hermie54

NEC 3520aw with very expensive Mitsubishi Chemical (Verbatim) DL coasters...

Sorry freshburn, but I don't buy it. I've made more coasters with Toast 7 than with all my previous versions put together. Besides, it's raining reports of people throwing away Toasted discs but reporting succes with Finder burns. Can't be a coincidence or always bad media.

Hmmm, I'm thinking more in the line of Directory problems. Did the disk have its weekly DiskWarrior sweep? IMNSHO DW is a Must Have for keeping disks healthy and weird problems out of the door. Yes, it costs money, but I think it's money well spent. When you eventually get a new machine you don't have to pay over again, just order a new disc when it gets available that will startup your Mac for a fraction of the original app's price. DW (and AppleJack for that matter) have bailed me out through the years more than once.

Sorry for not reading the whole thread (again), but I don't have any AVI-sync problems. They go straight into Toast 702 Video window. I clean out the text and set a button picture in the Edit window and that's about it. No sync problems yet burning PAL discs. But then, are we talking AVI files or AVI containers with XVID or whatever in them? Anyway, if they don't show up in Toast or it balks I whip them through ffmpegX first. The only ones that still give me trouble are the ones with Ogg Vorbis sound. Yes, there is a way to get the sound playing but that means installing yet more software and I really can't be bothered at the moment. Oh well, still learing...

No idea really, except that France has SECAM and the rest of us Eurotrash PAL. Dunno what the actual difference is, cuz normally here everything plays anything. Well, sorta, I suppose...

As far as I know there are no "extras" in the box. If you burn the downloaded image you'll end up with exactly the same installation CD, so you'll have a "hard" backup as well. If I'm wrong someone from Roxio correct me, please...

Is your output format set to PAL? Menubar ==> Toast Titanium ==> Preferences. Shouldn't make much difference though cuz in Europe every DVD player or telly automatically recognizes PAL, SECAM or Never The Same Color.. But just to make sure. You didn't mention getting a Toast nagging screen telling that the contents to burn is NTSC and Toast is set to output PAL, do you want to burn NTSC or encode to PAL? This is what I got this morning. Roxio, can this one be removed, please? I mean, when I set prefs to PAL I really don't need yet another screen going on about the same thing...

Whispering from under rock... So now I've got another AVI, which is probably not a "real" one but a wrapper, because the info that came with it says Ogg Vorbis. It plays in VLC, but I can't get it exported to something usefull for Toast. Does anyone have an idea where to look? DivXDoctor II doesn't want it either. Surely there must be a way to get this thing on DVD?

OK, I started to play with the various new Video options in Toast 702. But before I screw up the rest of this particular file to DVD flow I've got a video newbie question... It's a MPG-1 file and Toast won't or can't play it from the DVD Video window under the "More" button. The player thingie is not there. So I had the idea of exporting it as DV and then perhaps add Chapters in iMovie and get it back into Toast after that? Anyway, Toast will export the file, but before I do I'd like to know what to do with the Audio under the Export DV Options. It said locked and 44.100 (which is CD). Should I leave locked checkmarked or not? And, because I want to end up on DVD, should I change the audio to 48.000 at this stage or later on? Sorry, but I can't find answers to these question in the Help file, nor in the Getting Started Guide. Yes, I realise that the quality will probably be poor, but I'd like to try it anyway.

Yep, my 700 something MPG file grew to 19 GB. I don't think you're doing anything wrong, it's just the way it is. Drag the .DV file into Toast's DVD-Video window, give the disc a name and stuff under "More" and set a picture under "Edit" and that's about it. You can try if it plays alright in Toast as well, which more or less guarantees that your disc will be fine, I think. Toast encodes again and burns the disc. I then trash the large DV file and probably keep the smaller original MPG on a Data DVD gatherng dust for just in case...

I exported again as PAL, 48 kHz and switched the Lock checkbox off (defaults seem to be NTSC - even when PAL is set in prefs - and the Lock checkbox on). This time through Toast and then there was sound... SUCCESS! It's a long process first exporting and then encoding again for burning, but it worked fine. It plays on my standalone DVD-player for the telly and I was amazed about the quality I got on TV. Brilliant! Thanks again for the help! Hmmm, still don't know what the Lock box actually does though

I'll give it a try, thank you. But before I do that, should I convert from NTSC to PAL at this stage or later while burning? I also don't know what to do with the Audio Locked checkbox, leave it on checked or uncheck it? With my failed attempt I "unlocked" it. Not in manuals and no tooltip, sorry.

I exported to DV through QuickTime with audio on 48 khz. But when I play the DV file all sound seems to have been lost. After ages it finally showed up in iMovie, but I couldn't do much with it there, wanted to add Chapter markers but they were greyed out. Perhaps I should have tried iDVD instead. Dunno, rookie in this area. Anyway, no sound in iMovie HD, QuickTime Player, nor in the play window in Toast. Any tips/ideas about what I'm doing wrong? The original file has sound alright.

