Please help ASAP? Can't make DVD Chapters

[Gurr8]

I've tried to make DVD chapters in Toast 6, 7 and 8 and none of them give me the option. I'm using a Macintosh OS 10.4. When I click on any of the videos in my content page, I only get the option to change the title and date. There's no video tab and no mention of DVD Chapters either in the individual video or on the menu. How does this work? I need to make a DVD with chapters ASAP.

 

Thanks,

 

Jill

[tsantee]

What format are your source files? Toast automatically creates chapter marks in certain time intervals (such as every 5 minutes) with some video formats. When the source is an existing MPEG 2 file then Toast recognizes existing chapters in the file or creates chapters at 5 minute intervals (no other time settings are available). If it is in iMovieHD project then Toast recognizes the chapters placed in iMovie.

 

There is no option to manually select chapter mark locations in Toast.

[Gurr8]

I'm using Toast 8.0. I'm about to leave town so I'll update to 8.03 per your suggestion. Thanks SO much for all your help. Hopefully this will be resolved very soon.

[Gurr8]

What format are your source files? Toast automatically creates chapter marks in certain time intervals (such as every 5 minutes) with some video formats. When the source is an existing MPEG 2 file then Toast recognizes existing chapters in the file or creates chapters at 5 minute intervals (no other time settings are available). If it is in iMovieHD project then Toast recognizes the chapters placed in iMovie.

 

There is no option to manually select chapter mark locations in Toast.

 

 

 

I'm using Video-TS files. They're not MPEG 2's or iMovies.

[Gurr8]

I'm actually not even sure if it's Chapters that I need. I want to be able to put the DVD in and have a menu come up so people can choose one of several video clips that last a few minutes each. When I put the DVD in now, it just starts playing the videos in consecutive order without giving people the option to see what's on the DVD and to choose the one they want to see. Can you help?

[Gurr8]

Thanks for all the details but I've hit a new snag. I followed your directions exactly as written but when I save it as a Disc Image or even try to burn it since all my videos are in the window, I get the same error message:

 

Couldn't Complete the Last Command because of a Mac OS Error: Result code = -39

 

I've tried to find out what error -39 is but Google doesn't turn up anything. This is SOOOO frustrating!!

[tsantee]

I'm actually not even sure if it's Chapters that I need. I want to be able to put the DVD in and have a menu come up so people can choose one of several video clips that last a few minutes each. When I put the DVD in now, it just starts playing the videos in consecutive order without giving people the option to see what's on the DVD and to choose the one they want to see. Can you help?

Place your VIDEO_TS folder on the desktop (not inside any other folder). Choose DVD video in the Video window. Choose DVD with the top button of the Media Browser. In a couple seconds something will appear in the browser window. Use the second button (the one below DVD) in the browser window to access either the titles or chapter level of the VIDEO_TS folder. Select the titles or chapters you want and drag them to the Video window. Toast extracts MPEG files from the VIDEO_TS. You can do this with other VIDEO_TS folders as well. If the video is on a non-encrypted DVD you can just insert the DVD and don't need to copy the VIDEO_TS to the hard drive. The content of the DVD shows up in the browser the same way as above.

 

Once you have all the titles you want in the Video window, edit the text so it makes sense and give the disc a name. Uncheck the auto Since you want the menu to appear when the disc is inserted remove the check mark next to Auto-play disc on insert. If you want the menu to reappear after each title plays then uncheck the box next to Play all items continuously.

 

I suggest choosing Save as Disc Image from the File menu. Toast should go into multiplexing rather than encoding. If it starts "encoding" then abort the process and go to the custom encoder settings window and choose Never next to re-encode. When Toast is finished writing the disc image mount the disc image and preview it with DVD Player. If all is okay then burn the disc image to DVD using the Image File setting in the copy window.

[Gurr8]

Thanks for all the detailed info. I'm really a newbie at this so forgive me but when you say:

 

"Use the second button (the one below DVD) in the browser window to access either the titles or chapter level of the VIDEO_TS folder."

