[Belgian Genius]

I authored a Bluray that included an AVCHD video with DTS-HD audio track and it's around 29GB in size.

When I try to burn it to a Blu-ray using "fit-to-DVD" compression with a BD-R selected as the target, Toast just seems to strip out the audio track and write an oversized image file around 25GB. (i.e., strips audio and does not recompress video at all).

What gives?

[tsantee]

My understanding is the Fit-to-DVD is only for fitting the content of a dual-layer standard-definition video DVD to a single-layer disc. It shouldn't apply at all to your project because you're not trying to make a DVD. Also, I don't think Toast can read DTS audio tracks. It supports Dolby AC-3 and QuickTime-playable audio.

You can see the encoding options for your Blu-ray disc by clicking More... and then encoding and then custom to get to the custom encoding settings window. I don't have the expertise to suggest what you need to use to create a Blu-ray disc with DTS audio.

[Belgian Genius]

My understanding is the Fit-to-DVD is only for fitting the content of a dual-layer standard-definition video DVD to a single-layer disc. It shouldn't apply at all to your project because you're not trying to make a DVD. Also, I don't think Toast can read DTS audio tracks. It supports Dolby AC-3 and QuickTime-playable audio.

You can see the encoding options for your Blu-ray disc by clicking More... and then encoding and then custom to get to the custom encoding settings window. I don't have the expertise to suggest what you need to use to create a Blu-ray disc with DTS audio.

So, then, what's the point of this HD plugin for Toast if it just vomits with HD audio?

Did I just waste $20?

[CantankerousInHD]

HD encoding on 10.0.4 seems extraordinarily broken. No matter what I throw at it & no matter how I tweak the bitrate settings for encoding, the math it calculates is off -- horribly. For example, I have a 1 hour HD video (a .tivo file, but that seems irrelevant) that I select to use 8 Mbps average, and 8mbps peak. Toast claims this will take 12 GB. It should take no more than (8 Megabits-per-second / 8 bits-per-byte) * (60 seconds-per-minute) * (60 minutes) => 3600 Megabytes. The source audio is, allegedly, 7-channel PCM, but I've set the output to Dolby Digital at 192 kbps (=> an additional 86.4 Megabytes). Even if I crank the bitrate down to unacceptable numbers like 2 Mbps video, toast still claims this is over 7 GB of data. Something is horribly horribly wrong here.

Keep in mind that this, for the most part, all worked fine on Toast 10.0.2 on Mac OS 10.5.8. (I'm now using 10.0.4 on OS X 10.6.2). I've trashed plist files (which required re-installing the HD plugin) and gotten the same results. I can't even get it to encode the video to a disc-image file (I figured that at least the encoder would get the math right once it got things going, and I could burn it to a DVD), because the encoding hangs at 10% every time. (Yes, hangs. I've left it over night. No progress. The progress meter races to 10% in a matter of less than a minute, which is *also* really wrong, and then just sits there indefinitely). It's also probably worth mentioning that, at 10%, I get the spinning beachball of death.

I notice that there's been no response in the tivo-applications forum, but it's only been a few days. Still... is anyone paying attention to this issue?

This post has been edited by CantankerousInHD: 13 December 2009 - 07:30 AM

[pruthe]

HD encoding on 10.0.4 seems extraordinarily broken. ...

Maybe it does have something to do with tivo file or maybe you should reinstall Toast. I recently created 2 BD-R projects where the edited source video was from FCE4. Both projects were about 3 hours long with chapters and were saved as image files. Size of both image files were about 22GB. I just left video quality as Best. After image files created, did burn to BD-R using Copy (image file) function. Burn to BD-R took just 40 minutes. It did take a long time to encode; about 20-22 hours. The progress bar worked OK for me. When playing BD-Rs on my Blu-ray player (Sony S301) and HD TV, video quality was excellent. Hope you are able to get things sorted out and working properly with your projects.

pruthe

Mac Pro Intel, 8GB mem, internal LG GBW-H20L
FCE 4.01, Toast 10.0.4, Mac OS 10.6.2

This post has been edited by pruthe: 14 December 2009 - 05:10 AM

[CantankerousInHD]

Maybe it does have something to do with tivo file or maybe you should reinstall Toast.

I've reinstalled several times now -- no luck. I'll try encoding some sample HD quicktime trailers & see if I have the same issue... good idea, and thanks for the data point. I notice that other people are claiming that encoding HD *to DVD* (ie, an AVCHD disc on DVD media) seems to not work for them, either, which is what I'm doing. Another thing I can try is to not change the media type and write an image file (I do not have a bluray writer).

[pruthe]

I've had some interesting situations creating BD-R disk images and using 10.0.4. (Not using 10.0.5 right now because of current bogus error message problem.) Using Best video quality option, I've previously created disk images that fit within 25GB BD-R limit. For example, I had one video that was 2 hours and 56 minutes long. The indicated size from Toast was about 20GB with about 3 GB space free. The actual disk image size generated was about 22GB, under the 25GB BD-R limit. Then using same Best setting, I tried to create disk image for a 2 hour 38 minute video. The indicated encoded disk size from Toast was almost 23 GB with about 1/2 GB space free. The actual disk image size generated was slightly over 25GB, which exceeded the BD-R limit when I tried to burn a BD-R. So using a Best video quality setting, Toast is obviously automatically adjusting encode settings based on video time duration and maybe other factors.

In order to reduce disk image size of 2nd video to fit BD-R, I tried some different custom encode settings. Leaving video format as MPEG-4 AVC, I tried adjusting only average and maximum bit rates. Some of the higher settings still exceeded BD-R 25GB limit. I ended up using ave bit rate setting of 16mbps and max bit rate of 18mbps. This generated an actual disk image of almost 23 GB, even though Toast said disk size would be about 18GB. When I actually burned BD-R of this disk image and played on BR player, video quality was pretty good, so I was happy.

So thing I learned (so far) is using Best video quality setting, Toast will automatically adjust encode settings based on your video's time duration. If result does not fit BD-R limit, you can try to manually adjust encode settings, but what Toast indicates as disk size may be a lot different from what is really generated, so will probably need to make adjustments until actual size is below 25 GB limit.