Ahhh, I just ditched that codec assuming AC3 was fixed again in QuickTime 704. Are you sure it's not and I should install it again?

Thank you very much for your help. Yes, the file plays in QuickTime and I just noticed that QT's Export Options window is exactly the same as Toast shows. So I take it Toast uses QT for this? Meaning I should perhaps export it directly from QT to DV Stream 48 khz? I'll try that I think and then fire up iMovie for the very first time. Fun! Or not, perhaps...

Depending on how you ripped it this can be a Toast or MTR problem, I think. Let's wait for the Toast Gurus. In the mean time you should be able to find more info about this on the MTR Forum, which is here: http://www.ripdifferent.com/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=26

ehmmm freshburn, how come you kept your total posts number while yours truly seems to have started over again after the revamp? BTW a lot of very useful threads have been lost, I think. Or have they been archieved somewhere?

I have Flip4Mac 2.0.1 installed (a paid version) and burned two CD's with Toast 7.0.2 today. All went fine. But these were simple Data-discs, haven't tried anything else yet.

On the MTR Forum I read that Taiyo Yuden doesn't make DL discs. Anyway, can't get them here so I try to get Verbatim from Mitsubishi Chemical instead. Also, I got a pressy from someone containing a small spindle of Imation DVD-R's and two boxes of Sentinel CDR's and they both burn fine with Toast 7 so far... Different subject, but on the same forum I also read that DL-R discs usually won't play on standalone DVD players, which could explain my film problem. Something about a marker of some sort not being present on the blank disc. Bummer!

I think you found the problem, tsantee. I just checked and Amadeus II can resample sounds, but I don't know what will happen with the recording's time scale. Any audio-freaks around who can check this out? Amadeus II is a great app and it's cheap, so would be a nice solution if it would work in upsampling CD to DAT...

Thank you! Of course, obvious place, why didn't I think of that one. Anyway, do we still need it now that QuickTime 7.0.4 has seen the light? Haven't updated it yet, got burned before...

Thank you very much! But please forgive my ignorance, where do I put it? Can't find it on the apps pages...

OK, i looked in the drive's PDF manual and there it also said it can burn DL -R. So I started Toast again, inserted the disk that I thought was now a coaster with the idea to see if and what Toast would give for speeds and stuff. Surprise, this time Toast said the disk was still blank and had 2x instead of 4x selected. Just for fun I dragged in the MTR folder, unchecked the compress setting and hit burn. Guess what? It burned and verified fine at 2x. So IT WORKED! Well, sorta, the new disc plays fine on my Mac, but my Daewoo VCR/DVD Combi won't have it, fails to load. Still, I really do think that my DiskWarrior sweep and other maintenance activity yesterday must have somehow influenced Toast's operation. The same sometimes happens with DVD player, MacReporter and a few other apps. An extra restart (which I did) usually cures these weird symptoms. But not for Toast perhaps. The difference today being a real "cold" start. Dunno... So a mixed result (the combi won't play), but at least I didn't waste a lot of money on DL discs!

Straight after the lead-in Toast 702 reports a sense key error, tells me it failed to write and that I'm using unsupported media. While I'm using the recommended by manufacurer NEC Verbatim 4x DL's for my NEC 3520aw with firmware 306, that is. No problems with SL so far. Something wrong with Toast's DL support, perhaps? For good order, my machine is a Dual G4 1.42 MDD FW800 with 2 GB RAM and lotsa free disk space left. Rather frustrating...

Hi tsantee, thank you very much for the quick reply! Mine came in a LaCie box as well. Both LaCie and NEC confirmed with me that it actually is a NEC drive without any modifications. Flashing to 3.0.6 with NecFlash went without a hitch and you can actually use the .exe file from the NEC site for doing this. Don't forget to dump the old Firmware first, so you can go back in case of disaster. NecFlash prompts you for that. Anyway, in the capabilities it doesn't mention DL at all, but in the Features tab it indeed says DVD+R. And I haven't got those, I bought 2 5-packs of expensive DVD-R's. I did so because the only DL disk mentioned in the drive's Medialist is Verbatim DVD DL -R. The Plus variety isn't even mentioned there. Weird... I think I'm going to ask NEC-support about this one. I really don't feel like getting new +R disks again and besides, the shop I got these from doesn't even have them. I could of course burn to SL, but I wanted the DL for quality. If I go that way I think that instead of burning straight from the MTR 3 folder I'll save as compressed Disk Image and burn that one. Looks safer to me. I'll report back if I get any wiser from NEC (or LaCie for that matter).