[decahill]

Config: PowerMac G5; Lacie OEM of the Pioneer 107D DVD-RW; Toast 7.0.2; Jam 6.0.2
I created a video/music DVD in Toast 6. All worked great.
Moving to Toast 7 (now 7.0.2), there seems to have been a change in the way Toast handles the Music only portion of a DVD.

Here is the scenario:
Title 1 - Chapters 1 thru 3: Video
Title 2 - Chapters 1 thru 17: Music DVD
Title 3 - Chapters 1 thru 18: Music DVD
Title 4 - Chapters 1 thru 2: Video

When playing the burned DVD image on the Mac DVD Player, my home DVD Player, or PS2 I get the following:
Title 1 - Chapters 1 thru 3 play through without a break.
Break to change Titles
Title 2 - Chapter 1
Break like it was changing Titles again! <depending on the device this is anywhere from 1 to 4 seconds>
Title 2 - Chapter 2
Break like it was changing Titles again!
Title 2 - Chapter 3
etc.....

All videos play without a hitch. All music Titles have the serious break between Chapters.
This is all live music so the gap (and corresponding silence) is quite disruptive.

Toast Music DVD Settings:
Menu Style - Corporate; Play DVD on insert; Play all items continuously; Dolby Digital - 192 kbs; all other settings are unchecked.

Videos were created using iMovie; Music is Apple Lossless (although I have also tried aiff thinking there may be some header info in the lossless files.)

Any ideas of what I might have done wrong?

[freshburn]

So this disc was done in Toast 7.0.2? Make sure that the Roxio Converted items are being deleted.

Also, if I understand correctly the DVD will go back to the menu, then play again, or do you have to manually press play again to get to the next chapter.

[tsantee]

There is an option when creating a Music DVD playlist in Toast to set the track pause at 1, 2, 3 or 4 seconds. There is no option for zero seconds between tracks. I believe this is a function of the DVD spec that Toast uses to create music DVDs.

The track pause option appears when you select a music DVD title in the main Toast window, click the Edit button and then choose the Playlist tab.

[decahill]

freshburn, on Jan 5 2006, 01:05 PM, said:

So this disc was done in Toast 7.0.2? Make sure that the Roxio Converted items are being deleted.

Also, if I understand correctly the DVD will go back to the menu, then play again, or do you have to manually press play again to get to the next chapter.

Thanks for the quick reply, freshburn.

Roxio Converted items are being deleted. And, yes, Toast 7.0.2 (one of the reasons I moved to Apple Lossless vs AIFF because of the music encoding issues.)

It does not go back to the menu (I don't want it to either so that's goodness.) It goes directly to the next chapter automatically. The effect on the DVD Player on the Mac is that it goes to a "Pause" state and then "Play" continues with the next chapter. No manual intervention is required. Again that's goodness as well, just need to play through the chapters without stopping.

For Music:
Chapter 1 -- pause -- Chapter 2 -- pause -- Chapter 3, etc.
For Video:
Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 (as I would expect to see every time.)

To reconstruct:
Drag a playlist from iTunes into the DVD Music window (shorter tunes would be best to recreate quickly.) It will create a Playlist DVD "Title". After you burn the image, mount it. Watch the "Play/Pause" button on the DVD Player as it moves between the songs (Chapters). You should see it go to Pause then Play. This doesn't happen with movies just music DVDs.

tsantee, on Jan 5 2006, 01:17 PM, said:

There is an option when creating a Music DVD playlist in Toast to set the track pause at 1, 2, 3 or 4 seconds. There is no option for zero seconds between tracks. I believe this is a function of the DVD spec that Toast uses to create music DVDs.

The track pause option appears when you select a music DVD title in the main Toast window, click the Edit button and then choose the Playlist tab.

Actually my Track Pause option allows "None". Which, in Toast 6, was honored as zero seconds. Now that I look at that option in my playlist I have no options to choose from. It shows "none" by default but when I select the pull down the options are empty (looks like it has 4 items to choose from, but they're all blank.) That could be part of the issue.

[tsantee]

decahill, on Jan 5 2006, 12:31 PM, said:

Actually my Track Pause option allows "None". Which, in Toast 6, was honored as zero seconds. Now that I look at that option in my playlist I have no options to choose from. It shows "none" by default but when I select the pull down the options are empty (looks like it has 4 items to choose from, but they're all blank.) That could be part of the issue.

FYI, I just checked with my versions of Toast and the None option is present in 6.1.1 but not in 7.0.2.

