"only 98 Movies Or Slideshows Can Be Written" Error With Blu-Ray

[khyron 0]

Have you ever waited for years to get a piece of hardware you really want, then install it and suddenly realize that your software can't do something you presumed it could?

 

I'm having one of those moments.

 

I just finally got a BD-R/BD-RE writer, and have been excitedly experimenting with it over the past few days. One of the uses I've been really looking forward to putting it to is for backing up raw sets of clips from our AVCHD cameras. However, when I try to take advantage of my wonderful new 25GB-per-disc capacity, I immediately run into a depressing error dialog which says:

 

"Only 98 movies or slideshows can be written."

 

For heaven's sake, WHY? I know that there are various limitations of the DVD-Video standard, but I'm burning to a BD disc. Is there any reason technologically why this barrier has to be left in Toast for when using larger capacity media? I've searched around and haven't been able to find any evidence of such a limitation within the Blu-ray specification...if I'm missing one please feel free to point it out to me.

 

In the meantime, Roxio, please remove this! Does anyone else find this maddening and want to try and remove it? I'm tempted to try and hack around inside the application package and see if I can find some way to do it.

 

This is really frustrating, because of course anyone who shoots this many gigabytes of camcorder footage is going to have far more than 99 clips...

[tsantee 231]

I don't know about this because I don't have a Blu-ray burner. However, you say you are doing backups of the raw video. That can be done in the Data window. There also is the AVCHD archive setting that I also know very little about. The only reason to burn as a Blu-ray video is if you want to watch it on a Blu-ray video player.

[khyron 0]

I don't know about this because I don't have a Blu-ray burner. However, you say you are doing backups of the raw video. That can be done in the Data window. There also is the AVCHD archive setting that I also know very little about. The only reason to burn as a Blu-ray video is if you want to watch it on a Blu-ray video player.

 

If you burn a disc as data instead of authored properly as a Blu-ray video disc, it will not play back in most players. Even on a PS3, one of the most forgiving, it will not play back properly. The files will be browseable, but they will tend to skip during playback and no navigation (not even simple "next" or "previous") will be available. Tried this already.

 

Of course, you do end up with a backup of your files in the strictest sense, but you could just as easily use a bunch of hard drives or some other burning software to accomplish that. My goal is to produce watchable "reels" of my footage that can be equally useful in my living room player or my editing workstation.

Edited September 4, 2010 by khyron

[Alex-Vics 0]

Hi, everybody!

 

I'm a new user of Toast 10, just buy it by downloading, and also buy ext-BD writer - LG BE08

for video editing on iMac 27

And, was very upset of facing with same problem as You - Khyron.

 

And also could not find any salvation of how to increase this number of clips.

 

I use Sony HandyCam 100Gb HDD for video, and of course there are a lot of clips on it as a same event or vacation.

 

And my problem was that Roxio allows to choose BD-DL as option, and shows it capacity - 46 Gb, but only 98 movies could be added to project - in my case it's only 12Gb - I think it's not fair,

esp, when you expected much more from Soft of 150 USD.

 

My question for You Khyron - did you have chance to solve this problem, and is it soft or not.

Also ask other members to help in this.

 

PS Really love my shift to Mac, don't want to come back to Windows, please help.

[khyron 0]

My question for You Khyron - did you have chance to solve this problem, and is it soft or not.

Also ask other members to help in this.

 

I'm running the most recent version of Toast, and no, to this date I have STILL not been able to actually use my BD burner to actually do what I want, which is to back up my AVCHD footage with a heck of a lot more than a measly 98 clips per disc. It's extremely frustrating!

 

I've searched and searched online for more information about the BD and AVCHD formats, and nothing I've found leads me to believe that there is any reason to limit the clips like this...it seems to be a "leftover" from Toast's roots as a DVD-only application.

 

If anyone from Roxio is listening, please please remove this crippling limitation?

[Alex-Vics 0]

Hi, khyron

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

Today, I Tried to import to Toaster arranged FC Express 4 .mov' file which was preliminary combined from cameras raw avchd files from camcoder, but as a result this file was opened as a black square (no image at all), just audio content.

Is it ok, or once again i used this program (toaster) in irregular or incorrect way...

 

Will continue to find the answers...

[khyron 0]

Hi, khyron

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

Today, I Tried to import to Toaster arranged FC Express 4 .mov' file which was preliminary combined from cameras raw avchd files from camcoder, but as a result this file was opened as a black square (no image at all), just audio content.

Is it ok, or once again i used this program (toaster) in irregular or incorrect way...

 

Will continue to find the answers...

 

It's not that hard to combine together all your clips in a program like FCE and then export to Toast. I can actually do that, and if you're having trouble I'd suggest reading a Final Cut forum somewhere because that's really not a Toast issue. The problem is, of course, that by using Final Cut at all, you're dropping the quality of your original footage and not really achieving a "backup" in any true sense.

