Music Dvd

[holysmoker7]

I can create a music dvd, no problem. But I would like to add some pictures to it. Looked in the manual, tried google - so far no help. Anybody do this and have a way? Do I simply create a folder of the pictures and drag that into the Toast window where I added the audio folders? TIA

[tsantee]

I'm unclear about what you are wanting to create. Are you wanting to have a slide show of pictures to look at while the music is playing? Are you wanting a slide show of pictures as a different item on the DVD to view instead of playing the music? Are you wanting to change the picture in the thumbnail image that accompanies the track name? I don't know of any way to include a slide show with a music DVD disc. The only thing you can do is change the thumbnail image.

 

iDVD allows the addition of audio to its DVD slide shows. Maybe that is better suited to what you are wanting. However, there is no way to control what audio tracks are playing as there is with the music DVD.

[holysmoker7]

What I want is to simply create a music dvd - the music is actually talks I have given over the past 6 months, and the files are all in iTunes format (AAC I think). But Toast will not do that. It crashes about halfway through the encoding process. I have tried every version since 10.0.3, and Toast will not create a music dvd./ I was able to get it to do so with just one playlist - one talk in other words. I want a dvd with all 26 talks on it.

 

In reading about creating a music dvd, it seemed so simple. The there was the part about adding your own pictures, and since it is a dvd to be played in dvd players, I thought, 'Hey that would be great!" But alas I cannot get it to even create a music dvd with more than one playlist.

 

I really do not care to create a slide show. I've done that with iPhoto, iMovie and such. I want a dvd that lists the talks and tracks within the talks, and all that as a menu that a normal dvd player can access. This is what it seemed like a music dvd would be, and what Toast claimed it would and could do. Unfortunately my experience with Toast 10 has been that many things were broken from the start. And every time one thing was fixed, two or three things were broken.

 

So forget the photos and slide show stuff, how do I create a music dvd? The directions in the manual, and a recent post on the same, simply do not work. I have a Mac Pro, 13 gigs ram, four 2TB hard drives, an SSD raid, external backups, OSX 10.6.4 and 10.5.8 and have tried them all. Restarted, run permissions repair on all drives, do maintenance scripts, pram reset, turn off computer and let it rest a couple of hours. Can you interpret the crash files that get created each time Toast crashes - which has been every time I've tried to burn or create a music dvd or an image. If so I could attach that. Any other suggestions? TIA

[tsantee]

What I want is to simply create a music dvd - the music is actually talks I have given over the past 6 months, and the files are all in iTunes format (AAC I think). But Toast will not do that. It crashes about halfway through the encoding process. I have tried every version since 10.0.3, and Toast will not create a music dvd./ I was able to get it to do so with just one playlist - one talk in other words. I want a dvd with all 26 talks on it.

Interesting. That's quite a different tone than your first post where you said you can create a music DVD with no problem. I just completed a test of creating a music DVD with multiple titles, AAC and Mp3 audio tracks and images from different locations. It didn't crash and plays great.

 

So let's see if we can figure out why that isn't happening for you. Toast is completing encoding of some tracks but crashes at about the mid-way point. You can see which track was being encoded when the crash happened by opening the Roxio Converted Items folder in your Documents folder. Sort the list by Date Modified. The last one to appear in the list is the one preceding the one where Toast crashed. In iTunes, convert the problem track in iTunes to AIFF and replace the AAC version in the playlist with the AIFF version. Now remove that title from the Toast window and replace it with the modified playlist so Toast recognizes the change you made. When all is ready choose Save as Disc Image to see if you get all the way through the encoding this time around. You may encounter other tracks that cause Toast to crash and may need to do this again. If the disc image gets completed you can burn it to DVD using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.

 

The only time I've had Toast crash making a music DVD is when the compressed audio file had some error in it. That error gets fixed when the track is uncompressed to AIFF.

 

The way to convert to AIFF in iTunes is to click the Import Settings... button in the iTunes Preferences General tab. Once you select AIFF Encoder in the preferences then select the tracks in the iTunes playlist and choose Create AIFF version in the iTunes Advanced menu. This will make an additional copy of those tracks in the main library. You will need to move the AIFF version from the full track list to the playlist (and remove the AAC version).

[holysmoker7]

Interesting. That's quite a different tone than your first post where you said you can create a music DVD with no problem. I just completed a test of creating a music DVD with multiple titles, AAC and Mp3 audio tracks and images from different locations. It didn't crash and plays great.

 

So let's see if we can figure out why that isn't happening for you. Toast is completing encoding of some tracks but crashes at about the mid-way point. You can see which track was being encoded when the crash happened by opening the Roxio Converted Items folder in your Documents folder. Sort the list by Date Modified. The last one to appear in the list is the one preceding the one where Toast crashed. In iTunes, convert the problem track in iTunes to AIFF and replace the AAC version in the playlist with the AIFF version. Now remove that title from the Toast window and replace it with the modified playlist so Toast recognizes the change you made. When all is ready choose Save as Disc Image to see if you get all the way through the encoding this time around. You may encounter other tracks that cause Toast to crash and may need to do this again. If the disc image gets completed you can burn it to DVD using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.

