Why Won't My Dvd Burn?

[haphazard.moogle]

I recently downloaded a TV series that I would like to burn onto a disc. The series itself is about 4.8 Gigs, and I'm trying to put 3 episodes onto one disc, about 1 gig. When I try to burn the disc, it says there's a problem because it needs 5 gigs of space on the DVD and my DVD only has something like 4.3. Why does it need so much room on a disc? Is there any way of compressing the video before it tries to burn? I've already tried setting the Video Quality to Good, but no go.

 

Any ideas?

[NimChimpsky]

I recently downloaded a TV series that I would like to burn onto a disc. The series itself is about 4.8 Gigs, and I'm trying to put 3 episodes onto one disc, about 1 gig. When I try to burn the disc, it says there's a problem because it needs 5 gigs of space on the DVD and my DVD only has something like 4.3. Why does it need so much room on a disc? Is there any way of compressing the video before it tries to burn? I've already tried setting the Video Quality to Good, but no go.

 

Any ideas?

I'm presuming that you recorded the TV series as AVI or MP4 and that you're using the Video -> DVD-Video option in Toast. (BTW, the fact that the source video takes up 1 gig is mostly irrelevant. What matters is its duration.)

 

Under Encoding: choose Custom and click on More. Then set Motion Estimation to Best and check Half-PEL. Set the Audio Format to Dolby Digital. AFIAK, the other pull-down menus might as well be set to Automatic, but someone else may know better! Then you set the Average Bit Rate to be only as low as necessary so that, when you press OK, you see a green arc alongside the big red button in the corner and not a red or orange one.

 

You can also sometimes/perhaps make the data rate change needed to get the arc to green by just lowering the audio Data Rate a little. Unfortunately, the adjustment of the video Average Bit Rate is extremely crude at low bit rates; from 2.5 to 2 Mbps is a rather big plunge! (I wonder, though, how seriously toast takes these average video bit rate settings, anyway. It seems to allow more video on a DVD than would fit according to a bit rate calculation.)

 

I have no opinion on the setting of the Maximum Bit Rate or whether to check Dynamic Range Compression. I'd be interested in what others have to say about them.

 

[haphazard.moogle]

This is going to sound completely stupid, but how do I get to the Toast Copy window to select the disc image file via the Image file setting? I'm totally new to Roxio, so step by step might be needed. Sorry! I really appreciate your help.

 

Shout out from Portland, Buddy! I lived in Eugene for 18 years until moving here recently.

 

Edit: Actually, I figured it out. Thanks for your help！！

[tsantee]

Choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu instead of clicking the burn button. When that process is complete select the disc image file using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window. Now click the burn button. Toast does Fit-to-DVD compression to make it fit the disc.