15 replies to this topic

[VHS Assistant]

I am a veteran Toast user.  I started with Toast Titanium 7 and it was awesome.  I have been using EyeTV to capture my VHS into .EyeTV format, then I drag it into Toast Titanium to encode and write to my DVD.  Toast 7 was very fast encoding (minutes) and writing (minutes).  I just bought Toast 10 Titanium, and it takes 2 hours just to encode.  What has changed, or what am I doing wrong with Toast 10?  Thank you!

[tsantee]

Best Answer

VHS Assistant, on 30 January 2011 - 10:41 AM, said:

Yes, the problem isn't with Toast at all, but with EyeTV3.  My previous EyeTV/Toast7 setup did everything in DVD format MPEG-2.  The hardware finally died, so I had to upgrade everything.  So now I have Elgato EyeTV HD and it came with Version 3.5 of EyeTV3.  This software does everything in .mp4 format.  So no matter what I do with EyeTV3, the .eyeTV file (and everything I can export into) is .mp4.  So poor Toast 10, getting all the blame, has been doing everything correctly -- taking an .mp4 file from EyeTV3, reencoding it into MPEG-2, and then burning it onto the DVD in its supported MPEG-2 format.
This is why I don't have the MPEG Program Stream in my EyeTV3 -- I have MPEG Elementary Stream, which exports into -- you guessed it -- .mp4.  
Of course, I never would have figured this out with out tsantee's help.  Tsantee's version of EyeTV must have MPEG-2 encoding option (hint - don't buy a newer version of your EyeTV software).  
Even though I don't have a solution, at least I know the problem -- which is a huge relief.  So thank you!

Thanks for sharing your discoveries. I hadn't thought about the EyeTV HD recording in h.264 rather than recording or capturing in the MPEG 2 format of its predecessors. I like what the EyeTV HD can do but it is much less convenient if your objective is to create a video DVD copy. It's not the software that's changed but the EyeTV hardware which now has a h.264 encoder instead of a MPEG 2 encoder. My version of the EyeTV software is the same as yours.

[VHS Assistant]

Correction -- Toast 7 didn't encode at all -- it multiplexed and then wrote.  Also, the resultant DVD skips terribly in all my DVD players (I've tried 3 on my PC and two others different players connected to my TV).  Hopefully I'm doing something wrong since I don't see many complaints such as this.

[tsantee]

VHS Assistant, on 28 January 2011 - 06:02 PM, said:

Correction -- Toast 7 didn't encode at all -- it multiplexed and then wrote.  Also, the resultant DVD skips terribly in all my DVD players (I've tried 3 on my PC and two others different players connected to my TV).  Hopefully I'm doing something wrong since I don't see many complaints such as this.

Click the More button and the Encoding tab in the window that appears. Click the Custom button and then choose Never next to Reencode. That should result in the EyeTV videos being multiplexed rather than encoded.

[VHS Assistant]

Another variable -- I used Toast 7 with iMac Tiger.  I'm using Toast 10 with Snow Leopard.

[VHS Assistant]

tsantee, on 28 January 2011 - 06:16 PM, said:

Click the More button and the Encoding tab in the window that appears. Click the Custom button and then choose Never next to Reencode. That should result in the EyeTV videos being multiplexed rather than encoded.

tsantee -- Thank you very much for your quick reply.  I found the selection, chose "never" for re-encoding, and tried again with a second file.  It is still encoding the file slowly like before.  I'll let it encode and write overnight and see how it turns out in the morning.  
However, the great news is that the final version of my first DVD played without skipping on my DVD player.  
Thank you again, and if you have any other suggestions, please send them along and I'll try them.

[Jim-K]

VHS Assistant, on 28 January 2011 - 05:07 PM, said:

I am a veteran Toast user.  I started with Toast Titanium 7 and it was awesome.  I have been using EyeTV to capture my VHS into .EyeTV format, then I drag it into Toast Titanium to encode and write to my DVD.  Toast 7 was very fast encoding (minutes) and writing (minutes).  I just bought Toast 10 Titanium, and it takes 2 hours just to encode.  What has changed, or what am I doing wrong with Toast 10?  Thank you!

I am new to Toast.  I managed to burn a couple of DVDs, but now I am trying another one, and the Multiplexing and Encoding is unbelievably slow -- as in more than 15 hours.  Something is not right.

I am on a PPC Mac G5 with MacOS 10.5.8.  I am burning a DVD with several MPEG2 files grabbed from Tivo.

