little disclaimer of "up to 2 hours" somewhere. The issue isn't that it can or can't do 2 hours, it's that Apple says it can but seems to be crashing in the attempt. Or it might not even be an iDVD bug--it could be a corrupt video file, a disk problem, or a bad install.

Here are some alternate suggestions:

As the useful half of MacAficionado's post said, Toast Titanium can do some useful things with DVDs, and might be worth a shot. Reinstalling iDVD, if you haven't already, might also be worth a shot, as might digging up its cache and preference files and deleting them--corruption does, occasionally, happen.

I recently had some issues with iDVD 3 crashing which seemed to be resolved by running the daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts. There are tools like Panther Cache Cleaner to be found at VersionTracker that will help you do those things.

Finally, a combination of ffmpeg and a couple of other shareware tools and/or Toast will let you do just about anything you want with DVDs, but it's a LOT of work. Once you get the hang of it, though, it can work pretty well.

[disclaimer: I really wasn't trying to insult or offend anybody in this or any of my previous posts. I was trying to explain something about the way video encoding works, to point out that this isn't necessarily just a normal side effect of MPEG2 encoding on various video sources. I'm now also wondering why several people are getting defensive about someone looking for help with a smallish bug--far less than the issues many people had with iMovie 3, for example--in what is otherwise a spectacular piece of software. End rant.]
 
I agree with you MattG. What is up with all the bashing anyway? If they say it fits two hours, it should. If not, then do not say it does, that simple. If they said it would support 1 hour and 45 minutes, then MattG would not be here complaining. He is just asking for a little help and everyone is basically calling him an ass.:confused:
 
Originally posted by Makosuke
I'm not seeing why several people seem to have a need to defend what is apparently a simple and annoying bug in iDVD 4, at least on MattG's system.

This seems to be turning into some sort of weird argument, for no reason at all. He's not trying to do something unreasonable, just asking for some tech help, same as I've asked about Word font problems or instability of an older version of Thoth on dual processor systems.
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How is it a bug? 2-hours may or may not equal 4.7GB. If the 2-hours takes less than 4.7GB then it will fit, if it takes more it won't. That's what MattG fails to see. While it would be nice to be more informative about it not fitting, Apple would have a hard time making every two-hour project fit. Undesirable results would probably get produced as well.

He already has his answer. The consensus here is the same as what Apple told him.
 
Well then Steve Jobs should have said, "In some cases you can fit up to two hours of video." It is too bad that iDVD cannot say that it is too large prior to burning. I understand it cannot until it encodes everything, but it would be great if it would.
 
Originally posted by Lanbrown
How is it a bug? 2-hours may or may not equal 4.7GB. If the 2-hours takes less than 4.7GB then it will fit, if it takes more it won't. That's what MattG fails to see. While it would be nice to be more informative about it not fitting, Apple would have a hard time making every two-hour project fit. Undesirable results would probably get produced as well.

He already has his answer. The consensus here is the same as what Apple told him.
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No, I don't fail to see that. I know you can't fit more than 4.7gb on a DVD. Again, what's unacceptable is the fact that the program will lead you to believe that you can fit two hours on a DVD, encode it for three hours, and then crash without giving so much as a reason why. THAT IS A BUG.
 
Hey, I had iDVD 4 crash on me, on my first DVD - a TWELVE-MINUTE video. I have over 100GB free disk space and 896MB RAM, fresh install of iLife 4.

There is no excuse for iDVD to "quit unexpectedly" in this manner, no matter how long or short the video is. There is no excuse for any software to crash in this manner under any circumstances.

The software has reported its bug to Apple. We will have to wait for a fix.
 
Originally posted by MattG
No, I don't fail to see that. I know you can't fit more than 4.7gb on a DVD. Again, what's unacceptable is the fact that the program will lead you to believe that you can fit two hours on a DVD, encode it for three hours, and then crash without giving so much as a reason why. THAT IS A BUG.
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It can't know until it encodes. It has no idea how much space will be used prior to encoding. So footage takes more room then others. An error would be nice. So you only have one thing to complain about it.
 
Originally posted by Lanbrown
It can't know until it encodes. It has no idea how much space will be used prior to encoding. So footage takes more room then others. An error would be nice. So you only have one thing to complain about it.
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how does iDVD have a way to figure out if there's an error until it's encoded everything. i swear its not a bug, its something you cant do anything about unless you freakin give iDVD magical powers that let it see into the future.
 
The complaint here seems to be that the program crashes. That's a bug. There's really no reasonable way to argue that a program crashing is not a bug. There may be no way to keep it from FAILING, but that is not the same thing as crashing. If it comes upon some insurmountable hurdle, fine, it happens. That's kinda how the universe works. But that is no way an excuse for the program to simply crash. Hopefully it will be fixed. Even a kludge like "Woops, we can't encode this next bit.. do you want to burn what we have so far, or skip this next bit and try the one after, or dash it all and try again?" would be a major improvement. All software has bugs. I think everyone is reasonable enough to know that. But refusing to admit a bug is a bug doesn't help anyone.
 
