Any Mileage In Converting Video Files Before Using Toast?

[Tribeofone]

I'm having a frustrating day trying and failing to make a DVD-R from an assortment of .flv, .mp4 etc video files on my HD.

The problem is that even though the total amount of Mb in the original files is well within the 4.38 Gb line (1.5 Gb), once Toast gets to work encoding them, it ends up being more like 4.80 Gb and I can't burn the disc.

 

I'm wondering if the video formats affect Toast's performance?-eg if an .mp4 takes up a lot more Gb after encoding than a .mov, for example.

And therefore wondering if it might be worth converting some of those files to a different format before putting Toast to work. Or is it completely dependent on the time length of the original video?

I've tried changing from 'Best' to 'Better'-but it makes no difference at all.

[tsantee]

The MPEG 2 format used for video DVDs has less compression than your source videos so they will take up more space. But there is an easy solution to your problem. Choose Save as Disc Image. That way it doesn't matter that it is too large for a standard DVD disc. Then select that disc image in the Toast Copy window and make sure Fit-to-DVD is checked. Toast will requantize the video to fit the single layer disc.

 

The other easy way to avoid the problem is to keep the total length of all the videos to under 3 hours. That way Toast should make it fit the single-layer disc in the first place.

[Tribeofone]

Thanks, Tsantee. Strangely enough I tried that option (disc image), which gave the same result (not enough space)-but I didn't see the 'Fit-to-DVD' option. I shall remember that.

In the end I lost patience and divided the files onto 3 separate DVDs.

 

While I'm here, aside from the social networking fol-de-rol, which interests me not one iota, is there any advantage in upgrading to Toast 11? (I'm on OS X 10.8.3, and Toast 10 seems to serve my-occasional-needs just fine).

[tsantee]

Thanks, Tsantee. Strangely enough I tried that option (disc image), which gave the same result (not enough space)-but I didn't see the 'Fit-to-DVD' option. I shall remember that.

In the end I lost patience and divided the files onto 3 separate DVDs.

 

While I'm here, aside from the social networking fol-de-rol, which interests me not one iota, is there any advantage in upgrading to Toast 11? (I'm on OS X 10.8.3, and Toast 10 seems to serve my-occasional-needs just fine).

There's no compelling reason to upgrade. However for the next few hours you can get Toast 11 along with 10 other apps for $50 at maclegion.com.