[decahill]

tsantee, on Jan 5 2006, 02:08 PM, said:

FYI, I just checked with my versions of Toast and the None option is present in 6.1.1 but not in 7.0.2.

Thanks for the answer (not exactly what I wanted to hear, but understand.)

Now that I've found that I have an empty Track Pause field in 7.0.2 (& being a bit of newbie on the MAC) is there something I need to do get that field populated again?

[tsantee]

decahill, on Jan 5 2006, 01:34 PM, said:

Thanks for the answer (not exactly what I wanted to hear, but understand.)

Now that I've found that I have an empty Track Pause field in 7.0.2 (& being a bit of newbie on the MAC) is there something I need to do get that field populated again?

All I can think of is to delete the "Roxio Toast Prefs" and "com.roxio.Toast.plist" files from your User Library Preferences folder. Maybe reinstalling the application is needed as well. As I noted, I still have Toast 6 on my Mac so you don't actually need to trash the current app to install an new copy.

I haven't made any Music DVDs of live concerts so haven't been distracted by any pause between tracks. You've motivated me to give this a test. I think I once read, though, there always will be some pause because the DVD player is told to search for the next chapter rather than just continuously play on.

[decahill]

tsantee, on Jan 5 2006, 02:59 PM, said:

All I can think of is to delete the "Roxio Toast Prefs" and "com.roxio.Toast.plist" files from your User Library Preferences folder. Maybe reinstalling the application is needed as well. As I noted, I still have Toast 6 on my Mac so you don't actually need to trash the current app to install an new copy.

I haven't made any Music DVDs of live concerts so haven't been distracted by any pause between tracks. You've motivated me to give this a test. I think I once read, though, there always will be some pause because the DVD player is told to search for the next chapter rather than just continuously play on.

I still have Toast 6 installed as well (which may have caused the conflict with the Pause field) and will have to go there to finish the project. I was so hoping to take advantage of the new graphics in 7. Now I wish we'd have saved the old Forums. There was a link to create/modify the Toast graphics. Anyone still have that?

As for live Music DVDs - it works fine (but may be out of spec based on your comments) in Toast 6 with "Track Pause = none", however, you must use an uncompressed file format aiff/wav when you add the music to Toast. iTunes adds something (about .2 of a second of silence at the beginning of each imported track) to all of it's compressed formats. That's enough for the human ear/brain to detect.

[freshburn]

The None option was removed from 7.0.2 because Toast 7 can't do 0 second gaps. This is a result of the smart playlists in Toast 7.

[mrv4]

freshburn, on Jan 5 2006, 05:09 PM, said:

The None option was removed from 7.0.2 because Toast 7 can't do 0 second gaps. This is a result of the smart playlists in Toast 7.

Can't you make the smart playlists optional, so that Music DVDs can play from Chapter-to-Chapter without any gaps? I'm using Music DVD for listening to audiobooks, where the original CD has a track every 3 minutes even if the reader is in mid-sentence. Gaps between tracks during playback of Music DVDs is disturbing b/c the reader suddenly stops mid-sentence.

[freshburn]

Even if the smart playlist is turned off, the information is still added to the navigation packs and IFO files. This causes the pop between tracks. It is possible to improve it, but doing so would require the entire Toast authoring engine to be re-written, which is no easy task.

Also, true 0 second gaps is only possible with a lossless format such as AIFF, FLAC, etc. MP3, AAC, and AC3 always have a little extra at the end of the file. The best way to get rid of the pop is to convert the files to AIFF, then edit out the extra and author it. Encoding to AC3 will still produce a gap though. You would need to create the disc using PCM.

[mrv4]

Thanks for your reply.

freshburn, on Jan 30 2006, 03:54 PM, said:

Even if the smart playlist is turned off, the information is still added to the navigation packs and IFO files.

Yes I suspected that was happening; my question was trying to get at whether you could *not* add the information to the "navigation packs and IFO" as you say, so that the gap is reduced.

freshburn, on Jan 30 2006, 03:54 PM, said:

You would need to create the disc using PCM.

I was using PCM, so the gap is entirely the DVD player trying to navigate to the next Chapter, which really should be seamless - i.e. there shouldn't be a gap.

I am also trying to figure out why if I am listening to Chapter 13, and I skip back to Chapter 4 for example, the machine will play Chapter 4 and then proceed directly to Chapter 14 (!?) instead of Chapter 5. That is really odd and frustratiing.

