DVD Encode CALCULATION ERROR!

[P_syc_H_ot_I_c]

ok so i encode alot of videos to watch on a regular DVD player. i like quantity vs quality so i use a custom setting and both of the sliders are set at the lowest setting (2). i used to be able to use the little bar around the big red "burn" button to monitor how much space i have on a dvd. i always stay in the green, but i've been having alot of problems with it.

 

recently i'll fill the encode/burn que leaving some space left on the dvd, toast is telling me that its okay to encode and burn but once it is done encoding it'll give me errors telling me that it needs xxxx space but the dvd can only fit xxxx space. how come toast didnt tell me that before i started encoding?

 

its also so inconsistant, sometimes i'm able fit over 6 hours on a dvd, sometimes only 4.75hr. (it ranges all the time, sometimes it can be 5hours, 5.5hrs, etc)

 

i made sure that toast knowz that the media will be single layer dvd, but the calculations are always telling me i can fit 6hrs but after encoding it'll tell me i need a bigger DVD. how come toast doesnt just tell me in the begining when the blank dvd is already inserted?

 

anyone have any suggesstions on why this would happen? or how to fix it?

 

i make the dvd w/o any menus with autoplay and play one after the other.

 

 

thanks, any suggestions would help

[Squid3660]

I've been trying to burn an 802 mb avi file to a dvd with no luck. First it told me that there was not enough disk space 4.38 needed 2.07 available, even though it was a new dvd. Tried burning to a Disk Image and it told me exactly the same thing! So I quit and restarted the program and the second time it told me 4.38 needed, 1.04 available for a disk image. I have plenty of hard drive space btw.

 

What's going on with this program?!

 

Are you using the DVD-Video menu? Im not too familiar with AVI files. If you are using DVD-Video, this might help.

 

I am sensing that you are using AUTOMATIC ENCODING? Select CUSTOM ENCODING, then click MORE and Encoding. Adjust your MAX bit rate to 2.00 Mbs, Motion Estimation to BEST and click Half-Pel. Next, select ALWAYS in the Reencoding button. Everything else leave as AUTOMATIC. Click ok and recheck the green bar... it should have gone down a significant amount. If you have lots of room left on the green bar, go ahead and increase your MAX bit rate to something higher until you can comfortably fit it all on the DVD. This will give you the best quality for the compression and be able to fit it on the DVD. Just because your source file is 800MB does not mean that your converted mpeg-2 is going to remain 800MB! The size of your converted/reencoded mpeg-2 is determined by your MAX bit rate setting. Thanks to forum member Tsantee for this valuable info for us newbies!

 

I sure hope this helps!

 

I just tried this with a 900MB .mov file... I dropped it into the blank DVD-Video window with AUTOMATIC Encoding set, and the green bar balooned to 7GB! I set Encoding to CUSTOM and set MAX bit rate to 2Mbs and turned Reencoding to ALWAYS, and the size dropped down to 1.87G. I feel this is the key to your problem!

 

Try this and let me know what happens!

 

BTW, I just want to say thanks to the Toast creators out there... I had a hard learning curve before I got things to work, but it paid off... the results Im having are outstanding (Albeit, reencoding takes FOREVER, but worth the wait)! Awesome program! Thank you Thank you!

[mike457]

As Squid says, the issue is not the original size of the AVI file, but rather how you're encoding it. In my own case, I have a DVD player that will play AVI files, so I just save those as data files. In that case, the size of the original file does not change, as I'm not converting it into anything else. If I change it to a different format, such as DVD, then it's the output size that matters. Burning as a DVD movie always comes out as MPEG2, a format that is usually larger than AVI files. Even saying that, I can take two 1 hour TV shows encoded as AVI files 624X352, 25fps encoded as DIVX 6 (698mb each in size) and use Toast to encode them as a 2 hour DVD at the best quality setting. In this case, roughly 1.4gb of files becomes 4.3gb on the DVD. A better rule for guidance is the running time of the file rather than its size. A two hour file should be about the max for a DVD at best quality. The space indicator always seems to be accurate on my computer. (I know; don't you just hate people who smugly say they don't have your problems?

 

That said, I have not encountered anything like the sensitivity Squid reports. I'm running a 24" iMac with the 2.16 core2duo processor and 2gb of RAM. I find I can do email, use iChat, watch a video, run Word and so forth without choking Toast. I would be interested to know what hardware and how much RAM Squid has. When I was running a 1.8G5, I did find any encoding task seemed to take a long time, but I always still could run other programmes without trouble.

[july1962]

I've been trying to burn an 802 mb avi file to a dvd with no luck. First it told me that there was not enough disk space 4.38 needed 2.07 available, even though it was a new dvd. Tried burning to a Disk Image and it told me exactly the same thing! So I quit and restarted the program and the second time it told me 4.38 needed, 1.04 available for a disk image. I have plenty of hard drive space btw.

 

What's going on with this program?!

[Squid3660]

I'm having the SAME problem... except I am using DVD-DL. I tried to fit two VOB files that were around 4.5G each on a 8.5G DVD, using AUTOMATIC setting (not custom) and the green bar said the total size used was 7G out of 7.5G (I'm using a superdrive on my mac mini intel).

 

So, Im thinking... this is cool, so I will burn to disc. I usually burn an image first, but I was feeling confident that Toast knew what it was doing.

