Encoding Time

[colboy]

Why is it that some movies take all night to encode to blu ray and others a few hours? even using the same format (.mov) and file sizes roughly the same.

[tsantee]

Toast will multiplex rather than encode MPEG 2 video files (HD or SD) that meet the required specs. If you use another application to encode .m2v and .ac3 streams , just drag the .m2v to Toast and it will automatically add the audio stream if it has the same name (except for extension) and is in the same folder; or Toast will ask you to locate the audio.

 

What was the resolution and frame rate of your source .mp4? It may be that Toast was doing some rescaling.

[sterlingarcher]

tsantee, the file in question: .mp4, 1 Hr 51 Min, 1080p, H264 (High), 1910x1076, 23.98 FPS, 5485 KB/S (4.58 GB)

 

The resulting file in Toast was over 6GB, even though I used the lowest quality setting under 'HD video authoring on DVD.'

 

It did finally finish and burn (after the veeeeeery long wait), but like I said, the audio timing was slightly off on the disc (although it's fine in the original .mp4 file)

 

So how would I create .m2v and .ac3 files from my .mp4? iFFmpeg has a preset for AVCHD containers (.m2ts), VOB containers, MPEG TS containers, among many others.

 

Any information would be hugely helpful. I am absolutely out of my element!

[tsantee]

If the source video is high definition then it takes a very long time for Toast to encode it to standard-definition for DVD. If the source is standard definition then it takes a relatively short amount of time. A .mov file can be either HD or SD.

[The Iron Giant]

The correct answer to this question is: Toast 12 *STILL* doesn't use multithreaded encoding. Final Cut / Compressor have taken advantage of this for years. Even Sony Movie Studio for Windows and Handbrake for Mac/PC will use multiple threads / cores to accelerate video encoding. Why isn't Toast doing this?

[tsantee]

What may have messed up Toast's encoder is that the video is not 1920 x 1080 which required rescaling. Toast is not good at this. You have a choice of two encoding formats for Blu-ray disc with Toast. One is MPEG 2 and the other is MPEG 4. I don't know which one it used for your project but I'm guessing MPEG 2. You can go to Toast's custom encoder settings window and change the encoder to MPEG 4 to see if the result is better. You might try trimming the video down to 5 minutes or so as a test to speed up the outcome. You can choose Save as Disc Image and then mount the disc image (I use the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window to do this) and preview the result using Roxio Video Player in the Toast Extras menu.

 

I have no experience with other encoding applications. I'm sure you can find tips for FFmpeg somewhere. If you use that you want the result to be either a multiplexed mpeg 2 video or separate .m2v and audio streams.

[sterlingarcher]

I'm using Toast 12, trying to take a 4.5 GB .mp4 file and use the 'HD video authoring on DVD' option to put the file on a standard dual layer DVD.

 

The encoding process took 45 HOURS, even on a Retina iMac with 4 Ghz Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB DDR3 Ram AND the upgraded Radeon R9 graphics card. Am I doing something wrong? It seems absolutely insane that the file would take so long to encode. Days? Really?

 

And the kicker? The audio wasn't encoded properly. It was off by about a quarter of a second, making the entire video unwatchable.

 

Is there another program I could use (like iFFMPEG) to encode the file in preparation for Toast, so Toast didn't have to do the heavy lifting?

 

And if so, what file format do I convert my original .mp4 file to so Toast can just get about the business of burning the film onto a dual layer DVD?

[tsantee]

The correct answer to this question is: Toast 12 *STILL* doesn't use multithreaded encoding. Final Cut / Compressor have taken advantage of this for years. Even Sony Movie Studio for Windows and Handbrake for Mac/PC will use multiple threads / cores to accelerate video encoding. Why isn't Toast doing this?

Maybe because development of Toast has nearly come to a standstill.