[freshburn]

mrv4, on Jan 30 2006, 04:57 PM, said:

I am also trying to figure out why if I am listening to Chapter 13, and I skip back to Chapter 4 for example, the machine will play Chapter 4 and then proceed directly to Chapter 14 (!?) instead of Chapter 5. That is really odd and frustratiing.

That is a bug in 7.0.1, that was fixed in 7.0.2, but 7.0.2 has a bug that with the audio resampling which causes the audio to slow down. So, 7.0.2 will navigate correctly, but the audio is messed up. 7.0.1 has the correct audio, but the navigation gets messed up.

[tsantee]

freshburn, on Jan 31 2006, 09:58 AM, said:

That is a bug in 7.0.1, that was fixed in 7.0.2, but 7.0.2 has a bug that with the audio resampling which causes the audio to slow down. So, 7.0.2 will navigate correctly, but the audio is messed up. 7.0.1 has the correct audio, but the navigation gets messed up.

So to use 7.0.2 and get the navigation and the audio correct, one must start with all the audio files being Apple Lossless format. Right?

[freshburn]

Yep, that would work.

[eytan_bernet]

Ok, I am trying to take 96 kHz 24 bit audio FLACs and make a Music DVD. Idealy I'd like to be abel to do this:

1. make each set one Track
2. have the individual songs have no gaps
3. have the next set be the next track, again, multiple songs with multiple tracks

Reading what I read here, I have little faith that this is possible:
1. I cannot use Toast 7.0.2 with the 24 bit FLACs because of problems with Toast 7
2. Even if I could, I cannot produce seemless songs without a gap - EVEN if they are lossless

However, I MAY be able to do the following:

Make each track from the show one track, and then it will play like a movie without any gaps between the tracks....

Do I have this right? Can this be fixed in a future upgrade? Basically, I want the features of DVD Audio DVDs playable back on my DVD player which does support 96/24, but is not DVD Audio. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Eytan

[tsantee]

eytan_bernet, on Feb 21 2006, 12:08 AM, said:

Make each track from the show one track, and then it will play like a movie without any gaps between the tracks....

Do I have this right? Can this be fixed in a future upgrade? Basically, I want the features of DVD Audio DVDs playable back on my DVD player which does support 96/24, but is not DVD Audio. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Eytan

I don't know what you're referring to with "Make each track from the show one track" but it sounds like you're going in the right direction. As far as I know you need to use an audio editing application to join your existing audio files into a single track before bringing that into Toast. Toast has no editing tools to join files. Two good editing applications are Bias Peak and Sound Studio. I believe that Roxio's Jam 6 still includes a license for Bias Peak LE so that is another way to get Peak at a nice price.

[eytan_bernet]

tsantee, on Feb 21 2006, 07:50 AM, said:

I don't know what you're referring to with "Make each track from the show one track" but it sounds like you're going in the right direction. As far as I know you need to use an audio editing application to join your existing audio files into a single track before bringing that into Toast. Toast has no editing tools to join files. Two good editing applications are Bias Peak and Sound Studio. I believe that Roxio's Jam 6 still includes a license for Bias Peak LE so that is another way to get Peak at a nice price.

Yeah - what I mean is that when you drag multiple files together into the Music DVD section, it makes a chapter with multiple tracks, and the smallest pause you can make is one second

a. I wish you could have none
b. If you can't, and I make each Chapter one track, will it then play seamlessly?

As I said, what I was hoping for is each set being one chapter, and then the songs in the set being tracks - but since the music is live, it needs to be seamless. is this not possible? I do NOT want to combine all the tracks into one, or else I have no way to jump to the individual songs.

[mrv4]

Roxio should spend the resources to fix this track-pause problem. Clearly it is not what customers expected, and it seriously affects the usefulness of the software. This excuse about "Smart Playlists" or Smart Menus is not a good one in my opinion. Who needs Smart Playlists? If they affect performance of the software, they should be removed, or at least the option for their removal should be available so there is no track pause.

This post has been edited by mrv4: 26 February 2006 - 03:45 AM

[mrv4]

mrv4, on Feb 26 2006, 03:44 AM, said:

Roxio should spend the resources to fix this track-pause problem. Clearly it is not what customers expected, and it seriously affects the usefulness of the software. This excuse about "Smart Playlists" or Smart Menus is not a good one in my opinion. Who needs Smart Playlists? If they affect performance of the software, they should be removed, or at least the option for their removal should be available so there is no track pause.

Well Roxio - can you fix this to disable Smart Playlists so we can avoid gaps between tracks?