epstewart

I'd like to know why I frequently get "SESSION FIXATION ERROR WRITING LEAD-OUT" messages when using Toast 10 Titanium to burn dual-layer DVDs from VIDEO-TS folders. I see something like: The drive reported an error: sense key=MEDIUM ERROR sense code=0x73,0x03 the disk failed to be written I'm not sure those hex numbers were the actual sense codes I'm seeing, as I copied those from another post I googled online. I don't know how to locate Toast's logs to check. I've been using Verbatim DVD+R DL media in a Samsung DVD writer that shows as "TSSTcorp CDDVDW SE-S084C". Its USB cable is plugged directly into my iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.8. I have no known issues with that Samsung optical drive besides its failure to reliably burn DVDs. My memory is not reliable enough to be sure I haven't seen similar problems with burning single-layer DVD media, as I've been coping with what seems to be a "hard problem" with my iMac's internal optical drive's focus servo, causing it to be unable to write dual-layer DVDs at all. Hopping around trying to burn movie-copy DVDs in a timely fashion for transmitting to a hospitalized friend has resulted in my not being sufficiently attentive to what problems have happened in what specific situations that have left me with so many "expensive coasters" in the last week or two. Does anyone have any idea what I should do to nail down and eliminate my DVD-burning problems in the immediate future? Thanks in advance ... Eric

I'm using Toast 9.0.2 and just upgraded to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.2). Since my upgrade to Leopard, all my .TiVo files show up with generic document icons (a sheet of paper with the upper-right corner dogeared). They used to show up with a TiVo icon. Anyone else getting this? Anyone know how to get the more meaningful icon back? Thanks.

Yes, I see the video "garbage" too, on some programs but not others. I think it has to do with information that is normally hidden in the vertical blanking intervals. That information is showing up in the exported video. In standard-definition NTSC broadcasts, cable, etc., each video frame (or, actually, each of the two fields making up each frame) is separated from the next by a vertical blanking interval which contains sync signals, closed captioning, and other information. In bygone days, TV pictures would sometimes roll up and down the screen, and you could see the black vertical blanking stripes carrying white sync inside them. Nowadays there is more than just sync in vertical blanking, and so the white stuff flickers. If you can see it, that is. You usually never see it, since TVs hold sync perfectly now. When NTSC is digitized, as happens for non-digital channels in the TiVo unit, maybe the vertical blanking stuff gets digitized too. Then, when the transfered .tivo file is exported by Toast, maybe the conversion to H.264 or whatever is picking up the vertical blanking stuff. A lot of time, it doesn't matter, since the display device typically has "overscan": some number of pixels at the top, bottom, and sides of the screen are cropped off, such that the garbage at the top is hidden. But for devices that don't overscan, it would be nice if Toast's conversion/export capability would allow you to specify your own cropping.

Amiesue: OK, I'm still having trouble editing TiVo videos, and what you said about the "green" sections between the markers being the parts to be removed, and not the parts to remain in the exported video, could well explain it. That is indeed counterintuitive. You would think that "green" means "go" and that the parts to be snipped away would be (say) red. But it looks like what you said is indeed right! I took a 15-minute test TiVo video and made just the first few few seconds of it "green," then exported it for Apple TV. The result seems to be that the "green" part of it was snipped off, and the rest was exported: exactly the opposite of what I had in mind! So, given that, it might well be that the best way to do it would be to set markers around what you want to keep, then use the Invert Markers command such that the other stuff becomes what will be snipped off or out. To what you said in your earlier post #4 in this thread, giving the steps for editing, I would like to add these clarifications: After using the video player to make the edits, Save can be chosen immediately from the Toast Video Player File menu (or via keyboard shortcut). Or, if you simply quit the video player, you will get a dialog box indicating you have made changes to the markers for the video file, and then you must click Save in that dialog. Then you have to switch back to the Toast window itself (if it is not now on top). If the video player has not been quit, chances are you will have to make the Toast window active. That window should still be displaying the drop-down dialog from which you originally invoked the video player's editing function. It is in that drop-down dialog that you click OK. The drop-down dialog disappears, and then you click the lovely big red Convert Video button. After that you click Convert on that one last dialog box. In that last dialog you can accept the Apple TV device, at Automatic (or High or Fastest) quality, and you can select a Save To destination. To comment on your other comments: I have yet to figure out exactly what the Fine button does. If it gives greater granularity for frame control, I haven't any idea how to take advantage of it. In general, I find the control I have over the exact edits points to be hard to pinpoint, and sometimes using the right arrow key to jump forward actually makes it jump backward! I also would like a deinterlace capability very much. In general, I would like the ability to fine tune various options for the exported video, a la QuickTime.

Do you mean that the sections you wanted to be removed were green in color? Or that the sections you wanted left in were green in color? In my attempts at editing, I have found that the default behavior seems to be that the section between two markers is originally green. My assumption is that that indicates it is to be left in the edited output, while the other parts will be left out. Am I right about that? You can flip that original relationship by using Invert Markers from the pop-up menu whose button is at lower right in Toast Video Player. That turns the other parts light blue and the formerly green part returns to dark gray, which I interpret as meaning the other parts are now going to be in the final output and the formerly green part(s) won't. Correct?

In Toast 9 Titanium, I tried editing a TiVo file that I was about to convert for Apple TV. That involved clicking on Edit ... in the Convert: Video Files pane, which took me to Toast Video Player to do the editing. I thought I successfully snipped off the extraneous material at the start and end of the program, and yet when I exported the file it still had the snipped material. Anyone know how to get the export to honor the edits?

Toast 9 Titanium doesn't seem to be able to convert a TiVoToGo file for Apple TV (or for any MPEG-4/H.264 device) at resolutions greater than 480x360. In Toast 8 Titanium, there was a similar restriction, but also a workaround: Enter: defaults write com.roxio.Toast "tivo export mode" -integer 1 in Terminal. After that, higher export resolutions and extra formats became available in Toast 8. But in Toast 9, entering that line in Terminal does not seem to enable extra resolutions or file formats for TiVo files. There seems to be a rule imposed by the TiVo people themselves that Roxio TiVoToGo exports must be resolution-limited. The above was a workaround in Toast 8. It looks as if Roxio plugged that hole in Toast 9. Does anyone know how to get Toast 9 TiVo exports (now called "conversions") to give better than 480-pixel resolution? Does anyone have any nice words for Roxio over having successfully plugged the hole?

When I use Crunch to convert a VIDEO_TS folder, do I get a chance to give the output file the name I want? How? Crunch seems to default to an output file name based on that of the folder containing the VIDEO_TS folder. That's not always a meaningful name.