 

Nope... halfway through writing, i get an error saying the file is 9G and I so I need more space on the DVD.

 

Thanks to everyone at Roxio for helping me to create yet ANOTHER coaster out of an expensive blank DVD-DL.

 

I tried custom encoding too, bit rate at 2M/sec, the green bar goes even lower, saying that it is only going to use half my dvd-dl to fit everything on there. This time, I burned to image first to test this out... when all was said and done, the file was still 9G.

 

However, I have been known to be completely wrong sometimes... so maybe I am just overlooking a setting. It is probably something stupid too. I am going to experiment some more with this... maybe play with the custom encoding settings... turn reencode to ALWAYS or something... i dunno... we will see.

 

HEY ROXIO... DO YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS ABOUT THIS????????????????????????

 

Hello? Anyone there??? Its me... your valued customer who payed $80 bucks for your software... DO YOU HAVE ANY SUPPORT FOR THIS PROGRAM???

 

Thank you!

[Squid3660]

Ok, well I finally have me some success!

 

Turns out that you cannot rely on the automatic setting to do anything good for you. You must customize your bit rate and you MUST select ALWAYS under the REENCODE selector thingy.

 

With the two 4.5G VOBS I wanted to fit on the DVD-DL, I tried lowest bit rate and set REENCODE always. The green bar slid down to about the 1/4 mark (which I am no longer trusting at all, but it was interesting to see how far down it went. It is telling me something, it just isnt very accurate.)

 

I began to save this as a disc image, and it began to encode at 2M/sec. This process took almost 10 hours... good thing I was going to bed anyway. I let it encode all night, I went to work, came home for lunch and saw that it was all done. Before I mounted the file it had created, I checked to see what size it was... amazingly, it was 3.5G! Wow...!

 

So, I mounted the file and watched it through DVDPlayer, and I have to say, the quality wasnt too dam bad for such compression! It was slightly blocky in some parts, but overall, I was quite impressed.

 

Now, if 2M/sec made a 3.5G DVD out of two 4.5G VOBs, then I wonder what 4M/sec would do... I think that would fit just perfect on my DL, and will bump up the quality a lot. I will try this over the weekend and let you all know how it turns out.

 

BOTTOM LINE... Toast 8 definetly has a bug... Automatic settings and file size calculations are hosed. Now that I know how to make it work, I am not that miffed... but it would be nice if Roxio were to acknowledge this and work on fixing this in future updates (hopefully soon).

 

Cheers!

[P_syc_H_ot_I_c]

i'm sort of a slider when it comes to operating systems. i use PCs and MACs but recently i've been spending alot of time with my mac, and alot of time with toast 8. i'm pretty sure i've gone and tweaked all my settings in the DVD encoding part of toast and i've set everything to the lowest quality available and all it does its show the green bar as being smaller.

 

i did some test burns with some cheap DVDs i got from work and the results are very odd. if i burn something at an exremely low bitrate on custom setting and the green "capacity bar" shows up as jus under 3/4 of the way full, but when i burned it out and looked at the dye on the dvd it was almost to the edge.

 

i thought i was jus delusional, so i reduced the bar down to UNDER 1/2 and did another burn. this time the written data on the dvd was mere centimeters smaller than the last burn (further away from the edge)

 

i really dont understand why toast miscalculates the space. i mean if the video and audio are already factored and all there is to do is calculate space vs time (with a controlled quality variable ie: custom settings) why would toast make these mistakes?

 

i too have paid $80 for the program and am also wondering what roxio has to say about it. at least explain why it would be doing so.

 

thanks squid for keeping the post alive.

[Squid3660]

Oh yea... I forgot to mention... for best results, always start encoding with Toast directly after a fresh reboot or a shutdown, and never have any applications running in the background, not even a messenger client like Yahoo IM or whatever. My experience has yeilded better results this way... Ive wasted lots of time with Toast quitting due to cpu overload... even messing with Activity Monitor during a Toast burn session has caused Toast to flake out and quit on me. On the plus side, I have learned a lot about patience and how to best curb my anger! lol!

 

Good luck, Phsychotic!

[ogdens]

i'm sort of a slider when it comes to operating systems. i use PCs and MACs but recently i've been spending alot of time with my mac, and alot of time with toast 8. i'm pretty sure i've gone and tweaked all my settings in the DVD encoding part of toast and i've set everything to the lowest quality available and all it does its show the green bar as being smaller.

 

i did some test burns with some cheap DVDs i got from work and the results are very odd. if i burn something at an exremely low bitrate on custom setting and the green "capacity bar" shows up as jus under 3/4 of the way full, but when i burned it out and looked at the dye on the dvd it was almost to the edge.

 

i thought i was jus delusional, so i reduced the bar down to UNDER 1/2 and did another burn. this time the written data on the dvd was mere centimeters smaller than the last burn (further away from the edge)

 

i really dont understand why toast miscalculates the space. i mean if the video and audio are already factored and all there is to do is calculate space vs time (with a controlled quality variable ie: custom settings) why would toast make these mistakes?

 

i too have paid $80 for the program and am also wondering what roxio has to say about it. at least explain why it would be doing so.

 

thanks squid for keeping the post alive.

 

We are just fellow users on here.....occassionaly a Roxio person does come on (on their own time).