Two VIDEO_TS folders onto One DVD?

[John Bertram]

Did a search (both this forum and Toast Help, plus the Apple iDVD forum) but couldn't find a thread that dealt with this specific question:

 

A friend recently lent me two burned DVDs, representing Act One and Act Two of a school concert presentation from last year. Now the easy thing for me to do would be to just use Toast to make a straight copy of each. What I'd like to do though, is combine the contents of both discs (about 5.5 GB in total) and burn it all onto one Dual-Layer disc.

 

So I've copied the contents of each "master" disc onto my hard drive, and now have two folders (each bearing the name of the disc from whence they were copied), and in each folder is a VIDEO_TS folder (together with its companion AUDIO_TS one).

 

But now I'm having trouble figuring out the best workflow -- using either iDVD 6 or Toast 8, or a combination of the two -- to merge the content of these two separate discs (and their two separate VIDEO_TS folders) in such a way as to then let me burn it all onto one Dual-Layer DVD.

 

Is there in fact a straightforward way to do this? Hoping someone can point me in the right (and probably obvious) direction.

 

Thanks,

 

John Bertram

Toronto

[tsantee]

I opened a ticket on this today and here's the response:

 

Thank you for Contacting Roxio Technical Support

You can not burn VOB files or multiple Video_TS folders on one disc. You have to first export the Conetent of the Video_TS folder into a MOV, MPG, AVI, etc. Once it is in one of the supported formts for burning you would the drop the exported video files in to Toast to burn.

Regards,

Roxio Technical Support

http://support.roxio.com

Using the Media Browser is what extracts an MPEG file from the VIDEO_TS folder. Toast writes the MPEG file to the Roxio Converted Items folder and uses it in authoring a new video DVD. So Roxio's info is correct but it fails to explain how you can easily use Toast to accomplish this first step.

[Jar]

I opened a ticket on this today and here's the response:

 

Thank you for Contacting Roxio Technical Support

You can not burn VOB files or multiple Video_TS folders on one disc. You have to first export the Conetent of the Video_TS folder into a MOV, MPG, AVI, etc. Once it is in one of the supported formts for burning you would the drop the exported video files in to Toast to burn.

Regards,

Roxio Technical Support

http://support.roxio.com

 

This will only work if the Video_TS folder doesn't use PCM audio. Otherwise you won't be able to export.

This is a known bug in Toast 8, and Roxio has not resolved the issue as yet.

[tsantee]

Place one of the VIDEO_TS folders on the Mac's desktop.

 

Open Toast and choose DVD video as the format in the Video window. Go to the Media Browser and choose DVD with the top button. Select the DVD that appears below and add it to the video window. Toast extracts the MPEG 2 video from the VIDEO_TS and writes it to the converted items folder

 

Remove that VIDEO_TS folder from the desktop and do the same thing with the other one. It also works the same when putting a VIDEO_TS folder in the top level of the Movies folder.

 

You should now have both movies showing in the Video window. Edit the menu text and layout as you want. Then choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu.

 

When the disc image is finished, select it with the Image File setting in the Copy window. With Fit-to-DVD checked click the burn button. Toast will do additional compression to fit your oversized movie to a single-layer disc.

[pseudonym]

Thank you, tsantee, for this very useful information!

[John Bertram]

[...]

When the disc image is finished, select it with the Image File setting in the Copy window. With Fit-to-DVD checked click the burn button. Toast will do additional compression to fit your oversized movie to a single-layer disc.

 

One clarification -- I wasn't trying to compress two parts of an oversized movie to fit onto a single-layer disc, I was trying to combine the contents of two single-layer discs onto ONE dual-layer. So I left the "Fit to DVD" unchecked, since I'd already selected "DVD-DL" in the bottom right media list.

 

In any case, thank you tsantee (as always) for the helpful reply.

 

Unfortunately, after following the procedure exactly as you described, I get the following error message:

 

"Couldn't complete the last command because of a Mac OS Error

Result Code = -39"

 

I tried several variations (burning with or without menus; automatic vs. custom encoding; even burning straight to a disc instead of to a disc image) -- but no matter what combination I tried, that Error message would pop up almost exactly halfway through the writing process (i.e. when the Toast progress bar reach approximately 50%). Even Restarted the machine to eliminate that as a suspect. The Importing part of the process (from each of the separate VIDEO_TS folders, using the media pane as you described) seemed to work fine; but the writing part always got stalled about half way through.

