Toast 10 Titanium Crashes When It Gets To The Multiplex Step, But Not The Encoding Step

[Kristin]

I don't know what's going on! My MPEG4 video looks ugly/pixelated/blocky when I try to burn it with Toast due to the encoding step. I used Compressor to produce an MPEG2 video of satisfactory quality, and I want to preserve that quality when burning it onto a DVD. I don't want there to be any music accompanying this video, and the video itself has no audio track. However, Toast crashes every time it gets to the multiplexing step.

 

My computer:

MacBook Pro running OS 10.8.4

Optical Drive: Matshita DVD-R UJ-8A8

Burning onto a 4.7 GB single layer DVD

 

The file I want to burn:

Kind: MPEG-2 video

Size: 3.17 GB

In Compressor, burned with size=[1080x1920], fps=29.97, 10 Mbps (14.8 Mbps max)

 

The burn DVD settings I'm using:

Video: [X] DVD-Video

[X] Auto-play disc on insert

[X] Custom settings: MPEG-2, 9.0 Mbps (9.0 Mbps max), Reencode never

 

 

When the prompt box about audio comes up ("This track has no audio! Would you like to select a track..."), I select No. Then, when I try to burn the DVD, the first step (multiplexing) crashes Toast, and my computer acts as if I only just popped the blank DVD in (prompt box reading "What would you like to do with this DVD? [ignore] [show In Finder] etc...").

 

If I do choose a .aiff file (40 minutes of silence, generated in Audacity) to associate with the video I want to burn, the DVD will burn normally...however, instead of multiplexing, the first step will be encoding, and this ruins the quality of the video I'm trying to burn.

 

TL;DR I want to burn a silent MPEG2 file to a DVD. If I associate it an .aiff audio track (Video: MPEG-2, Audio: 16-bit, Mono, 44100 Hz), the video is encoded, and the resulting DVD looks bad. If I do not associate an audio stream (Video: MPEG-2, Audio: None), the first step is multiplexing, but the whole of Toast crashes before it can get even 1% into the multiplexing step.

[Kristin]

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I'm still having the same problem with decreased video quality.

 

Here's what I did: I went back to iMovie, added in a silent track (generated in Audacity), re-exported that as a high-quality movie, re-compressed that into a high-quality MPEG 2, and then gave the file to Toast to burn. Sadly, Toast went right to the encoding step, and in the process the nice MPEG2 was burned as a blocky, unattractive video.

 

I tried playing the lower-quality video on the burned DVD on a DVD player with a standard size television, but the blockiness/lossyness in the video was still evident

 

Is there something else I could try?

[tsantee]

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I'm still having the same problem with decreased video quality.

 

Here's what I did: I went back to iMovie, added in a silent track (generated in Audacity), re-exported that as a high-quality movie, re-compressed that into a high-quality MPEG 2, and then gave the file to Toast to burn. Sadly, Toast went right to the encoding step, and in the process the nice MPEG2 was burned as a blocky, unattractive video.

 

I tried playing the lower-quality video on the burned DVD on a DVD player with a standard size television, but the blockiness/lossyness in the video was still evident

 

Is there something else I could try?

Are you trying to make a standard-def video or a high-def video? By choosing DVD-video as the format in Toast you are making a standard-def video so it has to re-encode the HD MPEG 2 video you gave it. In this case you should have used Compressor to make a standard-def MPEG 2 file which Toast then would have multiplexed rather than encoded.

 

If you are trying to make a high-def video then you need Toast's Blu-ray plugin and choose either High-Definition DVD or Blu-ray as the format. The former is for shorter videos that will fit on a standard or DL DVD disc. It's still in the Blu-ray format but just burned to regular DVD media. The latter is for burning to Blu-ray media. When you burn a High-Definition DVD to regular DVD media it still requires a Blu-ray player to play the disc.

 

I just noticed that you're using Toast 10. I don't recall if Toast 10 specifically had a High-Definition DVD setting. It may be with Toast 10 you choose the Blu-ray setting but simply insert a regular DVD rather than a Blu-ray disc when you are ready to click the burn button.

[tsantee]

Toast needs an audio track. I wonder if you used Compressor to create a nearly inaudible .ac3 track if this would be acceptable to you.

[Kristin]

Are you trying to make a standard-def video or a high-def video?

I'm not trying to make a high-def video (these DVDs need to be given as gifts to many people who don't have BluRay players) but I do want to make DVDs with decent visual quality. It must be possible to make a DVD video that doesn't appear blocky - not necessarily high def, mind you, but still with decent resolution. I have plenty of non-BluRay DVDs that don't look blocky, so surely it's not just a problem of the standard definition format necessitating horrible video quality.

 

I did try using the Compressor "SD MPEG2" settings to make a file, but once again, it ended up reducing the quality of the video in a way that was also apparent when I played the DVD. When I reference reduced quality, I mean that the smaller-middle text in the video becomes so blocky/low res as to be almost unreadable.

 

I had read on the internet that it is possible to generate an MPEG2 that burns onto a DVD with multiplexing (i.e. without being re-encoded) but I just cannot figure out what combination of Compressor settings will allow me to do that. I can generate a nice 3.1 GB video with the resolution I want using Program Stream or Elementary Stream settings on Compressor. I don't think those are HD formats, but they still invite ruinous re-encoding when I try to burn them. Has anyone used this method before successfully?

[tsantee]

Toast will re-encode any video that does not meet the DVD-video specs. Therefore, it must be standard-def MPEG 2 which you can do with Compressor. If you're not using Compressor to encode the video then I have found the attached QuickTime format to be the best when having Toast encode the video. Use those settings to convert your original HD video and then add the resulting file to Toast. You can choose Half-Pel in Toast's custom encoder settings window as well. Since your video isn't very long you can increase the average bit rate to 6 or 7 mbps, too. Text will not look as sharp as it does with HD video because of interlacing.