Would Like To Author Bluray Dvds, But I Have Questions Before I Buy.

[Rajnesh]

Greetings,

 

I am new to this forum, and I'm interested in buying Toast 11 Pro for my Macbook Pro (2006 model).

My intent is to create BluRay DVD's that have Menus in them, and I recently bought a Samsung SE-506 Writer.

 

However, I have a couple of questions before I take the plunge, and your help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have FCP 6, Compressor 3, and DVD Studio Pro 4, and I can create separate sets of: Mpeg4 (H.264) and ac3 (Dolby 6.1) files.

Ideally I would like to create a DVD Studio Pro project, with all the files and menus created, then import the lot and use Toast to burn a BluRay disk.

If this isn't possible, my second choice would be to import the Audio and Video files into Toast 11 Pro, create Menus in it and burn to the disk. The menus will be simple nested ones with Images, Play buttons and such like, so that a user can skip to specific chapters in the film, or watch an interview perhaps.

 

I have 3 questions:

(1) Is my ideal case possible in Toast 11 Pro? If not, is my second choice possible?

(2) I don't want Toast to reencode the files. Is there some way of making sure of that?

(3) I checked the "System Requirements" and my Macbook Pro seems to qualify, but should I be wary about obscure problems... say with unsupported Video/ Audio cards etc?

 

Thanks very much for your help and advice.

 

Regards,

Rajnesh

[gspanos]

Greetings,

 

I am new to this forum, and I'm interested in buying Toast 11 Pro for my Macbook Pro (2006 model).

My intent is to create BluRay DVD's that have Menus in them, and I recently bought a Samsung SE-506 Writer.

 

However, I have a couple of questions before I take the plunge, and your help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have FCP, and I can create separate sets of: Mpeg4 (H.264) and ac3 (Dolby 6.1) files.

I would then like to import these files into Toast 11 Pro and concatenate some of them to create my Film, while others will be standalone - such as interviews etc.

 

I would also like to create simple nested Menus with Images, Play buttons and such like, so that a user can skip to specific chapters in the film, or watch an interview perhaps.

 

I have 3 questions:

(1) Is this functionality possible in Toast 11 Pro?

(2) I don't want Toast to reencode the files. Is that possible too?

(3) I checked the "System Requirements" and my Macbook seemed to qualify, but should I be wary about obscure problems... say with drivers or some such thing?

 

Thanks very much for your help and advice.

 

Regards,

Rajnesh

 

I use iMovie, and am able to do the things you want to do. I've never tried with FCP, but I would think it can do whatever iMovie does and more.

 

Yes, you can select "never re-encode" when you customize.

 

Your macbook should have as much RAM as possible. The encoding time difference between my 2008 macbook pro Snow Leopard model and my 2011 mcbook pro Lion model is dramatic. What takes about 3 hours with the 2011 takes about 13 hours with the 2008.

 

That said, there's a big downside to Toast blu-ray. You can't name your chapters and the menu options are very limited. I became so disenchanted that I Bootcamped my macbook pro so I could use windows software and am very happy with TMPGEnc Authoring Works 5. I still edit many of my projects in iMovie, create a bdmv folder with Toast, and then export it to TMPGEnc to do the authoring. Works fine.

[Rajnesh]

Thank you very much for that information, gspanos.

 

I was wondering whether the new release of Toast 11.1 Beta has better Menu capabilities for BluRay Burning.

 

Also, does anyone have experience importing a Project with Menus from DVD Studio Pro 4? What is the workflow like?

 

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[tsantee]

Thank you very much for that information, gspanos.

 

I was wondering whether the new release of Toast 11.1 Beta has better Menu capabilities for BluRay Burning.

 

Also, does anyone have experience importing a Project with Menus from DVD Studio Pro 4? What is the workflow like?

 

Thanks in advance for your replies.

If Compressor can completely author in the Blu-ray video format then you can do what you're wanting by using the DVD-Rom (UDF) setting in Toast's Data window. But if you need to use Toast to author the Blu-ray video then you'll get Toast's menus. Also, I'm not certain you can avoid re-encoding the video (ac3 audio will be multiplexed) when the source is MPEG 4. Re-encoding can be skipped with MPEG 2 video (including HD) but I've not read any user post where re-encoding was skipped with MPEG 4. Lastly, some users report problems with some Blu-ray players being able to access all the titles on the Toast menu. That may have been fixed with the 11.1 beta (why hasn't that come out of beta?).

 

What I'm saying is that Toast is a consumer-level app rather than the professional-level app you seem to require. You can purchase Toast as a download from Roxio's site and they have a 30-day refund policy. So it is possible to try it out.

[Rajnesh]

Thanks so much tsantee, you response was very helpful. Since I don't have the latest version of Compressor, I was hoping to use Toast 11 Pro, but from the responses to my question, I gather that it's a dicey proposition, given what I need.

 

My understanding is that Toast 11 Pro has the following problems:

1. Poor menu capabilities when Authoring.

2. May forcibly re-encode H.264 files.

3. Some Blu-Ray players may have trouble accessing Toast generated menu titles.

 

I think I'll wait for the release of 11.1 before going ahead.

Thanks again.

Rajnesh