 

In order to edit together the AVCHD footage, a program like Final Cut will first transcode all your material to AIC. Besides taking hours to do, this introduces additional loss into the visual quality of what you've shot (beyond the inital MPEG4 compression inherent to AVCHD). Then when you output from Final Cut to Toast, unavoidably there will be a third run of lossy compression on your video, again taking a great deal of time, which will further reduce the quality. In addition to all this colossal waste of time, if you're using Final Cut Express, you'd incur the added "bonus" of dropping your footage from 1080p to 1080i, because Final Cut Express doesn't support full HD (if you want progressive scan, it limits you to 720 lines of resolution).

 

The bottom line here though is that Toast should be letting you back up whatever AVCHD clips you want to BD media. You should not need to use any other software, especially a non-linear editing program that insists on transcoding, in order to accomplish this. Toast openly advertises itself as being able to do AVCHD backups and archives for digital camcorders, and right now it can't. By limiting BD to only holding the same number of clips as a DVD, Toast is totally crippling those of us who have BD drives.

 

Needless to say, this sucks. I wish I knew enough about how Toast works to hack it open and just remove the check wherever it is...after all there's no chance I'm ever going to try to author a DVD with over a hundred clips on it and then smack my forehead and go "oh noes, I wish my software had stopped me."

[Alex-Vics 0]

Hi, Khyron and everybody!

 

It seems to me that i found the simple, lying on the top but very in-convenient (IMHO) and not fully worked way to breach this 98 clips limitation in Toast 10. May be you had chance to do it also before ???

 

So today i've finished to write my second BD-DL consists of more than 150 clips

 

The answer is (It works in my experience only when you imported files from connected camera - use it like external flash drive):

1. Waste your time by adding groups of clips from camera not increasing quantity of 98 clips, exmpl. 65 or 1 or .... 54, or which you like (in my case, i choose a way by making groups of files based on day of recording during my vacation, each day - is a group to add)

2. then select all new added files (group) in a project, use MERGE Clips function in menu bar (Edit - Merge Clips), so receive 1 item consists on several clips

3. Repeat step 1 and 2 for the rest of my raw avchd files on a camera, as a result - i had chance to make 2 BD-DLs consist on 150 and 165 clips each in total, tried to see it on Panasonic BD player (home theater) - everything looks perfect, TV shown of course 1080p resolution.

Quality of video exact that I expected,

 

So, in fact not convenient but works, menu bar in project menu which was added just for test, also was burned and allows to choose the chapters while watching discs on TV, but this part or feature is poor poor poor arranged in Toaster IMHO,

more over i faced with difficulties of long names of titles, they were simply cut by the program.

 

one more and the last GOOD THING except mentioned above:

Speed of compilation and total time of burning process - it lasts only 1 - 1,5 hour (it was a good surprise to me, especially in comparison with usage Pinnacle 14 HD - in last one, direct burning procedures for the same projects last much longer,

for instance pinnacle project is still being under process of compilation on my VAIO FW-21ZR (more than 56 hours since start - only half was done),

 

So at this stage i satisfied just a bit but, i've done what i want to,

The WORST issue of course, is that this feature of merging clips is not available (for what reason i don't know) if you are adding files to the project from a disk space , this is a big big MINUS.

Maybe I missed something again, but tried many various ways, simply couldn't be chosen in menu bar

 

PS Will try to copy all my SONY's .mts files from HDD to CANON LEGRIA's SD FLASH Cards, and then plugin it to Toaster, hope will help to cheat it.

 

BUT ROXIO GUYS, REALLY PLEASE NOTE IT AND DO SOMETHING.

OR IT LOOKS LIKE YOU SPENT 1 mln. dollars for BUYIN' MAXI YACHT and SAIL on She only USING ENGINE.

Sincerely and Best Regards,

[Alex-Vics 0]

Hello everybody.

 

Everything became clear and transparent to me.

Just burn 45 Gb - BD-DL - totally 250 clips in 10 groups

 

All files transferred (imported) the same way, as mentioned above from external Samsung HDD

Merging process was available in EDIT menu.

 

So, Movie is on a disc now, saw it on TV - everything works.

 

 

But still ask Roxio to update this bug in net version in option of compilation BD disks,

in order to prevent window surfing of users.

 

Sincerely,

[mooblie 2]

I haven't read this entire thread, but it's almost certainly NOT a bug, Alex.

 

It's probably a limitation of the BD spec, over which Roxio have no control. (There are many similar "limitations" in the DVD and CD specs too.)

 

Actually, for my money, I'd rather they followed the official BD spec, and disallowed the user from making "illegally" constructed out-of-spec discs.

Edited January 18, 2011 by mooblie

[khyron 0]

I haven't read this entire thread, but it's almost certainly NOT a bug, Alex.

 

It's probably a limitation of the BD spec, over which Roxio have no control. (There are many similar "limitations" in the DVD and CD specs too.)

 

Actually, for my money, I'd rather they followed the official BD spec, and disallowed the user from making "illegally" constructed out-of-spec discs.

