[Bryan]

I couldnt find this in the forum.


Everytime I try to play the dvd it looks like it is starting then it just freezes on the screen. ten it will start back up and freeze right away. I have tried the same dvd on more than one dvd player. This is is decent media memorex dvd +R 16x. I am using Toast 7. I am also having problems putting multiple episodes on one disk.
I dont know what the hell I am doing wrong please help.

[tsantee]

Memorex media causes problems for lots of people. I'd choose a different brand such as Verbatim. Insert the troublesome DVD in your Mac's drive, open Toast and choose the Copy window. When the DVD appears in the window choose Save as Disc Image. Toast will copy the DVD to the hard drive. When it is done, eject the disc and double-click on the disc image to mount it. You can now play that video with DVD Player. Assuming it plays okay, you can use the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window to burn a new DVD. If you insist on using the Memorex media, try burning at a slow speed such as 4X.

I can help you with the multiple episodes but I need to know more information. What is the source for the videos? Also, tell me what Mac and DVD burner you are using.

[Bryan]

tsantee, on Sep 24 2006, 07:38 AM, said:

Memorex media causes problems for lots of people. I'd choose a different brand such as Verbatim. Insert the troublesome DVD in your Mac's drive, open Toast and choose the Copy window. When the DVD appears in the window choose Save as Disc Image. Toast will copy the DVD to the hard drive. When it is done, eject the disc and double-click on the disc image to mount it. You can now play that video with DVD Player. Assuming it plays okay, you can use the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window to burn a new DVD. If you insist on using the Memorex media, try burning at a slow speed such as 4X.

I can help you with the multiple episodes but I need to know more information. What is the source for the videos? Also, tell me what Mac and DVD burner you are using.

Well I thought memorex would have been a good brand to go with I have no idea. I added this drive LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1633S.

now I didnt think of this but what I am doing is using winavi video converter on my pc to convert avi to vob and so far all of the videos i have done that with give me the same problem.

As for the episodes I am taking avi's and converting them with that same software. maybe that software is the trouble.

[tsantee]

Bryan, on Sep 24 2006, 10:24 AM, said:

Well I thought memorex would have been a good brand to go with I have no idea. I added this drive LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1633S.

now I didnt think of this but what I am doing is using winavi video converter on my pc to convert avi to vob and so far all of the videos i have done that with give me the same problem.

As for the episodes I am taking avi's and converting them with that same software. maybe that software is the trouble.

Does it work to take the AVI's straight to Toast rather than converting them first? Or are they Windows Media Player files that have to be converted before they can be read by Quicktime?

If Toast is doing the MPEG encoding it will fit about 2-1/2 hours of video to a DVD at its automatic setting. You can get more (up to about 3-1/2 hours) if you lower the bit rate in the custom encoder setting, but the quality will be less. You also can choose Save as Disc Image from the Toast File menu to create an image file that is too big for a single-layer disc, and then use the Fit-to-DVD feature in the Toast Copy window to reduce the size of video in that image file to fit.

If Toast isn't doing the MPEG encoding then it will burn up to about 4.28 GB of MPEG-encoded video to a single-layer DVD.

Skipping can be caused by too high a bit rate, but that is only likely if your video is shorter than about an hour; otherwise the video at a high bit rate won't fit the single-layer disc.

[Bryan]

tsantee, on Sep 24 2006, 03:03 PM, said:

Does it work to take the AVI's straight to Toast rather than converting them first? Or are they Windows Media Player files that have to be converted before they can be read by Quicktime?

If Toast is doing the MPEG encoding it will fit about 2-1/2 hours of video to a DVD at its automatic setting. You can get more (up to about 3-1/2 hours) if you lower the bit rate in the custom encoder setting, but the quality will be less. You also can choose Save as Disc Image from the Toast File menu to create an image file that is too big for a single-layer disc, and then use the Fit-to-DVD feature in the Toast Copy window to reduce the size of video in that image file to fit.

If Toast isn't doing the MPEG encoding then it will burn up to about 4.28 GB of MPEG-encoded video to a single-layer DVD.

Skipping can be caused by too high a bit rate, but that is only likely if your video is shorter than about an hour; otherwise the video at a high bit rate won't fit the single-layer disc.

