Toast Titanium Ver. 11.1 Freezes At 22% When Creating A Bluray Image File

[DrDanDDS 0]

Hi everyone,

I am having a problem with Toast quitting unexpectedly during the creation of an Image file after reaching 22%.

 

The hardware is a new Mac Mini quad core i7 with 16 gigs RAM and USB 3.0 ports. The external drive is a LG BE14NU40 BluRay writer. I do have the BD plug in installed and activated. I also have the HD EyeTV where I have recorded several Hallmark Christmas movies that I would like to transfer to BluRay discs.

 

I finally figured out how to create multiple markers and edit out the commercials within EyeTV such that a single file is all I have to export into Toast in my last support request. The resultant file created by EyeTV is an MPEG-4 AVC, 8.0 Mbps high def movie. This is what is being transferred to Toast. I am only trying to include 2 of these movies on a single BD disc....and the file size of each movie is about 11 gigs.

 

I selected the menu type I wanted, changed it to "never reencode" as suggested by Tsantee, and then attempted to select a scene from each movie for the menu. (Edit/find the scene you want/Set picture). For the fist movie it took Toast about 40 seconds to stop thinking about it and give me an image and allow me to click on play &/or find an image I wanted to use. For the second movie....the spinning color wheel never stops spinning and no image appears.....it is locked up....and so I have to "force quit" Toast and start over. After doing that several times I gave up...and skipped picking a scene for the second movie and just went to "Create an Image File". Even though I selected "never re encode" I notice in the prompt that it says "Encoding" while creating the Image file. When it gets to 22% done Toast crashes and everything stops. It's always at 22% when trying again. Same thing happens when I select "Automatic" on the encoding screen, BTW....

 

I'm afraid Toast still has some major bugs in it. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Dan

[DrDanDDS 0]

This request has been up for a few days now with not a single suggestion as to how to get Toast 11 Titanium to work. Toast 10 seemed to work fine (most of the time)......so I wonder. Should I go back to Toast 10?

 

And another question......why do the movies show 10.3 to 11 gigs while in EyeTV.....but when placed in Toast (doesn't matter if I select it from the media browser or slide it from window to window manually)...the file size shows only 700-750 MB per movie?

 

Is Toast compressing those files? Maybe that's what is locking it up?

Edited January 29, 2013 by DrDanDDS

[DrDanDDS 0]

I'm trying an experiment until I get an expert to offer some assistance. Since exporting these movies from EyeTV to Toast as Elemental Streams didn't work....(it creates separate video and audio files...and Toast won't merge them back together again)......I decided to try some different formats. So...I exported both movies as 1080i H.264 files. Each one was about 11 to 12 gigs in size. When adding them to Toast.....the little bar graph on the bottom that indicates how much disc space your files are going to use up showed the 25 gig Blu-Ray disc being almost full....about 22-23 gigs. So....then I began the process of trying to create another image file in preparation for burning the disc. I began at 7PM last night and as of 7AM this morning (12 hrs later)....it was still running.....and at 11% complete. While I'm happy it hasn't crashed yet as it did before......or locked up.......it's taking FOREVER to get done. I'm guessing it's re-encoding the whole thing which takes a lot of time.

 

There has GOT to be a better way to do this. I'll continue to experiment until I find a format that works in a reasonable length of time. Toast doesn't appear to like MPEG2 and MPEG4 files (locks up and crashes)......so we'll see which ones it "plays nice with".

[DrDanDDS 0]

Just an update......while I wait for some assistance.

I had to stop the creation of the Image file. After over 24 hrs it was only up to about 14% complete.

I figured I had better contact Technical Support for the first time.....since you only get 14 days of free tech support after registering your new software.

Unfortunately, they make contacting them harder than it ought to be. When you click on Technical Support on this website....you're taken to a screen that asks the name of the program, version, what sort of problem are you having, etc. Then they want to know your "Support Code" before allowing you to go any further. They indicated that this number was included in the email I received after registering the product. This is not so. I read that email over and over again to see if it was there....and it isn't. I have a customer number, order number, password, product key....but no support code. So...I tried giving them a call. On the voice mail auto-attendant I selected technical support. I was given a recording telling me that I had to begin that process on the website (which you can't do without a support code). So...I called again and this time selected the sales line. There's always a live person on the sales line. The guy took down the information.....and promised he'd pass the information on to tech support and that they would be contacting me soon via email.

 

We'll see what happens....

[tsantee 231]

I'm just a volunteer and there are times I'm not going to be around. Sorry you've waited so long and are having such difficulty. Some of the problems you're experiencing are well known to me, but you're still making it harder than it needs to be.

 

Go back to the elementary streams. Add just the .m2v file to Toast. It either will automatically add the matching .ac3 audio file or will ask you to locate it. You'll see that both the video and audio are present when you read the description in small type below the video's name in the Toast window. Do not try to drag the .ac3 file into the Toast window. That is unnecessary and doesn't work.

