iDVD Tutorial: What to Do When iDVD Closes Unexpectedly When Opening
The Unexpected Quit
iDVD, though somewhat simple, suffers from the same thing that other DVD authoring programs like DVD Studio Pro does. An involved program like iDVD can have times when glitches and problems with normal operations occur, and you will have to troubleshoot them. One common problem that iDVD users complain about occurring is when iDVD unexpectedly quits when you first open it, which is a common problem with other DVD authoring programs as well. Here are a few practical ways that you can try to troubleshoot the problem when iDVD quits unexpectedly after you first open it.
First Troubleshooting Attempts
The first thing that you should look for is the most simple. Try to shut down other programs that are running at the same time, especially multimedia post-production programs like iMovie. Try to limit the amount of resources other programs are taking, and try to defragment your hard drive and even use anti-virus software to further clear out your computer. This should be a constant process around using iDVD, so make sure that iDVD does not have to compete on your computer. You can also try to create a new user account and log in with the new account before trying to open up iDVD.
Update iDVD
The next step for troubleshooting the unexpected quitting of iDVD is to simply update the version. If you are running an older version of iDVD
then you need to check on what the new update is and go through the standard updating process, which may need you to have access to your iLife software package.
Trash Files
One of the most important, and beneficial, ways to troubleshoot your iDVD problems is to trash certain iDVD files that are referenced by the software. With this you can in a lot of ways “start over” without certain saved preferences, and will often be the definitive way to solve a problem with unexpected quitting of iDVD.
Go into your computer’s hard drive and then delete the following files:
- /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 1
- /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 2
- /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 3
- /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 4
If you go to your standard home directory you can find some other files and you can delete further files to help resolve this problem.
- /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Installed Themes
- /Library/Caches/com.apple.idvd
Also go in and delete the iDVD preferences, which is well known to cause problems with unexpected quitting.
- /Users/“Your account”/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iDVD.plist
iDVD Themes Updates
You may notice that when you are opening iDVD that the iDVD themes go through an updating process. You can watch the iDVD theme update progress bar go, and you may want to let this finish out. Let it fully complete and then close out iDVD before re-opening it. This may solve the iDVD quitting problem, but really only if you have been quitting out of the iDVD theme updates.
This post is part of the series: iDVD Tutorials
Here are articles containing iDVD tutorials.