Originally posted by Lanbrown
It can't know until it encodes. It has no idea how much space will be used prior to encoding. So footage takes more room then others. An error would be nice. So you only have one thing to complain about it.
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An error message should be mandatory, not just nice.

Sure, some footage takes more room than other footage but for it to spend three hours, not checkpoint anything so that you could pick a stopping point and write to DVD, that is a huge design flaw. For you to waste three hours completely is absurd, even for the price of the application. If that's acceptable to people here, we have far too many people willing to accept Windows-quality failures.
 
Very concise explanation, IndyGopher--crashing is not an acceptable mode of failure for software, period. If it were, then we should've all been happy with OS9 bringing down the whole OS every time Netscape died.

Corrupt data is hard to predict or deal with, so crashes due to bad data be very difficult to avoid, but if this is really a fundamental bug in iDVD (which isn't clear to me), is not a situation in which crashing is even close to acceptable--an error message should be produced. That's what I do when I write software that runs out of space to do its job, and what 10.3 or Photoshop do, as well, when they run out of virtual memory scratch disk.

One more point: Lanbrown and übergeek, please go back and read my previous posts. iDVD absolutely, positively, can know exactly how much space it's going to use on a DVD. There are ways of encoding (single-pass VBR) that do produce a file of variable length, but the "better performance" option of iDVD 4 and any option of iDVD 1, 2, or 3, (all of which are constant bitrate, CBR) all produce a file of a fixed size based only on the length of the material, and iDVD 4's "better quality" option, if it uses 2-pass VBR encoding, also is quite capable of choosing an exact size for a resulting file.

Saying that software cannot encode a given chunk of video to fit an exact final size is simply not correct. It's possible iDVD can't do it if it's not using a good algorythm (single pass VBR or a weak 2-pass algorythm), but it is certainly not a technical impossibility.
 
Originally posted by Makosuke
One more point: Lanbrown and übergeek, please go back and read my previous posts. iDVD absolutely, positively, can know exactly how much space it's going to use on a DVD. (snip)
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i have read them, and other people made good points too, some I will point out in my post.
Speaking as a (still learning) programmer, I honestly think you guys are really being rough...the fact that iDVD wont give you an error message, bitching about that is like complaning that OS X doesnt give you a warning before your computer kernel panics or something. It's unfortunate but its not always possible to get everything you want, regardless of whether or not it was promised...
And yeesh, iDVD isnt even $50...the entire iLife suite is $50, even less with discounts, free with new computers, and you people are bitching about imperfect software (admittedly with bugs). If you wanted something more powerful than iDVD you should have gotten another app like Apple's DVDSP or Adobe Encore, not iDVD/iLife.
Or you could have at least sent feedback to Apple so they can fix it in an iDVD update.
Oh and by the way...I found this on Apple's iDVD site...
Put up to two hours of pro quality video on one DVD
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fyi, *up to* means *up to* not *exactly* or *about*.
 
Originally posted by übergeek
Speaking as a (still learning) programmer, I honestly think you guys are really being rough...the fact that iDVD wont give you an error message, bitching about that is like complaning that OS X doesnt give you a warning before your computer kernel panics or something. It's unfortunate but its not always possible to get everything you want, regardless of whether or not it was promised...
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This whole discussion, although interesting, really doesn't help MattG, which is too bad, and I really hope it's not turning into a fight--I'd rather think of it as a technical discussion. So, pointless as it is to make them, a few more points.

1) Good point on Apple's marketing; although you could argue that "up to 2 hours" means that two hours will fit, it certainly doesn't explicitly guarantee that 2 hours will fit. It should, but that would mean they're not technically breaking their promise.

2) Yes, iDVD is an inexpensive piece of software that does a heck of a lot for the money. And, bugs, particularly in low-end consumer software, are bound to happen. That doesn't change the fact that it is a bug, and one hopes one that will either be worked around or Apple will fix in an update. I don't take issue with the existance of bugs or people trying to fix them, I take issue when people insist that a bug isn't a bug.

Trying to find a work around or fix for a bug does not qualify as "bitching" in my book--it's what software troubleshooters, like me, do. Assuming it's not a problem with MattG's specific setup (in which case what's the point in defending iDVD when the crash wasn't even really it's fault to begin with), then the alternative to a work around would be to report it to Apple and hope they fix it.

2) OSX shouldn't need to give you a warning before it panics, because if it is written properly, and no uncontrollable external factors affect it (electromagnetic corruption of the contents of RAM, bad hardware attached, a physical processor problem, disk corruption, or a low-level 3rd party utility tampering with the normal operation of the system), it should NEVER panic. A kernel panic is an indication that the OS has completely failed, and if that wasn't caused by hardware, then the OS has failed to do it's job because of a programming error.

For practical purposes, bugs in large-scale consumer software are almost unavoidable, hence application crashes and kernel panics will occasionally occur, but they are not a certainty. If unprovoked software crashes were an absolute unavoidability (is that a word?), then embedded systems like the computer in your car or microwave would crash a whole lot more than they do.