I even de-installed and re-installed Toast, but still slow.  Very frustrating.

Any suggestions?   (Roxio has not responded to my help ticket.)

[VHS Assistant]

Jim-K, on 28 January 2011 - 10:01 PM, said:

I am new to Toast.  I managed to burn a couple of DVDs, but now I am trying another one, and the Multiplexing and Encoding is unbelievably slow -- as in more than 15 hours.  Something is not right.

I am on a PPC Mac G5 with MacOS 10.5.8.  I am burning a DVD with several MPEG2 files grabbed from Tivo.

I even de-installed and re-installed Toast, but still slow.  Very frustrating.

Any suggestions?   (Roxio has not responded to my help ticket.)

15 hours!  Roxio should definitely help you.  Tsantee gave me some advice on the reencoding option.  Hopefully this works for you.  My biggest problem was with Toast Basic -- the final DVD would skip terribly.  Had to throw the disc away.  I bought Toast 10 Titanium, and although encoding takes 2 hours (and I can't turn it off), in the end at least the DVD plays.  At this point I would accept 2-hour encoding as normal, but Toast 7 was SO much faster, it seems something went wrong in the Toast 10 version.  Good luck.

[tsantee]

VHS Assistant, on 28 January 2011 - 07:19 PM, said:

tsantee -- Thank you very much for your quick reply.  I found the selection, chose "never" for re-encoding, and tried again with a second file.  It is still encoding the file slowly like before.  I'll let it encode and write overnight and see how it turns out in the morning.  
However, the great news is that the final version of my first DVD played without skipping on my DVD player.  
Thank you again, and if you have any other suggestions, please send them along and I'll try them.

Toast will re-encode a video regardless of that setting if it finds it is out of spec for video DVD. However, since this came from EyeTV it should not be out of spec. Go to EyeTV and export the video using the MPEG Program Stream option. Then drag that file to Toast. This removes the EyeTV wrapper from the video and that may be what's causing Toast to misread this video.

[Jim-K]

VHS Assistant, on 29 January 2011 - 05:44 AM, said:

15 hours!  Roxio should definitely help you.  Tsantee gave me some advice on the reencoding option.  Hopefully this works for you.  My biggest problem was with Toast Basic -- the final DVD would skip terribly.  Had to throw the disc away.  I bought Toast 10 Titanium, and although encoding takes 2 hours (and I can't turn it off), in the end at least the DVD plays.  At this point I would accept 2-hour encoding as normal, but Toast 7 was SO much faster, it seems something went wrong in the Toast 10 version.  Good luck.

What I did last night after seeing this thread was to turn off Encoding.  I then had to reduce the number of episodes burned to the DVD (to 7 from 9), but I can live with that.  The disk was burned fairly quickly without encoding, and the disk plays normally on both my Mac and on my DVD player.

Thanks

[tsantee]

Jim-K, on 29 January 2011 - 09:36 AM, said:

What I did last night after seeing this thread was to turn off Encoding.  I then had to reduce the number of episodes burned to the DVD (to 7 from 9), but I can live with that.  The disk was burned fairly quickly without encoding, and the disk plays normally on both my Mac and on my DVD player.

Thanks

I don't know how long those episodes are, but if they fit on a single-layer disc you might be able to get all 9 on a single-layer disc by choosing Save as Disc Image instead of clicking the burn button. Then select the resulting .toast file using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window. At this point click the burn button and Toast asks if you want to burn to a single-layer or dual-layer disc. Choosing single-layer activates Toast's fit-to-DVD compression which is much faster than encoding.

[VHS Assistant]

tsantee, on 29 January 2011 - 08:27 AM, said:

Toast will re-encode a video regardless of that setting if it finds it is out of spec for video DVD. However, since this came from EyeTV it should not be out of spec. Go to EyeTV and export the video using the MPEG Program Stream option. Then drag that file to Toast. This removes the EyeTV wrapper from the video and that may be what's causing Toast to misread this video.

Thank you.  I think you may have hit on my problem.  It seems EyeTV now encodes in H.264/MPEG-4, so Toast 10 must re-encode into H.262/MPEG-2 for each capture.  Previously, I was using Toast 7, I was also using an earlier version of EyeTV.  Likely, this earlier combination had EyeTV encoding in H.262/MPEG-2 and Toast 7 needed only to multiplex and write to DVD.  I got my newer EyeTV with the Elgato HD.  The export function does not include MPEG Program Stream, nor does it include H.262 or MPEG-2 options for exporting.  So I think what is happening now is EyeTV is encoding the VHS capture into .mp4 file format, which Toast10 must re-encode into .mp2 format before writing.  
Does this sound reasonable?  If so, is there any way I can get EyeTV to export or capture in .mp2 format to begin with?  
Thank you.

