Compression Rates

[Michael_C]

I have a friend who is using Toast to convert half of the class lectures from a goup we both belong to. I convert the other half using Roxio's EMC9. They report poor quality trying to fit the 140-150 minute videos on a single DVD. I am able to get a reasonable quality in EMC9 if I save the DVD ouput to a "folder set" on the hard drive (using the highest quality), and use EMC9's Disc Copy to burn the disc - Disc Copy does a better job compressing. If I try to burn directly from Roxio DVD builder, or copy from a disc image created by DVD builder, I get poor results.

I saw a thread recommending to create a disc image, and then use Toast's copy. Is this the best way to go using Toast? It would seem a disc image created in Toast would have to compress the disc image file in order to fit on a standard dvd, unless you can allow the disc image to be larger than a standard dvd.

 

Any thoughts/recommendations?

 

Michael

[tsantee]

You should get good picture quality with a 150-minute DVD encoded by Toast as long as you are using Dolby Digital audio. But if you prefer you also can choose Save as Disc Image and then have Toast "Fit to DVD" that image file in the Copy window when you burn your DVD. That might produce slightly better quality although I've never compared the two.