4) If I'm right and iDVD is using a decent encoder, meaning that it can tell the exact length of a finished chunk of movie before it finishes encoding (which is really the point I was trying to make from the begining), then there's no good reason it should be hanging on a long clip, and the bug probably isn't even directly related to the encoding process--maybe something about handling the chapter track, for all I know.


I love iDVD. It's the 2nd coolest piece of consumer software I've ever used. I'm also realistic about what you're likely to get for $50 these days. I'd just rather be realistic when it comes to identifying bugs or problems with another Mac user's system and trying to get them worked out or around, and not try to legitimize an error as being the fault of unrealistic expectations or an unavoidable occurance, when neither are the case.
 
http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/mac/story/0,24330,3611081,00.html

Bigger movies



One of the major limitations of previous versions of iDVD was its refusal to create discs that contained more than 90 minutes of video. That's changed in iDVD 4. IDVD can now create discs that hold up to two hours of movies.



To make that possible, you must launch iDVD's Preferences (found in the iDVD menu) and enable the Best Quality option. With this option enabled, iDVD examines the amount of material you have in your project (this includes all the project's content -- video, pictures, motion menus, and static menus) and configures its encoder to provide the best quality possible while also allowing everything to fit on the disc. Note that switching to Best Quality results in longer encoding times (and by longer I mean several hours to encode a disc that contains two hours of video).
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by Lanbrown
It can't know until it encodes. It has no idea how much space will be used prior to encoding. So footage takes more room then others. An error would be nice. So you only have one thing to complain about it.
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Actually, before it encodes the footage it knows it will do whatever it takes to fit it on the DVD. Theoretically, a 45min clip or 2 hour clip at "Best Quality" will take the same space, just have different quality.

I assume you mean that iDVD just doesn't know how it's going to compress the footage to get the best quality, which sections are complex etc. In the 1st Pass it looks at which sections of the movie are complex (lots of movement), and which are simple (which will get compressed more).

I see no reason why iDVD couldn't do it's "1st Pass" at encoding in the background. Is there any reason the 1st pass can't be done as soon as a clip is added? (Actually, even a 2 pass encoding could be done in the background couldn't it?)

BTW: I agree with what seems to be the consensus. A crash (with or without warning) is a bug that should be fixed. But yes, all programs have bugs... which are bad things we don't want.

"up to 2 hours" does seem to me to mean "YOU choose how long you want, UP TO 2 HOURS". Whether that includes menus is up to Apple... I mean, they could say up to 3 hours... the more you squeeze in the lower the quality is - they just drew a line base on time, not quality. Why can't we have a 6 hour slideshow? (besides boredom)

Seeya
 
Originally posted by GregA
BTW: I agree with what seems to be the consensus. A crash (with or without warning) is a bug that should be fixed. But yes, all programs have bugs... which are bad things we don't want.
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Maybe in a simple app it might be easy, but you're talking about complex apps like iDVD.
Hundreds of thousands if not millions of lines of code, no app that large will be bug free....let alone OSs, which have a TON of bugs. after all it did take Microsoft and its developers 10 million PLUS lines of code to *test* Windows 2000...1.2 million hours of stress testing...etc. and it STILL wasnt that great...(2195 builds too, and an estimated 4.2 million lattes were consumed by the developers)

I've never used iDVD (would much rather prefer to use dvdsp when given the chance) but it sounds like a (sort of) major bug. hopefully they will change it.
 
Re: Re: Question?

Originally posted by MattG
What does that have to do with anything? I love how whenever anybody complains about a feature on Mac software that doesn't work, somebody else on this forum automatically has to play the "why don't you try it on Windows" card.

Save it.

Furthermore, the fact that the software is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things (only $49) is totally irrelevant. It's not an excuse for when it doesn't work properly.
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This is the only reason why I wrote that:

another poster on this thread said he has PC software that can put 6 hours worth on a DVD
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I did not mean to come off as "defending" iDVD or Apple. I was just really trying to offer a solution.

It is like when I get free food sometimes at work. If I don't like it I'm not going to complain, I just won't eat it or get something else that I like, Thats all!

all the best.
 
Re: Re: Re: Question?

Originally posted by MacAficionado
This is the only reason why I wrote that:
I did not mean to come off as "defending" iDVD or Apple. (snip)
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what are you apologizing for? Someone's gotta name alternatives.
And you are right. MattG I suggest you get another app to use if you're so pissed about how when you use iDVD it wont encode and burn 2 hour DVDs. And remember that...
YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY
 
Sorry for the late reply, but I just picked up this thread.

I have been converting a bunch of old family video that was shot on regular 8, 120 minute tapes. Rather convenient, since I can get 2 hours on a disc with iDVD! I've had no problems as long as my content was under 2 hours. 1:59:40 on the last one with no trouble.

iDVD always warns me when I launch if I've got too much content. I've been using iMovie to capture/create chapters, and then export to iDVD. I'm a video editor, and have FCP, but there's no need to get fancy here.

Are you sure you've got the quality set correctly? (iDVD/Preferences)

Just wanted you to know that I'm having success. Maybe I've got an updated version (4.0.1).

Good luck.
 
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