Edited by VHS Assistant, 30 January 2011 - 09:10 AM.

[VHS Assistant]

VHS Assistant, on 29 January 2011 - 05:27 PM, said:

Thank you.  I think you may have hit on my problem.  It seems EyeTV now encodes in H.264/MPEG-4, so Toast 10 must re-encode into H.262/MPEG-2 for each capture.  Previously, I was using Toast 7, I was also using an earlier version of EyeTV.  Likely, this earlier combination had EyeTV encoding in H.262/MPEG-2 and Toast 7 needed only to multiplex and write to DVD.  I got my newer EyeTV with the Elgato HD.  The export function does not include MPEG Program Stream, nor does it include H.262 or MPEG-2 options for exporting.  So I think what is happening now is EyeTV is encoding the VHS capture into .mp4 file format, which Toast10 must re-encode into .mp2 format before writing.  
Does this sound reasonable?  If so, is there any way I can get EyeTV to export or capture in .mp2 format to begin with?  
Thank you.

Yes, the problem isn't with Toast at all, but with EyeTV3.  My previous EyeTV/Toast7 setup did everything in DVD format MPEG-2.  The hardware finally died, so I had to upgrade everything.  So now I have Elgato EyeTV HD and it came with Version 3.5 of EyeTV3.  This software does everything in .mp4 format.  So no matter what I do with EyeTV3, the .eyeTV file (and everything I can export into) is .mp4.  So poor Toast 10, getting all the blame, has been doing everything correctly -- taking an .mp4 file from EyeTV3, reencoding it into MPEG-2, and then burning it onto the DVD in its supported MPEG-2 format.
This is why I don't have the MPEG Program Stream in my EyeTV3 -- I have MPEG Elementary Stream, which exports into -- you guessed it -- .mp4.  
Of course, I never would have figured this out with out tsantee's help.  Tsantee's version of EyeTV must have MPEG-2 encoding option (hint - don't buy a newer version of your EyeTV software).  
Even though I don't have a solution, at least I know the problem -- which is a huge relief.  So thank you!

[VHS Assistant]

tsantee, on 30 January 2011 - 02:59 PM, said:

Thanks for sharing your discoveries. I hadn't thought about the EyeTV HD recording in h.264 rather than recording or capturing in the MPEG 2 format of its predecessors. I like what the EyeTV HD can do but it is much less convenient if your objective is to create a video DVD copy. It's not the software that's changed but the EyeTV hardware which now has a h.264 encoder instead of a MPEG 2 encoder. My version of the EyeTV software is the same as yours.

Tsantee - Thank you for further clarification (hardware vs software).  Now I'm left with a choice between living with 2-hour encoding or buying Roxio's VHStoDVD software suite (and boxing up my EyeTV HD).  Do you have any experience with the Roxio VHStoDVD system?  I've read some reviews and it says "glitchy."  Also, I'm wondering about it's editing capabilities...

[tsantee]

VHS Assistant, on 30 January 2011 - 03:37 PM, said:

Tsantee - Thank you for further clarification (hardware vs software).  Now I'm left with a choice between living with 2-hour encoding or buying Roxio's VHStoDVD software suite (and boxing up my EyeTV HD).  Do you have any experience with the Roxio VHStoDVD system?  I've read some reviews and it says "glitchy."  Also, I'm wondering about it's editing capabilities...

What is your source video? If you are converting VHS tapes or other analog video for burning to DVD then the Roxio device can be a good approach. Tell me more about what you are working with and I can give you some suggestions.

[VHS Assistant]

tsantee, on 30 January 2011 - 05:12 PM, said:

What is your source video? If you are converting VHS tapes or other analog video for burning to DVD then the Roxio device can be a good approach. Tell me more about what you are working with and I can give you some suggestions.

Just converting VHS into DVD.  I'm fine now with the reencoding time -- just good to know what is going on.  When everything was going well with my last set-up, I didn't learn anything.  Struggling with this new set-up (and with your help), I've learned a lot more.  Thank you again for your help.  I'll check this issue as resolved since Toast 10 is doing everything well.