Anyone have any clue why?

I burned this same movie before and it took about 5 to 6 hours to finish. It was edited on iMovie. It ran fine on my DVD player but the client scratched it and wants another copy.

So I burned another yesterday but it's not even finished yet! It's still on "Stage 4 : multiplexing and burning".

I rebooted the G4 before I started the burn. My specs are in my sig below. Help me please!

Is it possible your machine just locked, and isn't really doing anything? Could it be bad media?

Well, I thought it was hung as well and forced it to quit yesterday morning when it took over 12 hours to burn. I rebooted, put in a fresh DVD-R and started the same iDVD project and it's still burning - well over 24 hours now.

What does your Mac show re free hard disk space? Are you using the saved project from the first burn, or sending it to iDVD through iMovie each time? If so, it's possible your hard drive looks pretty full right now, which would slow it down considerably. I also suspect that if you are trying to burn the same dvd with a fresh start each time (and not trashing previous starts) iDVD starts to get confused. But that's just me anthropomorphizing. I usually move the whole project to a firewire drive for storage once I'm done, trash any stray copies (all this to keep as much disk space available as possible) and move the project back to my hard drive if I need to burn more copies from some reason. (For me, the project means both the originating iMovie folder and the accompanying iDVD project that ends up in the documents folder.)

Originally posted by Patricia Kim : What does your Mac show re free hard disk space? Are you using the saved project from the first burn, or sending it to iDVD through iMovie each time? If so, it's possible your hard drive looks pretty full right now, which would slow it down considerably. I also suspect that if you are trying to burn the same dvd with a fresh start each time (and not trashing previous starts) iDVD starts to get confused. But that's just me anthropomorphizing. I usually move the whole project to a firewire drive for storage once I'm done, trash any stray copies (all this to keep as much disk space available as possible) and move the project back to my hard drive if I need to burn more copies from some reason. (For me, the project means both the originating iMovie folder and the accompanying iDVD project that ends up in the documents folder.)

I have 40 gigs free on the main hard drive. The project is on an external firewire Lacie drive which has 66 gigs free. The iDVD re-starts have always been on a new DVD-R, as I said before. The previous attempts did have data written to it but only half way though so I threw those DVD's away.

Every time I make a dvd of a project by re-starting from iMovie rather than using the already created and saved project in iDVD, it creates a new project on my hard disk that takes up space. This is not about the media (dvd-r), but your hard disk/drive space. Check your documents file on your hard disk to see if perhaps there are multiple icons for your project. If there are, you may want to trash some of them as unnecessary duplicates. (There may also be multiple icons named something like "my great dvd," which seem to be created every time you open up iDVD - trash those, too.) As I said, one theory I have is that if there are too many copies of the same project in your documents file, iDVD gets confused trying to sort through everything to decide what you really want to burn. Dumb theory, but clearing multiple copies of the same project from my hard disk has helped keep my system, as small as it is (60GB G4 Powerbook), running smoothly. (BTW, the last project I burned was about 1-1/2 hours. I needed to make additional copies after sending out the first one. No problems doing so from the revived project, so I don't think it's the length of the project that's an issue in this case.)

Well....I found out what my problem was. Believe it or not, it was the photo quality label I placed on the DVD prior to burning it. Seems that the thick paper placed an uneven weight on the disc and prevented the burner from making contact half way through the burn. That's why the previous failed (12 and 24 hour) burns did not finish.

The last attempt, I didn't stick on the label on the disc. In retrosepct, all the other successful burns had no label on them either. I think I'll switch back to regular labels instead of the thick photopaper labels.

Thanks for all the advice! You guys rock!

That is a surprise, but glad you found you problem. I guess the moral is, wait till you're done burning before labeling the disk.

I never really like anything about those paper labels, aside from the fact they are easy to print. If the label should come off while they are playing, I'm sure it could cause some damage.

It is recommended by a great many to NEVER use labels on DVDs. On CDs its not as bad. Anyway, you should get printable DVDs instead and print directly on them with a printer, such as the Epson R300. I also looks more professional.

Frederic- How does that Epson print on disks? It looks like the feeder is at a 45 degree angle, not flat.

There is a separate loading tray on the front that folds down to feed the disk through.

Nice :) Thanks Cannon! Do you have one?

There is one at the studio that I work for. I haven't ever really put it through the paces though. It comes with an application for printing on disks that is a little squirrelly. It doesn't color manage documents and placing graphics in it is still kind a mystery to me. I'm not sure if you have to use this app to print on disks or not. I'll probably should come up with a Photoshop template to use.

After googling for related problems, it seems that this is not isolated to just DVD discs but to CD's as well. Back in the day of 2x and 16x speed cd players, these labels did not cause that much of a problem. But now that modern devices are spinning at 54x speeds, an unbalanced disc can cause skipping and failed burns.

I think DVD burners are far more sensitve to unbalanced discs caused by labels. Well....I learned! I'll have to look into the Epson R300. It's not that expensive for a dedicated disc labeler....if the quality is exceptional (or in my case, acceptable).

I think that the R300 quality is acceptable but certainly not exceptional. I do believe that it is a better option than paper labels.

I was looking on Epson's website and saw that they also have an R200 model for $99.