Burn Blu Ray Disc - Possible To Force Toast To Not Re-encode?

[Conrad]

Hello,

 

I have purchased Toast version 9 and 10, as well as the blu-ray plug in for both versions. I have video in FCP that is DVCPROHD at 720p.

 

I have tried exporting to a Quicktime file and dragging and dropping that file into Toast to burn a blu-ray disc. It took forever for Toast to encode, but finally finished and burned a disc. I put it in my blu-ray player, and it looks terrible compared to the raw HD footage on my laptop. I've read online that Toast simply does not have the extensive capabilities for encoding that Compressor does.

 

I want to use Compressor to encode the footage. My question: in what format/settings do I have to export using Compressor in order for Toast to NOT re-encode anything? What file format AND file extension do I have to feed Toast so that it doesn't re-encode my footage? I have a few very short videos (about 20 minutes worth of footage) that I want to burn to Blu-Ray so I want to use the HIGHEST POSSIBLE DATA RATE. Yes, I know I have to export as an MPEG2 in Compressor, but as a Transport Stream or as a Program Stream? Will that include the audio as well?

 

Thx in advance,

Conrad

[revwally]

I'm afraid to tell you that the streams produced by Compressor are not, for some reason, compatible with Toast. But I don't know this for sure, since I don't own Compressor - that's only what I've heard from others.

 

What you would want most likely is two elementary streams (.m2v and .ac3) in the same folder with the same name, add the video file to Toast and it should automatically pick up the .ac3 file. Oh, the other key thing is to set the re-encode to "Never". I have to do this with my EyeTV recordings or else Toast will try and re-encode those, and as you saw, Toast's encoder isn't the greatest.

 

I know for a fact that material encoded as h.264 in Adobe Media Encoder will work without re-encoding in Toast, so it might be possible with compressor. You might want to try h.264 for DVD Studio Pro as well - that might work.

[Conrad]

Thanks for that info; can you tell me, where is the setting in Toast to set re-encoding to "Never"?

[Jasonaug]

I've tried every which way to encode with Compressor for Toast Blu-Ray, and it can't be done. Encoding for HD-DVD or BLu-Ray in Compressor results in audio/videos files that, when muxed together by Toast, gets corrupted and results in blocky, breaking-up video when played back. I don't know if Toast 10 is any different.

[revwally]

I've tried every which way to encode with Compressor for Toast Blu-Ray, and it can't be done. Encoding for HD-DVD or BLu-Ray in Compressor results in audio/videos files that, when muxed together by Toast, gets corrupted and results in blocky, breaking-up video when played back. I don't know if Toast 10 is any different.

 

Just out of curiosity, did you try using the h.264 for DVD Studio Pro?

 

I will say I was very surprised when things encoded in Adobe Media Encoder multiplexed into Toast fine.

[Conrad]

Do the assets you drop into Toast HAVE to be demuxed? If I try to give Toast a properly formatted MPEG2 or MPEG4 file, will it re-encode it regardless?

 

I spent all day converting my DVCPROHD footage into high quality h.264 files. Even when Toast is set to NEVER re-encode..... it still tries to re-encode my footage!!!

 

Conrad

[revwally]

I know a properly formatted MPEG-2 file (properly as being defined by Roxio) can be handled without being re-encoded. I have done it with EyeTV recordings that are MPEG-2. I've also gotten mpeg-2 and mpeg-4 transport streams to not re-encode. But most of these were recorded using EyeTV or encoded with Adobe Media Encoder.

 

[kma650]

Thanks for that info; can you tell me, where is the setting in Toast to set re-encoding to "Never"?

Note no one answered your question regarding how to set Toast to "never" on re-encode.

[sk810]

You can use Compressor to encode the DVD files before dropping them in Toast, but if you don't encode them small enough to fit on your disc, then Toast will re-encode them and it will look terrible.

 

Use this spreadsheet calculator from Ken Stone to help you calculate it. If you're doing a bunch of videos, you can temporarily drop them all in a timeline to get the total run time.

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/bit_budget.html

 

FYI, You need to make sure your AC3 and M2V have the same name and toast will automatically add the sound to the video when you just drop the M2Vs into it. Use a file renaming utility or if you set up a destination folder it will default the file names to only "source".

[grandpabruce]

sk810, your post may help someone in the future, but you posted to a thread that has basically been dead for over 8.5 years!