Toast 9 Quality Of Video

[sydman]

Hi there.

 

In iDVD forums there is much discussion about the dreadful degradation of images, especially purpose made and purpose sized graphics which look absolutely beautiful in their native formats and also in such applications as iMovie, but turn to "expletive deleted" when burnt to disc. The usual reply from the experts on these forums is (to paraphrase) "iDVD only produces Standard Definition video and what more do you want - it's FREE isn't it?"

 

And fair enough I suppose.

 

What I would like to know is: Given that Toast is NOT FREE, does it have a better standard of video reproduction than one can get with iDVD? Something above iDVD's Standard definition but below Blu-Ray definition or the purchase of special discs or esoteric hardware devices to write and read them?

 

In other words, if I burned a standard DVD disc from the same original files on both iDVD and Toast 9, both capable of playing on a common or garden DVD player, would Toast be the obvious winner and would I being able to see a demonstrable difference?

[tsantee]

Toast has a very good MPEG encoder and I expect that Roxio will claim it is higher quality than iDVD. But whether you'd notice a difference depends on what the content is - and the total length - of the video you're burning to a video DVD. Toast also has a Half-pel encoding option that improves image quality.

 

You may already know everything I'm about to write, so I apologize if I'm going over some background info that isn't news to you.

 

Do not evaluate the quality of a video DVD picture by viewing it on a computer display. View the DVD on a TV screen to evaluate its picture quality.

 

If your source content is photos there is only one way to make them look their best on a video DVD. That is to create a DVD slide show rather than a movie slide show. The difference is that a DVD slide show treats each image as a chapter so that you can advance and go back using the chapter button on a player's remote control. DVD slide shows are full frame and can be authored to advance to the next image in a certain number of seconds. There can be 99 images in each title on a DVD and up to 99 titles. iDVD provides some transition options and allows a background audio track for its DVD slide shows whereas Toast does not have those options with its DVD slide shows.

 

A movie slide show is what gets made in iMovie, Fotomagico, Photo-to-Movie and some other applications. Those create a QuickTime movie so you can pan and zoom across the slide, add clever transitions and text and time-sync an audio track. They are fun to watch but the picture quality suffers considerably when compared with a still-frame DVD slide show.

 

If you are displeased with iDVD at its best quality then I don't believe you'll find Toast to be enough of an improvement to spend the money only for that purpose. Toast does a lot of things that may make its purchase worthwhile even for people who never use anything other than iDVD. Roxio also has a refund policy for people who buy Toast as a download from the Roxio site and want to "return" it within a certain number of days.

 

One other thing to note, Toast by default does Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding for audio when making video DVDs. iDVD only does PCM audio which uses up a lot more disc space which could be used for higher video bit rates on movies of more than one hour in length. So if you are making movies longer than one hour, Toast may be your better option as long as you don't need fancy menus.

[rpj]

Did you get a reply to your question below? Can you share it with us? Or me?

 

My email is rjohnson@aeifunds.com.

 

thanks

 

rpj

 

 

 

 

Hi there.

 

In iDVD forums there is much discussion about the dreadful degradation of images, especially purpose made and purpose sized graphics which look absolutely beautiful in their native formats and also in such applications as iMovie, but turn to "expletive deleted" when burnt to disc. The usual reply from the experts on these forums is (to paraphrase) "iDVD only produces Standard Definition video and what more do you want - it's FREE isn't it?"

 

And fair enough I suppose.

 

What I would like to know is: Given that Toast is NOT FREE, does it have a better standard of video reproduction than one can get with iDVD? Something above iDVD's Standard definition but below Blu-Ray definition or the purchase of special discs or esoteric hardware devices to write and read them?

 

In other words, if I burned a standard DVD disc from the same original files on both iDVD and Toast 9, both capable of playing on a common or garden DVD player, would Toast be the obvious winner and would I being able to see a demonstrable difference?

 

[FarmerBob]

I have spent the past several days reading through everything including the explanation above and you can say what you want but "iDVD Toasted Toast!" I had an AVI file that through Quicktime was beautiful. Toast just could not deal with it. What ever I tried, in several versions of Toast, as I read different versions were better or worse than others, I got considerably worst video quality than the original file. I tried every program that I had, forgetting that I had iDVD 8. So in final desperation I tried iDVD One Step and got perfect video and AC-3 sound, so says my receiver set at "auto" to take whatever it gets via optical and use it. And in doing so, it tells you what it got and is using.

 

So, the days and money that I have wasted on Toast, and having been a day one user, I have seen a severe drop in the overall quality since Adaptec spun off Roxio (for socio-political reasons) that seems to be getting worse as the GUI gets more intricate than the applications ability.

 

"Toast ain't the "Toast of the Town" anymore.

[sydman]

Hi tsantee.

 

no, I did not know one tenth of what you gave me in your reply. It was very useful and I now understand things a whole lot better now. You have also given me some ideas to go and try out.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Regards

 

sydman