 

Is this the button that says Video_TS Folder (just below DVD-Video) in the left side of the browser? It brings up a window that says to Select the video.

 

And since all of my DVD segments that I want to load say Video-TS, can I differentiate them with titles, since otherwise I don't know how else to copy them onto the hard drive per your instructions. But when I give the second folder a name, it doesn't show up in the Media Browser window. Can I erase the first Video-TS Folder once it's loaded into Toast to avoid this problem?

 

I'm going out of town until Wednesday so will have to work on this then but appreciate any more feedback you can give.

 

Thanks!

 

Happy Holidays,

 

Jill

[tsantee]

Thanks for all the detailed info. I'm really a newbie at this so forgive me but when you say:

 

"Use the second button (the one below DVD) in the browser window to access either the titles or chapter level of the VIDEO_TS folder."

 

Is this the button that says Video_TS Folder (just below DVD-Video) in the left side of the browser? It brings up a window that says to Select the video.

 

And since all of my DVD segments that I want to load say Video-TS, can I differentiate them with titles, since otherwise I don't know how else to copy them onto the hard drive per your instructions. But when I give the second folder a name, it doesn't show up in the Media Browser window. Can I erase the first Video-TS Folder once it's loaded into Toast to avoid this problem?

 

I'm going out of town until Wednesday so will have to work on this then but appreciate any more feedback you can give.

 

Thanks!

 

Happy Holidays,

 

Jill

 

You aren't looking at the Media Browser. It is a separate window, typically to the right of the main Toast window. If you don't see it then choose Show Media Browser from the Windows menu at the top of your screen.

 

You also did not choose DVD video as the format in the Video window. I believe you chose DVD video from VIDEO_TS. Do not choose that for the project you are wanting to do.

 

Here's why you need to do it as I previously described. In order to create a DVD with menus you need to have the DVD "authored" into a VIDEO_TS folder that contains the menu details and links. If all you wanted was to copy an existing VIDEO_TS folder or compress the entire contents of a dual-layer disc to fit a single-layer DVD then the existing menu within that VIDEO_TS can be retained. But that's not what you're wanting to do. So you need to have Toast create a new menu. It does that using the DVD video setting. However, you still need to get the videos out of the VIDEO_TS folder into Toast. That's why you extract the titles and/or chapters using the Media Browser.

 

Once you have the titles and/or chapters extracted from your VIDEO_TS folders they appear as a list in the Video window, each with a thumbnail image and a text description. You can change the thumbnail image by clicking on it. A scroll bar appears beneath it which lets you slide to select a different image that appears in the menu.

 

Maybe it will make more sense if I say that you are creating a brand new video DVD. It is the same as if you making one from movie clips you shot with your camera. Instead you are making it with MPEG video clips you extracted from your VIDEO_TS folders.

 

One more thing: because you are wanting clips from multiple VIDEO_TS folders just drag one to the desktop at a time. When you're done extracting titles or chapters from it, move it from the desktop and place a different one there. The Media Browser will automatically updated itself for whatever one is on the desktop. The same is true if you place a VIDEO_TS folder at the top level of the Movies folder.

[tsantee]

Thanks for all the details but I've hit a new snag. I followed your directions exactly as written but when I save it as a Disc Image or even try to burn it since all my videos are in the window, I get the same error message:

 

Couldn't Complete the Last Command because of a Mac OS Error: Result code = -39

 

I've tried to find out what error -39 is but Google doesn't turn up anything. This is SOOOO frustrating!!

Sorry this is going so poorly. Tell me more about the DVDs that are your source. What created them?

 

Something I didn't mention is that quitting Toast after doing the extractions from the browser to the video window, Toast automatically deletes those from the hard drive. So if you gave up and quit Toast you'll have to do the extractions again. There is a setting in Toast preferences where you can prevent Toast from automatically emptying the Converted Items folder. You might want to change this preference now.

 

Are you using Toast 8.0.3? The -39 error will appear in earlier versions of Toast 8 whenever the source DVD has PCM audio which is what iDVD creates. But that is fixed in the latest Toast update.