 

This is exactly the kind of "assumption" that can be dangerous when researching something on the Internet. I have been looking high and low for some verification of the exact maximum number of clips one can include in a BD video disc and I have not yet found an answer, but it seems extremely presumptuous and perhaps even foolish to say that it would be exactly the same as DVD, the format which BD is designed to replace. Do you realize that at DVD quality, that is to say "standard definition," a BD project can easily hold 23 hours or more of video? Why on earth would the BD spec have the exact same limitation as its deprecating predecessor? That makes very little sense.

 

Until one of us can produce an official source to the contrary, I think it makes far more sense to presume this is in fact a bug, and that BD authoring in Toast is being subjected to a legacy limitation that really ruins the practicality of AVCHD camcorder archiving.

 

One bit of evidence which would seem to lean on the side of BD being able to handle far more clips would be the filename patterns, for example. When you pick apart a DVD, for example, you find two digit numbers all over the place because of the 99 title limitation. The filenames inside a BDMV structure have five digit numbers. While this is not the authoritative proof I'm still looking for, it certainly seems to indicate planning for far greater than 99 titles.

 

Merging clips may be a "workaround" but it does NOT produce the desired result, because individual clips lose their identity and therefore can never be re-imported into an editing program using the BD disc as a "reel." For anyone who does non-linear editing with their footage (Final Cut, Premiere, Avid, Vegas, you name it) this makes such a backup worthless and requires that we additionally save disc images of our memory cards, making a BD drive almost useless to us.

Edited January 18, 2011 by khyron

[mooblie 2]

"Dangerous"?! You're taking life too seriously, khyron. I did say "probably" anyway. "Presumptuous"? "foolish"? Verging on the rude there.

 

Why on earth would the BD spec have the exact same limitation as its deprecating predecessor?

Because they both hold similar amounts of video duration when used as intended (DVD for SD, BD for HD).

 

As for BD being "worthless" as a back-up, I regard that as a rather extreme reaction on your part. You need to address your workflow and archive issues. I am sorry you've been caught between the desire to have:

 

(i) BD-legal set-top playable video discs

and yet simultaneously

(ii) re-ingestable unprocessed archive format data on BD data discs without further processing,

 

...but I can't see how that's Roxio's fault, however you cut it.

Edited January 18, 2011 by mooblie

[khyron 0]

As for BD being "worthless" as a back-up, I regard that as a rather extreme reaction on your part. You need to address your workflow and archive issues. I am sorry you've been caught between the desire to have:

 

(i) BD-legal set-top playable discs

and yet simultaneously

(ii) re-ingestable unprocessed archive format data on BD data disc without further processing,

 

...but I can't see how that's Roxio's fault, however you cut it.

 

My name isn't Alex, and what's really frustrating is that you've made a presumption that you know something about the BD specification that you don't...and now you're making claims based on that presumption. It would be far more reasonable for you to say that "if I'm right about my presumption, this isn't Roxio's fault."

 

I have at least provided some circumstantial evidence that the BD spec can handle a larger number of clips, and all you've implied is that I'm probably wrong and Roxio is probably right.

 

Whether this is a Roxio issue or not depends on whether there is any inherent 99 title limitation in the BD specification. This is an unanswered question. Please do not miscast this as a closed issue involving people demanding that Roxio produce "illegal" media. It's nothing of the sort. I just want to be able to do something with my camcorder and my BD drive that any Windows user can do with other software.

Edited January 18, 2011 by khyron

[mooblie 2]

If I'm right about my presumption, this isn't Roxio's fault. Apologies for referring to you as Alex.

 

...and all you've said is "you're probably wrong and Roxio is probably right."

Please don't mis-quote me. I can see you're really cut up about this, but I guess I'll leave it here.

Edited January 18, 2011 by mooblie

[khyron 0]

Please don't mis-quote me. I can see you're really cut up about this, but I guess I'll leave it here.

 

Apologies, I've edited my post to say "implied."

[Philcat 0]

I immediately run into a depressing error dialog which says: "Only 98 movies or slideshows can be written."

 

I found your post from Bing search.

 

For the very same ridiculous reason for what I just tried to do on a

Standard DVD of mini clips that only use up 1/2 the disc if only 98 are used.

I counted the clips just to make sure that data was accurate for 98.

 

This makes no logical sense.

 

Oh, yea as long as I'm here, Toast 9, it has crashed so many times in the last day. I forget how many.

To add to the mess, I found I paid for the HD add on, activated it, yet it won't add it to the App.

 

I'm not the happiest camper at the moment.

[khyron 0]

For the very same ridiculous reason for what I just tried to do on a

Standard DVD of mini clips that only use up 1/2 the disc if only 98 are used.

I counted the clips just to make sure that data was accurate for 98.

 

This makes no logical sense.

 

Phil, are you working with HD content and trying to create a Blu-ray video disc? If so, I feel your pain. Toast should be able to create Blu-ray video projects with greater than 98 clips whether one is using BD media or DVD media.

 

If you are trying to create a DVD video disc however, there is no way around that limitation and that's not Roxio's issue. There is a hard limit of 99 tracks built into the DVD video specification (and most software goes up to 98 in order to leave room for a menu asset or keep certain kinds of players from malfunctioning).