Ok this is what I tried. I went to the video tab and clicked dvd video and then I dropped like episodes in and put a disk in and clicked burn. Then it did some encoding which takes forever then burns the disk. that seems to be working. It just takes a long time. And it seems like I can only put 3 half hour episodes on the disk cause when I drop the episodes the green bar fills up completly. I thought there would be more room than that

[tsantee]

Bryan, on Sep 25 2006, 09:05 AM, said:

Ok this is what I tried. I went to the video tab and clicked dvd video and then I dropped like episodes in and put a disk in and clicked burn. Then it did some encoding which takes forever then burns the disk. that seems to be working. It just takes a long time. And it seems like I can only put 3 half hour episodes on the disk cause when I drop the episodes the green bar fills up completly. I thought there would be more room than that

If you are using Toast's Automatic setting you should be able to get more than 2 hours of video on a DVD. Try putting up to 2-1/2 hours of programs in the Video window and choose Save as Disc Image. If the resulting disc image is less than 4.38 GB in size then Toast can burn that to a single-layer disc using the Copy window. If it is more than 4.38 GB, then Toast's Fit-to-DVD feature will kick in and do further compression to fit the video to the disc.

[Bryan]

tsantee, on Sep 25 2006, 10:20 PM, said:

If you are using Toast's Automatic setting you should be able to get more than 2 hours of video on a DVD. Try putting up to 2-1/2 hours of programs in the Video window and choose Save as Disc Image. If the resulting disc image is less than 4.38 GB in size then Toast can burn that to a single-layer disc using the Copy window. If it is more than 4.38 GB, then Toast's Fit-to-DVD feature will kick in and do further compression to fit the video to the disc.

Well let me ask you this. When I have a avi thats in two parts how do I use toasts auto feature to convert and mmake a whole movie? Also what file types will it convert? Is it just avi or can I use mpg and others?

[tsantee]

Bryan, on Sep 26 2006, 11:04 AM, said:

Well let me ask you this. When I have a avi thats in two parts how do I use toasts auto feature to convert and mmake a whole movie? Also what file types will it convert? Is it just avi or can I use mpg and others?

Toast cannot join video files. You can put them in sequence and turn on the "Continuous Play" function so your DVD player will automatically start playing the second title when it has finished playing the first title

Toast can encode to video DVD a wide variety of video sources. You'll get an error message for those it can't encode. I also choose Save as Disc Image because it gives me a way to preview the encoded video (by mounting the disc image and watching it with DVD Player) and I have less trouble burning image files to disc.

If you AVI's are Divx you may consider creating Divx discs instead. This won't require re-encoding if the original was within the Divx specs. The downside is this requires a Divx-capable DVD player for watching on your TV. Those are pretty cheap now.

[Bryan]

tsantee, on Sep 26 2006, 05:51 PM, said:

Toast cannot join video files. You can put them in sequence and turn on the "Continuous Play" function so your DVD player will automatically start playing the second title when it has finished playing the first title

Toast can encode to video DVD a wide variety of video sources. You'll get an error message for those it can't encode. I also choose Save as Disc Image because it gives me a way to preview the encoded video (by mounting the disc image and watching it with DVD Player) and I have less trouble burning image files to disc.

If you AVI's are Divx you may consider creating Divx discs instead. This won't require re-encoding if the original was within the Divx specs. The downside is this requires a Divx-capable DVD player for watching on your TV. Those are pretty cheap now.

When I put an avi in and click save as disk image it made a toast file. then it went through and encoded it. Then when I tried to copy from disk image the disk was not playable. When I just record the disk with out doing an image first everything was good Thanks for all your help

[tsantee]

Bryan, on Sep 28 2006, 10:42 AM, said:

When I put an avi in and click save as disk image it made a toast file. then it went through and encoded it. Then when I tried to copy from disk image the disk was not playable. When I just record the disk with out doing an image first everything was good Thanks for all your help

The disc image must be burned to DVD using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window. It can also be played on the Mac by mounting it. You can mount it by double-clicking on it in the Finder, or by control-clicking on it and choosing Mount It from the contextual menu, or by selecting it in the Toast Copy window.

[Bryan]

tsantee, on Sep 28 2006, 01:48 PM, said:

The disc image must be burned to DVD using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window. It can also be played on the Mac by mounting it. You can mount it by double-clicking on it in the Finder, or by control-clicking on it and choosing Mount It from the contextual menu, or by selecting it in the Toast Copy window.

Dude thanks for all your help