 

The only time I've had Toast crash making a music DVD is when the compressed audio file had some error in it. That error gets fixed when the track is uncompressed to AIFF.

 

The way to convert to AIFF in iTunes is to click the Import Settings... button in the iTunes Preferences General tab. Once you select AIFF Encoder in the preferences then select the tracks in the iTunes playlist and choose Create AIFF version in the iTunes Advanced menu. This will make an additional copy of those tracks in the main library. You will need to move the AIFF version from the full track list to the playlist (and remove the AAC version).

 

I was premature in saying that Toast would create a music dvd. It appeared to be doing so when I wrote the first post. No to any specific file for crashing. I already converted the mp3s to aac, but do I need to convert all of them to aif. That would be 26 playlists X 12 tracks average, total. My understanding is that Toast converts the files to 192Khz Dolby Digital, the default setting. I had no problems with one playlist. Anytime that I dragged two or more playlists and either tried to burn a dvd or burn an image, Toast crashed. No specific place as I can tell. My tone has changed to frustration from optimism at the first post. I thought I had found the solution to a big problem - sending out 4 cd's per month to 30+ people. I was hoping one dvd per month or even per quarter would help save a lot of time, postal expense and other troubles. Now are you saying that Toast will only accept AIF files for this activity. I do have all the files in AIF format, but that would mean having to drag them individually from the folders they are in, (along with the editing files), which would really be a pita. I've turned off the computer for a while - need to fix dinner. Back later with a clearer mind and calmer emotions hopefully. Thanks for your help. If you say you've been able to do it, then it must work, and maybe there is something I have missed.

[tsantee]

I was premature in saying that Toast would create a music dvd. It appeared to be doing so when I wrote the first post. No to any specific file for crashing. I already converted the mp3s to aac, but do I need to convert all of them to aif. That would be 26 playlists X 12 tracks average, total. My understanding is that Toast converts the files to 192Khz Dolby Digital, the default setting. I had no problems with one playlist. Anytime that I dragged two or more playlists and either tried to burn a dvd or burn an image, Toast crashed. No specific place as I can tell. My tone has changed to frustration from optimism at the first post. I thought I had found the solution to a big problem - sending out 4 cd's per month to 30+ people. I was hoping one dvd per month or even per quarter would help save a lot of time, postal expense and other troubles. Now are you saying that Toast will only accept AIF files for this activity. I do have all the files in AIF format, but that would mean having to drag them individually from the folders they are in, (along with the editing files), which would really be a pita. I've turned off the computer for a while - need to fix dinner. Back later with a clearer mind and calmer emotions hopefully. Thanks for your help. If you say you've been able to do it, then it must work, and maybe there is something I have missed.

I didn't say Toast needed the files to be AIFF (after all, my test had no AIFF files in it). What I said was when there is an error in a compressed file it can be fixed by converting that file to AIFF. That's why I suggested looking for the file where Toast crashed during encoding and replacing it. There is no reason to replace all the tracks and playlists if only one file is causing the problem. Toast automatically empties the Roxio Converted Items folder when you quit Toast (unless you change the default in Toast preferences), but it doesn't get emptied if Toast crashes. You should see the tracks that were successfully encoded to ac3 in that folder.

 

After clicking Save as Disc Image and choosing a save location, Toast reports in its window the name of the track it is encoding and continues to report the subsequent track names until it is done with the encoding. When the encoding is finished Toast begins writing the disc image file. My understanding from your posts is that Toast crashes during the encoding stage but only if you have more than one playlist. Is it crashing before it encodes any tracks?

 

One remote possibility is if there are some uncommon characters used in the track's file name.

 

It's going to take some experimenting on your part. Try making a disc image of a music DVD using songs you've ripped from some CDs that you have in iTunes or mp3s you've downloaded. I'm still thinking the problem is related to your tracks because that was the issue whenever Toast crashed when making a music DVD on my system. If the problem is not the tracks but is Toast itself then the standard advice is to trash the Toast plist and prefs files in your User>Library>Preferences folder and replacing your copy of Toast with a fresh installation.

 

I've seen for myself that Toast can make music DVDs with multiple playlists from iTunes.

 

I'll be out of town for the weekend so if none of this works I'll see if I can come up with some new ideas based on any new information you can provide. I'm sorry this is so frustrating.

[holysmoker7]

 

 

One remote possibility is if there are some uncommon characters used in the track's file name.

 

 

 

Thanks for all your help. No I do not use uncommon characters, at least not on purpose. My typing is horrid sometimes. But it eventually gets corrected. I'm sure there is a simple solution, so I'll keep plugging away until I find what works for me. I am right now encoding from all the aif files. It is about 1/2 way through. If it crashes, at least I know now where to look to see what caused the problem.

 

I would like to use the files from iTunes if possible because they have the cd text, cd title and all. Maybe that's not possible. But I rarely let the impossible stop me. I may get frustrated for a while, and then a brilliant idea or help comes along.

 

So enjoy your weekend and have a really good trip. You deserve it.

[holysmoker7]

OK. A burn with AIF files to a disk image worked. I had found an "offending" file that was in a format Toast did not recognize, so I changed it to AAC. I am now burning a disk image from the iTunes library; it is about 25% done with no crashes so far.