I am attempting to re master some old DVDs of mine. There are about 25 disks each with about 10 different 30 minute videos. This is a lot of content. It is not reasonable for me to re capture everything just to re do the menu's so I was hoping toast 8 could help.

I want to bring the VOB files into DVD Studio Pro. In order to do that I need either a m2v file and an ac3 file OR a quicktime MOV. Those are the only two options that have worked for me. I know Toast can do this.

I put the DVD in the drive and drag it into Toast 8. Toast then gives me the VOB files and the export button is giving me usable files. Here is the problem: the files are under a minute. All of the files on the disk should be over 10 minutes but toast only sees the first few seconds... most of them are about 20 seconds. I put in a Hollywood DVD and it sees the full movie. What is happening here? Why can I rip the pro stuff but cant rip my own DVD's? Any ideas?

You need to use the Media Browser for this rather than drag VOBs to the Toast window. Insert the DVD (or place a VIDEO_TS folder on the desktop) and select DVD with the top button of the media browser. You select the title or chapter level of the DVD using the lower button. Select the titles or chapters you want and click the + button or drag them to the video window with DVD video selected as the format. Toast extracts the muxed MPEG and writes it to the Roxio Converted Items folder.

However, Toast won't give you separate .m2v and .ac3 streams when it is working from muxed MPEGs. The application you should be using for this is either Miraizon's Cinematize or MPEG Streamclip.

Thanks, that fixed the problem. I really appreciate the help.

I have a new issue though. When it exports, it pulls out chunks of video. The chunks get pulled at about every 60 second mark, give or take 10 seconds. They appear to be pretty short chunks, but over a 10 minute video they add up to about 4 minutes. It pauses on one of the last few frames for the remainder of the video's original length.

Sorry, if this has been discussed. I will continue to try and troubleshoot on my own. They do import in DVD SP just fine though!

That sounds like the timecode breaks I get when recording a real-time video mode DVD with my standalone Pioneer DVD recorder. Those appeared at approximately 60-second intervals but varied. After extracting the MPEG using the Media Browser, open in MPEG Streamclip the resulting MPEG file that is in the Converted Items folder. Choose Fix timecode breaks from Streamclip's Edit menu and then choose Convert to MPEG from its File menu. Then drag that MPEG to Toast to replace the one you originally extracted. There is no re-encoding in any of this so it does no harm to picture quality.

Alternatively you could skip the Toast Media Browser extraction by opening the VOB sets in Streamclip, fix timecode breaks and convert to MPEG.

YOU ARE AMAZING! HOLY CRAP! That not only is how the DVD's were created, that is the solution. Thanks again, I really owe you big for this one!

I liked this thread, so I am sticking it up at the top for a while.

How can I tell which DVD Title applies to which VOB(s)?

I don't know how to do that in Toast and since VOBs aren't added directly it really isn't necessary.

If you choose DVD video from VIDEO_TS as the format in the Toast Video window and add your VIDEO_TS folder there you can click options and Custom to select individual titles. When you select one of the titles there you'll see a preview window with a small arrow in the lower left corner. Clicking that starts a preview playback.

Possibly between watching those previews and seeing how the thumbnails are displayed in the Media Browser you'll be able to see which titles you really want to add.

By the way, Popcorn 3 is much easier than Toast for making anything from existing VIDEO_TS folders.

I guess it's a little late to ask this now but does Popcorn allow you to burn data compilations (like just files to disc, either CD or DVD) like you can with Toast?

No. Popcorn 3 only does video. It has some video features that are better than Toast although Toast has some video features that don't exist in Popcorn. Roxio has a refund policy if you buy Popcorn 3 and decide after trying it out for 15 days (I think) that you really don't want it. If you're doing a lot of things with VIDEO_TS folder content then I recommend it.

Quite the coincidence but Roxio sent me an email to buy Popcorn 3 for $30 this morning so I went ahead and got it. Thanks for the tip. I might have gotten it sooner but when I bought my Mac the Apple dude said that Popcorn was like a subset of Toast so I went for the bigger package.