[sunrisew]

I have a Final Cut Pro project converted to a quicktime .mov file. It looks great in the quicktime player. When I encode it to DVD using Toast 6, the quality seems to substantially degrade. The latest Macworld review says that encoder in version 7 is new. Has anyone used it and compared it to version 6? I'm trying to determine if the quality would improve doing the same task in version 7.

[bewindo]

sunrisew, on Sep 21 2006, 12:24 PM, said:

I have a Final Cut Pro project converted to a quicktime .mov file. It looks great in the quicktime player. When I encode it to DVD using Toast 6, the quality seems to substantially degrade. The latest Macworld review says that encoder in version 7 is new. Has anyone used it and compared it to version 6? I'm trying to determine if the quality would improve doing the same task in version 7.

I don't know for Toast 6, but what I know is that at full quality, when I burn directly from the 8mm Sony video camera to my Panasonic DVD Recorder, the result is better than when I record from the camera to Eye TV and then burn to Toast 7.0.2. In dark scene, there is a lot of noise (pixels) with Toast 7.0.2 that I don't have with my Panasonic DVD Recorder.

And by looking the disc, you can see that for 1 hour of video, my Panasonic recorder use all the disc, while for the same thing, Toast don't use all the disc!! For me, it's mean that Toast compress unnecessarily too much!

I hope this problem will be corrected in a futur version...

[tsantee]

bewindo, on Sep 23 2006, 07:12 PM, said:

I don't know for Toast 6, but what I know is that at full quality, when I burn directly from the 8mm Sony video camera to my Panasonic DVD Recorder, the result is better than when I record from the camera to Eye TV and then burn to Toast 7.0.2. In dark scene, there is a lot of noise (pixels) with Toast 7.0.2 that I don't have with my Panasonic DVD Recorder.

And by looking the disc, you can see that for 1 hour of video, my Panasonic recorder use all the disc, while for the same thing, Toast don't use all the disc!! For me, it's mean that Toast compress unnecessarily too much!

I hope this problem will be corrected in a futur version...

There are some variables here. You don't say what settings you are using for Eye TV, but it is doing some kind of compression of the video regardless of the settings. So that intermediate step can affect quality. Toast 7's automatic setting has a bit rate ranging from 4 mbps to 8 mbps which can fit as much as 2-1/2 hours of video to a disc. Raise the bit rate in the Custom Encoder setting to use more of the disc with shorter videos. Also turn on the Half Pel setting in Toast.

Lastly, hardware encoders in standalone DVD recorders are different from software encoders. So you won't get the same results. In some cases Toast may do better and in others not as well.

[bewindo]

Ok... so could you tell me what bit rate is the best to maximise usage of the disk if I want to fit 1 hour of video?

At full quality, 1 hour fit on a single layer DVD. So, I would like to be able to simply set a preference in Toast to make fit a 1 hour movie on one DVD using ALL the place available on the disk. And surely the resulting quality will increase. Why Toast suppose that everyone has 2 hours of videos to put on one DVD? The quality is poor because there is too much compression.

I'm not a professional, I don't know what is "bit rate", I don't need to adjust bit rate myself with iDVD. Why do I need to do it myself in Toast??

So, could someone tell me the exact bite rate to put a 1 hour movie on a DVD using ALL the place on the disk?

Thanks!!

Eric

[tsantee]

Ok... so could you tell me what bit rate is the best to maximise usage of the disk if I want to fit 1 hour of video?

At full quality, 1 hour fit on a single layer DVD. So, I would like to be able to simply set a preference in Toast to make fit a 1 hour movie on one DVD using ALL the place available on the disk. And surely the resulting quality will increase. Why Toast suppose that everyone has 2 hours of videos to put on one DVD? The quality is poor because there is too much compression.

I'm not a professional, I don't know what is "bit rate", I don't need to adjust bit rate myself with iDVD. Why do I need to do it myself in Toast??

So, could someone tell me the exact bite rate to put a 1 hour movie on a DVD using ALL the place on the disk?

Thanks!!

Eric

If you set the bit rate for one hour of video at the maximum to fill the disc while retaining Toast's default setting for audio at 192 kbps Dolby Digital then you'd have a video bit rate that exceeds the spec for video DVD. Many DVD players have trouble playing back videos that are even close to the maximum.

What I think you really want to know is what is how to get the highest quality video encoding with Toast regardless of whether there still is space remaining on the disc. You actually should get very good video using the automatic setting and dragging the slider to Best quality. Even better is to go to the custom encoder window and set the average Bit Rate at 8 mbps, the maximum at 9 mbps and turn on Half-Pel especially if the video has lots of action. At this setting don't set the audio at more than 192 kbps.

[bewindo]

Well, thanks for the reply. But for me it sounds like "well... it's the best that Toast can do"... I have tried everything you mention and in low light condition videos still very noisy, and for the rest, iDVD still give me a better compression.

Very sad for Toast. As Apple seems to want to trash iLife, I really hope that Toast team will works on a new compression engine. I would love to do all my DVD work with Toast in the futur. But I can't right now.

[tsantee]

Well, thanks for the reply. But for me it sounds like "well... it's the best that Toast can do"... I have tried everything you mention and in low light condition videos still very noisy, and for the rest, iDVD still give me a better compression.

Very sad for Toast. As Apple seems to want to trash iLife, I really hope that Toast team will works on a new compression engine. I would love to do all my DVD work with Toast in the futur. But I can't right now.

If consumer-level encoders aren't good enough then get either DVD Studio Pro (with Compressor) or BitVice, MegaMPEG.X or Heuris. Toast's MPEG encoder is from MainConcept and is well regarded. At up to one hour Toast and iDVD should be similar because they both encode at about 8 mbps. But after one hour Toast should gradually exceed iDVD's quality because iDVD must lower its bit rate more due to the space required for PCM audio. Apparently the up-to-one-hour quality is noticeable better to you with iDVD.

Are you wanting iDVD's quality but the Toast menu? If so just choose Save as Disc Image with iDVD. Mount the disc image and choose DVD with the Toast Media Browser. Extract the MPEG from the iDVD disc image by dragging it from the media browser to the Toast Video window. Now you can use the iDVD-encoded MPEG in your Toast project.