 

 

So it looks like I may just have to take the easy way out and simply burn two separate discs, one for each of the two originals. But if there's anything else worth testing or trying, by all means let me know.

 

Thanks.

[gesplus]

Just copy both VIDEO_TS folders from the DVD's to the Mac, you'll have to copy them to separate folders since they both have the same name.

 

Go to the video tab, DVD-video, drop the first VIDEO_TS folder you want to play onto Toast, then the second. Make sure they are in the order you want to play them top to bottom. Say Okay at the unsupported format warnings.

 

Under Menu Style check mark "play all items continuously," you can check mark Auto Play if you want it to play as soon as you insert it into the player.

 

I have never done this but I just tried with two small clips and it worked. Let us know how it turns out on bigger files.

 

BTW if you don't want to waste a DL DVD experimenting, you can save it as a Disc Image, when it's done double click the image then mount the image with Toast, and play it in DVD player.

[ronr]

I sent another web ticket out last week to see how far Roxio is in addressing the Mac OS error -39 issue, that has not been resolved using version 8.0.1. After a few days a tech closed the case, stating that I should upgrade to version 8.0.1. I just re-opened the ticket. What a great experience this is.

 

I opened a ticket on this today and here's the response:

 

Thank you for Contacting Roxio Technical Support

 

 

You can not burn VOB files or multiple Video_TS folders on one disc. You have to first export the Conetent of the Video_TS folder into a MOV, MPG, AVI, etc. Once it is in one of the supported formts for burning you would the drop the exported video files in to Toast to burn.

 

 

Regards,

Roxio Technical Support

http://support.roxio.com

[tsantee]

One clarification -- I wasn't trying to compress two parts of an oversized movie to fit onto a single-layer disc, I was trying to combine the contents of two single-layer discs onto ONE dual-layer. So I left the "Fit to DVD" unchecked, since I'd already selected "DVD-DL" in the bottom right media list.

 

In any case, thank you tsantee (as always) for the helpful reply.

 

Unfortunately, after following the procedure exactly as you described, I get the following error message:

 

"Couldn't complete the last command because of a Mac OS Error

Result Code = -39"

 

I tried several variations (burning with or without menus; automatic vs. custom encoding; even burning straight to a disc instead of to a disc image) -- but no matter what combination I tried, that Error message would pop up almost exactly halfway through the writing process (i.e. when the Toast progress bar reach approximately 50%). Even Restarted the machine to eliminate that as a suspect. The Importing part of the process (from each of the separate VIDEO_TS folders, using the media pane as you described) seemed to work fine; but the writing part always got stalled about half way through.

So it looks like I may just have to take the easy way out and simply burn two separate discs, one for each of the two originals. But if there's anything else worth testing or trying, by all means let me know.

 

Thanks.

 

That error is likely due to the brand of DL media you used. Most drives seem to only reliably work with Verbatim DVD+R DL media.

 

 

Just copy both VIDEO_TS folders from the DVD's to the Mac, you'll have to copy them to separate folders since they both have the same name.

 

Go to the video tab, DVD-video, drop the first VIDEO_TS folder you want to play onto Toast, then the second. Make sure they are in the order you want to play them top to bottom. Say Okay at the unsupported format warnings.

 

Under Menu Style check mark "play all items continuously," you can check mark Auto Play if you want it to play as soon as you insert it into the player.

 

I have never done this but I just tried with two small clips and it worked. Let us know how it turns out on bigger files.

 

BTW if you don't want to waste a DL DVD experimenting, you can save it as a Disc Image, when it's done double click the image then mount the image with Toast, and play it in DVD player.

Do not drag VIDEO_TS folders to the Toast Video window. It might work for short videos where the VTS title set does not exceed on VOB. But Toast 7 and 8 are designed to use the Media Browser to access titles from VIDEO_TS folders. Toast needs to work from extracted MPEG 2 files rather than from VOB title sets.