 

Because the .m2v video is in MPEG 2 format Toast will not need to do any encoding. The Never re-encode only works when the source is in MPEG 2 format.

 

Toast's edit window for selecting scenes oftentimes freezes or messes up in other ways when the source is high definition. Do not use Toast's editor. If you need to edit scenes, do it with EyeTV before sending to Toast.

 

What you should see upon clicking the burn button (or choosing Save as Disc Image) is Toast reporting that it is Multiplexing. If you don't see that, abort the project and post your steps again. I'll try to be more available for a few days.

 

Don't use the MPEG 4 versions. The elementary stream versions should be all you need.

[DrDanDDS 0]

I'm just a volunteer and there are times I'm not going to be around. Sorry you've waited so long and are having such difficulty. Some of the problems you're experiencing are well known to me, but you're still making it harder than it needs to be.

 

Go back to the elementary streams. Add just the .m2v file to Toast. It either will automatically add the matching .ac3 audio file or will ask you to locate it. You'll see that both the video and audio are present when you read the description in small type below the video's name in the Toast window. Do not try to drag the .ac3 file into the Toast window. That is unnecessary and doesn't work.

 

Because the .m2v video is in MPEG 2 format Toast will not need to do any encoding. The Never re-encode only works when the source is in MPEG 2 format.

 

Toast's edit window for selecting scenes oftentimes freezes or messes up in other ways when the source is high definition. Do not use Toast's editor. If you need to edit scenes, do it with EyeTV before sending to Toast.

 

What you should see upon clicking the burn button (or choosing Save as Disc Image) is Toast reporting that it is Multiplexing. If you don't see that, abort the project and post your steps again. I'll try to be more available for a few days.

 

Don't use the MPEG 4 versions. The elementary stream versions should be all you need.

Thanks for all your help. I know you're just a volunteer.

But....remember my EyeTV is the HD version. The movie files it creates are MPEG4....so when I export as Elementary Streams.....it's an MPEG4 file. When I add that to Toast....it does not ask anything about the .ac3 file. It's just video without audio. I did try to slide the audio file into Toast myself...and as you indicated....that' doesn't work either.

Just out of curiosity....I tried doing a DVD image file with just a single movie file instead of both of them. It crashes doing a regular def DVD image file the same as when trying to do an HD BluRay image file.

I suspect that Roxio pushed this product to market before it was fully vetted.....and ready to go. We're seeing WAY too many bugs to believe it was really ready for sale/distribution.

But...that being said....I know you're a volunteer and don't have to be here trying to help us poor saps....and I thank you for your efforts. I've seen some of the snarky comments some on these boards have made towards you....and it's not your fault. You don't work for Roxio. They should direct their frustration towards Roxio and THANK-YOU for trying to help them.

[tsantee 231]

Sorry for misunderstanding that yours is an EyeTV HD. My advice makes sense for the other EyeTV models but not that one.

 

Going back to Toast's custom encoder settings window change the video format to MPEG-4 AVC. You'll still get the encoding window but at least both are versions of MPEG-4. The file size shown by Toast should be about the same as the source video. If it isn't then Toast isn't reading the video correctly. As I mentioned before, do not use the Toast editor. One of its problems is it will truncate the video short of the length that you indicated. Or it just freezes, as you've found. In any case, it is useless with HD video.

 

I don't know why there would be any problem using Toast to make the Blu-ray video from the EyeTV source as long as you don't use the Toast editor.

 

However, there are other options for your consideration. I'm presuming you're wanting to play these videos on your TV using a Blu-ray video player. Many such players can play data discs with h.264 video. You don't have the nice menu and probably some commands such as chapter advance or maybe even fast forward, but it also eliminates any need for encoding. Choose DVD-Rom (UDF) in the Toast Data window, click New Disc and name the disc, add your h.264 video and burn the video to either DVD or Blu-ray media. Your Blu-ray player's manual should indicate if it can play this kind of disc.

 

If you have a Blu-ray player that is Internet connected then it may also be able to play h.264 video streaming from your computer. In this case you only need to burn a disc if you want to keep a backup somewhere or want to send the video to someone else. ElGato sells EyeConnect that makes it particularly easy to watch videos from your EyeTV library on your Internet-connected TV or player. There is a 30-day free trial. Your TV or player also may be able to access the videos on your Mac directly without EyeConnect.

 

Yes, Toast has lots of bugs. However, you really shouldn't be having crashes during encoding of those videos. Something you might want to do is get the freeware app Rember and do an extended RAM test. If there is a defect in any of your Mac's RAM then Toast will find it during an extended encoding; resulting in a crash. But in that case I would expect that Mac to crash and not just Toast.

[goodidea 0]

The eyeTV file in the finder actually has hidden files in it. Try this. In the finder control-click on the file and select the show hidden files option. You should see the mpg, tif, m4v, etc. files individually. Drag the mpg file to the Toast burn window. If you've set EyeTV to automatically make an iPad or iPod compatible copy, it's hidden in the file. If you select the file name in Toast or the finder, you may be creating a problem