Preview Dvd/bluray Before Burning ?

[Dinky]

Hi all,

 

Does anybody know if it is possible in Toast 11 to preview a planned DVD or Bluray before burning or creating a disc image ? Even in iDVD you can see what it looks like when the DVD is ready, so I would expect something like this to be possible in Toast as well, but I cannot find how.

 

If this option would be missing that would be a serious omission, as the first time you would then be able to see the end result is when the burn is done. This would not only be a waste of time but also of DVD/Bluray media.

[tsantee]

Save as Disc Image and then use Mount Disc Image in the Toast Utilities folder to preview it. If it is a standard DVD video then Apple's DVD Player will play it. If it is a Blu-ray video open the Roxio Video Player in the Toast Extras menu to play it. In the case of Blu-ray you won't see a live menu but you can see how the menu pages look by selecting the last titles using the button that's on the right part of the play back bar.

 

Another tip is to go to Toast Preferences and change when the converted items are deleted. The default is they are deleted when Toast quits but you may want them to remain until you're certain the video disc is the way you want it to be.

[Dinky]

For Bluray this unfortunately does not work. I have been told playing Bluray menu's is not done because of license issues. Roxio Video Player (RVP) does not recognize the mounted disc image or the BDMV folder in it. The BDMV can be selected in RVP, but pressing "open" does nothing. We have a "missing link" here

[tsantee]

Do not select the BDMV folder. Instead, click the name of your Blu-ray disc in the "Devices" list in the left panel of the window that Roxio Video Player displays for selecting the video.

[John Bertram]

But tsantee, re your May 22 reply -- does this mean that for just a standard DVD, there's no way I can get even basic preview of how the menus will look, etc., without actually burning a complete disc image file (something which can sometimes take quite a while)?

 

I always assumed some kind of DVD "simulation preview" (pre- any kind of burning) was an absolutely fundamental feature of ANY disc authoring software. I'm a bit gobsmacked if this is not the case for a far-from-free commercial product such as Toast. And also confused as to what the greyed-out "Preview Disc" option therefore is under Toast's Disc Menu -- which I'd assumed up till now had to be a way to, well... preview how the disc you're wanting to create will play, so you could THEN go ahead and start burning -- whether to an image file or directly to blank media.

 

Am still thinking there has to be a way to do this -- but still not clear what that is.

 

John B.

[tsantee]

But tsantee, re your May 22 reply -- does this mean that for just a standard DVD, there's no way I can get even basic preview of how the menus will look, etc., without actually burning a complete disc image file (something which can sometimes take quite a while)?

 

I always assumed some kind of DVD "simulation preview" (pre- any kind of burning) was an absolutely fundamental feature of ANY disc authoring software. I'm a bit gobsmacked if this is not the case for a far-from-free commercial product such as Toast. And also confused as to what the greyed-out "Preview Disc" option therefore is under Toast's Disc Menu -- which I'd assumed up till now had to be a way to, well... preview how the disc you're wanting to create will play, so you could THEN go ahead and start burning -- whether to an image file or directly to blank media.

 

Am still thinking there has to be a way to do this -- but still not clear what that is.

 

John B.

I'm pretty sure Preview Disc only applies to Audio CD projects. It's something left over from when Roxio made an application called Jam that mostly got merged with Toast. Yes, you need to first create a disc image and mount it in order to see how the final menu will look and play. The good news is that it is easy to make a new disc image if you need to make changes to the menu. Go to Toast Preferences and change the preference for deleting temporary files to Never (or something a little shorter if you're feeling confident the project will soon be done). That way there is no need for any re-encoding for the next version of the disc image. Even if you did lose the temporary files you can use the encoded videos from the earlier disc image by mounting it and going to the Video tab of the Toast Media Browser. There you can drag the videos from the disc image into the main Toast window.

 

Being able to preview a working menu before burning the disc would be a wonderful feature. It apparently never got on Roxio's to do list.

[John Bertram]

thanks tsantee

 

[full reply in parallel thread at: http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/88660-audio-for-toast-created-slideshow/]