What Am I Doing Wrong?

[TimothyK]

I made a 45 minute project with iMovie. I shared it to Media Browser.

I opened Toast and opened the appropriate window. I opened videos, found the video file and dragged it into the window. I input the name of the video and as there are some chapters, I went to options/customise and clicked on 'include scene menus for video'.

Everything looked fine in the editing window. I then clicked burn, put in a blank DVD and waited.

The result was a DVD that displays nothing but the title window. It's completely static. If I click on play, all that happens is that a triangle appears in the upper left. If I click on anything else, including 'menu', I get 'not permitted (this is with DVD player app, but I get similar non-response with a normal DVD player.

The data was certainly burnt on to the DVD, as I can see it if I open the DVD with toast.

I've tried it three times, and get the same poor results each time.

 

I assume I'm doing something wrong, but what?

 

Toast 11.0.4

Mac OS 10.7.1

[TimothyK]

Thanks.

 

Seems fine now. I was just being a bit dumb.

[tsantee]

I'm confused when you say you clicked on play and on menu in the DVD Player app. Where do you see those? Which menu style did you choose? What's customary is to click on the thumbnail image of the video you want to play. Since you have scene menus this opens another window that shows thumbnails of the chapter points. Click on one of those to start playback.

 

In DVD Player you also can start playback by selecting a title or chapter in the Go menu.

[TimothyK]

I'm confused when you say you clicked on play and on menu in the DVD Player app. Where do you see those?

 

These are on the on-screen controls provided by DVDplayer.app, at the bottom of the screen. Equivalent to the controls on the remote control of my actual DVD player.

 

Which menu style did you choose?

I didn't choose any menu style. I didn't see anything in the instructions about that. Perhaps that is where I went wrong.

 

What's customary is to click on the thumbnail image of the video you want to play. Since you have scene menus this opens another window that shows thumbnails of the chapter points. Click on one of those to start playback.

 

But this is the problem: there are no thumbnail images. All I have is a static title screen. Nothing happens no matter where I click.

 

In DVD Player you also can start playback by selecting a title or chapter in the Go menu.

 

Thanks I didn't know that. I'll try that on Monday when I go back to the school. However, the most important thing is for it to work on an ordinary, basic DVD player.

Thanks for your help

[tsantee]

These are on the on-screen controls provided by DVDplayer.app, at the bottom of the screen. Equivalent to the controls on the remote control of my actual DVD player.

Ahh, found it. You need to press the Enter button to access the selected video title. The play button doesn't do anything in the menu because – as you've seen – the menu is static so there is nothing to play.

I didn't choose any menu style. I didn't see anything in the instructions about that. Perhaps that is where I went wrong.

The default menu style is called Splash and is a text-only style so there are no thumbnail images. There is a small dot next to the movie's title that can be clicked on. The other menu styles are selected by clicking on the Splash menu in the Toast Video window and scrolling up and down to pick the menu style you want. You probably didn't see the menu styles because that was covered up by the Media Browser. Clicking Options hides the media browser and clicking Media brings it back.

 

I prefer the Media Browser to be a separate window so it is out of the way. There is a little icon in the upper right corner of the Toast window that will make the browser separate from the main window. What you'll see in its place is the Options panel. To get a good look at the menus click the Customize... button in the Options panel and then click the Menus tab in the window that appears. When you use a menu style with thumbnails you click on the thumbnail to start play. You can select the video frame that appears as the thumbnail by clicking on the thumbnail image in the Toast window and sliding the scroll bar that appears beneath.

 

A good thing to do when creating a video DVD (especially when you are learning Toast) is to choose Save as Disc Image rather than clicking the burn button. This way you can preview how the menus look and work before committing it to disc. You can choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu or click the Destination button at the bottom of the Toast window and choose it there. When you do the latter the burn button changes to Save. To view the disc image it needs to be mounted. This is done by control-clicking on the .toast file in the Finder and choosing Mount It from the contextual menu or by selecting it in the Toast Copy window with Image File selected as the format. DVD Player should treat the mounted disc image the same as an inserted DVD.

[TimothyK]

Thanks. I'll check it out and get back to you next week.