Toast Dvd Encoding

[MATHEW.M]

I HAVE ONLY HAD MY MAC A WEEK SO IT MIGHT BE ME!!! BUT WHEN I TRY TO BURN A DVD VIDEO THE BAR AT THE BOTTOM SAYS IT IS GOING TO USE 4.1 GB BUT IT ONLY USES 1.5 GB AND THE QUALITY IS RUBBISH. PLEASE CAN ANYONE HELP?

[tsantee]

What is the resolution of your source video (i.e. is it 720x480) and what is its time length?

 

I'm guessing you chose Automatic and Best Quality. That usually turns out well. For the very best quality, though, click Custom and click the More button. Now choose the Encoding tab. Here you'll see options to set the bit rate and turn on Half-Pel. Half-Pel increases quality but doubles the time it takes to complete the encoding. I'd leave the maximum bit rate at 8 mbps but increase the minimum if your video is less than two hours.

 

You can choose Save as Disc Image to write a file that can be mounted and previewed in DVD Player. If it ends up too big for your single-layer DVD you can use Toast's Fit-to-DVD when selecting the disc image using the Image File setting in the Copy window.

 

If you were previewing your DVD full screen on your Mac, that is why it looked like rubbish. You need to preview it at actual size. Better yet, burn it to rewritable media and preview it on your TV.

[MATHEW.M]

What is the resolution of your source video (i.e. is it 720x480) and what is its time length?

 

I'm guessing you chose Automatic and Best Quality. That usually turns out well. For the very best quality, though, click Custom and click the More button. Now choose the Encoding tab. Here you'll see options to set the bit rate and turn on Half-Pel. Half-Pel increases quality but doubles the time it takes to complete the encoding. I'd leave the maximum bit rate at 8 mbps but increase the minimum if your video is less than two hours.

 

You can choose Save as Disc Image to write a file that can be mounted and previewed in DVD Player. If it ends up too big for your single-layer DVD you can use Toast's Fit-to-DVD when selecting the disc image using the Image File setting in the Copy window.

 

If you were previewing your DVD full screen on your Mac, that is why it looked like rubbish. You need to preview it at actual size. Better yet, burn it to rewritable media and preview it on your TV.

 

 

The video size is 664x268 and the film lasts 1 hour 51 min. I have tried changing every setting but the output is the same 1.5 GB the original file is better quality than the DVD File! Any other suggestions are welcome!

[tsantee]

The video size is 664x268 and the film lasts 1 hour 51 min. I have tried changing every setting but the output is the same 1.5 GB the original file is better quality than the DVD File! Any other suggestions are welcome!

What a strange resolution. Of course the source video is going to look better than the DVD. Toast needs to rescale the image by adding more pixels. Also remember that a video DVD is interlaced whereas your source probably has no interlacing fields. But I'm surprised it looks like rubbish although I've never had Toast create a video DVD from something with that resolution. There isn't any more I can tell you about improving the quality beyond adjusting the settings in the custom encoder window.

 

You might try seeking some advice from the users in the Mac forum at videohelp.com. They use other software such as ffmpeg and might have some experience working with similarly scaled videos.

[pseudonym]

Using tsantee's advised settings (above) has made a noticeable difference in the quality of avi-to-DVD conversions. I have obtained very good results by choosing Custom encoding settings, with the *Average* bit-rate set to 7 Mbps (8 maximum), motion estimation to Best with half-Pel checked. The motion is smoother than when using the Automatic settings, although the conversion does perhaps take a bit longer.

This is definitely worth a try if you are not satisfied with the results when using the best Automatic settings.