24 Hour Encoding?

[offtheroad]

I have a mac with Snow Leopard and 12 GB RAM and Toast 11. I'm trying to made a DVD from a mp4 movie that is 2GB, When I try it takes 24 hours just to encode. If I try to make a HD DVD when finished it has an error and won't play. I tried the custome section and tried turning of auto Encodeing but still started to encode. Help Please

[tsantee]

That sounds very excessive. What matters is how long the video is, not its file size, but in any case the encoding to standard-def video DVD shouldn't take very long. The HD DVD will take much longer and there is no way to avoid the encoding process. I don't know why it's so slow on your Mac. Whenever do a project requiring encoding I recommend choosing Save as Disc Image from the File menu instead of clicking the burn button. Then burn the resulting .toast file to disc using the Image File setting in the Copy window. That way an error during the disc burning doesn't mean you have to start over.

 

When Toast encodes video it writes the encoded files to the Roxio Converted Items in your Documents folder. These are automatically deleted when you quit Toast. You can change that timing by changing the setting in Toast preferences. I prefer to keep those files a short time because Toast can use them again without re-encoding.

[offtheroad]

OK trying your way. It's encoding now for HD but this time it's not asking for a disk while encoding. The movie is of standard length around 90 min's. It's been about 5min's now and not even 1% started encoding yet. I have all app's turned off on my Mac except for Safari and naturally Toast.

[tsantee]

OK trying your way. It's encoding now for HD but this time it's not asking for a disk while encoding. The movie is of standard length around 90 min's. It's been about 5min's now and not even 1% started encoding yet. I have all app's turned off on my Mac except for Safari and naturally Toast.

Did you quit Toast after it failed on the previous project? If not, those encoded videos should still be present which can prevent the need for encoding again. I can tell you how to re-use them since Toast isn't do that. Your set-top Blu-ray player may be capable of playing that video without making a Blu-ray format disc. You can find out by choosing DVD-Rom (UDF) as the format in the Toast Data window and adding the video there and burning a disc. Some Blu-ray players can play video from a data disc. You just don't get a menu and chapters. It's worth a try.

[offtheroad]

Thank you very much for your speedy replies. I don't care about a Blue Ray video just HD I just quit Toast and resave mp4 video out of Toast as a disk image and Encoding is starting but still no indication of percentage of completion after 5 min's

I did find in my Documents folder area the Roxio Converted Items and can at least tell there that progress is being made. After about 10 min's 60MB

[tsantee]

When you make a HD DVD you are making a Blu-ray format disc that requires a Blu-ray player even though it is burned to regular DVD media. However, only about 30 minutes of HD video can fit on regular DVD discs and you say yours is 90 minutes. What are you planning to use to play the disc when it's done? Are you wanting to watch it on a HDTV or on the Mac? Maybe there is a better way to approach this rather than creating a disc.

[offtheroad]

Want to watch it on HDTV thru a Sony DVD setop player.

[offtheroad]

I will burn it to a 8GB disk, will that play on setop player?

[offtheroad]

Should I abort the encoding since after 1% of encoding = 136MB in the Roxio converted Items folder?

[tsantee]

Want to watch it on HDTV thru a Sony DVD setop player.

You cannot play a HD video with a standard DVD player regardless of what kind of disc you use. So go ahead and abort that project. Since you have a HDTV it may have a USB port. In that case copy the HD video to a flash drive and pop that into the TV's USB port. If the video is in a supported format (which it should be if it is mp4) then the TV can play it.

 

There also are a variety of devices that you can connect to a TV that allow you to stream the video over wifi from your Mac's hard drive to a TV. One example is Apple TV. Another approach is to get a network hard drive that is DLNA certified (most are). It's like you connected a hard drive to the HDTV assuming the TV has an ethernet port or wifi.

 

The only reason I can think of to create Blu-ray or HD video discs is if you want to send them to someone who has a Blu-ray player. It's simpler to just play them from a hard drive or flash drive.

[offtheroad]

Thanks great advice, which would play better a flash drive or an external HD. I do have a USB port on my Sony TV. So then your saying just copy the original Quicktime mp4 file to a flash drive or external HD plug and play. I don't have a 3 GB flash drive at the moment but do have plenty of external hard drives. Do they (external HD's) need to be formatted in any way different than Mac?

What is DLNA.

[offtheroad]

Looks like Apple TV is best bet at $100