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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning Apps

I recently acquired a MiniDV camcorder, and suddenly I had an excuse to play with iMovie and iDVD. However, when I burnt my most recent DVD, I discovered the soundtrack I had carefully placed there in iMovie was replaced with a Christmas carol.

I checked the movie I originally dropped onto iMovie, yes it was fine. I checked iDVD's preview mode - still fine. I peeked inside the iDVD document with a text editor, to see if any references to other audio files had crept in - nothing. I toggled the preference that causes iDVD to clear its cache on quit, restarted iDVD, and burnt another DVD - iDVD replaced my sound track with its own favourite carol, once again.

After much messing around and interrupting iDVD in the middle of operation and other such invasive activities, I discovered that iDVD handles the audio track of a movie differently from the video track: while video tracks are encoded in the background and cached in the iDVD document, audio tracks are encoded just prior to burning the DVD, and are stored in a temporary file.

There are three problems with this approach:

  1. Rather than follow good Unix practice and try to pick a temporary file name that nobody else will choose, iDVD always uses the name /tmp/tempmovie.mov.
  2. When iDVD is finished burning a DVD and exits, it doesn't automatically delete its temporary file, which can be quite large.
  3. If, for some reason, iDVD cannot remove a pre-existing temporary file, it just assumes that the pre-existing temporary file is the right one, and uses it.

Those three problems add up to a ticking timebomb for anyone who wants to use iDVD and also have multiple logins on the one Mac: It turns out that my sister had used the computer to make a Christmas DVD a short while before (hence the choice of a Christmas carol). When she burnt the DVD, iDVD left the carol sitting around as a temporary file. When I went to burn my DVD, iDVD couldn't replace the carol with my soundtrack (since the file was owned by my sister, not me), so it replaced my soundtrack with the carol.

Fortunately, once I'd figured out all this diabolical mechanism, the solution (in Panther, at least) was easy:

  1. In the Finder, choose 'Go to Folder...' from the Go menu.
  2. Enter /tmp and click OK.
  3. Find the file called tempmovie.mov and drag it to the trash.
  4. Since you don't normally have permission to delete another user's files, you'll be asked to enter your Mac's administrative password. Enter it and click OK.
Done!

[robg adds: Thanks to our anonymous tipster for debugging this one -- it seems like a tricky issue to resolve, and one that (as Panther reaches more users) will sneak up and bite more and more people over time. I thought about burning a DVD to prove the theory, but have nothing ready to go at this point; if anyone has a project in the works and can confirm this, please post in the comments!]
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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning | 8 comments | Create New Account
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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: alexiskai on Jan 22, '04 12:32:33PM

Wonder if you could fix this by running iDVD as root...



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: SeanAhern on Jan 22, '04 03:23:52PM

I hope Mr. Anonymous submitted a bug report to Apple.



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: robg on Jan 22, '04 05:19:52PM

He did, and someone else did (confirmed to me via email), and I added it myself just to be sure :).

The scary part is that the email respondent filed the bug report in September!

-rob.



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: gjw on Jan 22, '04 05:36:23PM

I'm that e-mail respondent. Would've posted it directly, but I didn't have an account here at that point and wasn't able to receive the password for the one I created until I got home. It's bug number 3411792, submitted on 06-Sep-03. Apple eventually came up with the same cause and workaround that this tip provided, and the issue is still listed as open. In all fairness, I haven't checked to see if iDVD '04 still exhibits this behavior.



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: gjw on Feb 25, '04 08:15:14PM

My bug report was closed and marked as no longer reproducible in the current version.



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: herbs on Jan 22, '04 07:38:38PM

Today I installed iPhoto 4 and iMovie 4 from the iLife'04 DVD (I don't have a DVD burner and no interest, at this time, in GarageBand). My principle "need" is iPhoto 4; I use iMovie for making slide shows with varying fades, titling and the "Ken Burns effect."

I noticed that /private and its subdirectories had their group changed from wheel (group ID 0) when I ran Disk Utility's Repair Permission after doing the Custom Install from iLife'04. I don't know if that only happens on the custom install or generally.

Could Group Ownership be the problem with deleting the /tmp file (/tmp is a link to /private/tmp).

Good Luck,
Herb Schulz


---
Herb Schulz



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: kfaulhaber on Jan 22, '04 09:56:08PM

/private/tmp/ is a world writable directory with the sticky bit set. which means while anyone can write to the directory and read the files in it, only the owner of the individual files or the root user can actually delete them.



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A fix for iDVD using the incorrect soundtrack when burning
Authored by: kylee on Jun 23, '06 10:59:52AM

Thanks for the fix. Throwing the temp file out works. Even if there is a more permanent solution (through user permissions or other), this seems quick and painless. I will however, miss that theraputic feeling of snapping the screwed up dvd in half.



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