Make Dvd's

[TOMb86***]

Purchased Roxio easy VHS to DVD for Mac. Box clearly indicates "Create DVD movies from VHS" I am able to transfer VHS tape to computer but find that the 90 minute tape creates a 12 GB file, which of course cannot be transfered to a 4.7 GB DVD disc. My question is how is it done?

[sheryltoo]

I didn't try your suggestion yet since that's not going to help my issue. I don't want to have to burn two DVDs in order to get one that will work but I did try importing my video to imovies and then burned the imovie file to a DVD only I still got the same issue with my player not being able to read the disk. I now have 5 DVDs that are useless.

Before I try anything else,, I decided to ask for some help in the Toast 11 forum.

[sheryltoo]

I'm not very good with mac computers or any of the software for a mac computer so could you please explain what you mean by authoring application?

I just bought Easy VSH to DVD for mac and tried to burn a DVD but realized my 2 hour video is over 16gbs and obviously won't fit on one DVD. I'm not sure what to do.

[tsantee]

I'm not very good with mac computers or any of the software for a mac computer so could you please explain what you mean by authoring application?

I just bought Easy VSH to DVD for mac and tried to burn a DVD but realized my 2 hour video is over 16gbs and obviously won't fit on one DVD. I'm not sure what to do.

In order for a video to play on a regular DVD player it needs files encoded and written in a certain way which is called authoring. You can't just burn the video to a disc and have it play. Corel sells Toast DVD on the Mac App Store and Toast 12 through the Roxio Web site which can do this for you. I can't talk about competing applications in this forum but you can search for others on Macupdate.com. Toast does a good job.

 

It sounds like you used the High Quality setting with the Easy VHS device. Please check if your audio is in sync. A lot of users have problems with the high quality setting. I strongly recommend using the Medium quality setting instead. Medium quality is still high quality video but recorded in a format that is much smaller in size and much more compatible with computers, as well as having its audio in sync.

[sheryltoo]

Thanks for the quick reply and explanation. I actually own Toast pro 11 and thought I'd see what happens if I dragged my video into that program and burned it there. I had first imported my video to iMovie since I thought that's what I needed to do and then tried to burn it using idvd. That's when I realized the file size was much too large for a single DVD. I did this after posting my message so it's in the middle of burning my dvd. I'm sure I used high quality for everything and if there's a problem with the audio I'll redo it using the medium setting.

I'm hoping my video quality is good. I'm not sure I dragged the right video into Toast. I really have no clue what I'm doing.

[tsantee]

Thanks for the quick reply and explanation. I actually own Toast pro 11 and thought I'd see what happens if I dragged my video into that program and burned it there. I had first imported my video to iMovie since I thought that's what I needed to do and then tried to burn it using idvd. That's when I realized the file size was much too large for a single DVD. I did this after posting my message so it's in the middle of burning my dvd. I'm sure I used high quality for everything and if there's a problem with the audio I'll redo it using the medium setting.

I'm hoping my video quality is good. I'm not sure I dragged the right video into Toast. I really have no clue what I'm doing.

I hope it all works. When using Toast be sure to choose the DVD-video setting in the Toast Video window. That way Toast will encode the video. Toast can fit up to about 3 hours of video on one DVD, but the quality is best if it is less than 2 hours. iDVD also can put about 2 hours of video on one DVD but it's quality suffers when the video is longer than 90 minutes. The only reason to first put the movie in iMovie is if you want to do editing. If all you want is to trim out the part where the camera is pointed at your shoes then Toast can do that trimming by clicking Edit next to where the video is shown in the Toast window. There are tutorials on making DVDs with Toast including when using iMovie. See Toast Help for info.

 

The gigabyte size of your source video is irrelevant. Keep the total amount of video for one disc to about 2 hours in total length and all will be fine.

[sheryltoo]

Thanks again for your help. My first movie actually came out pretty good except the audio was out of sync near the end of the video. I'm trying the medium setting for my next recording.

I'll have to look into looking at some tutorials. I've tried to follow some but its hard when the tutorials don't seem to match my software. One of my biggest problems in all this is trying to figure out where to save my videos and then how to access them when I want to burn a DVD. I recorded over 2 hours of video the first try and tried to edit the video in imovies so it would only be 2 hours long but now I can't seem to drag that video into Toast. Either that or I'm just not clicking the right file so I decided to start all over again and this time I'm only recording 2 hours at a time.

I was hoping I could record my video and then just burn it in toast since that's what the tutorials have lead me to believe but I can't figure out how to do that. There's no option to send my recorded video any place. I don't even think a basic version of Toast came with my software.

[tsantee]

You don't need iMovie. You should be able to copy the video files from the camcorder or camera to a hard drive. Drag the videos to the Toast Video window with DVD video selected as the format. After they appear there, click the Edit button. In the edit window that appears there is a way to mark segments that you don't want included in the final DVD. Place the playhead where you want an edit to start and then click the double triangle icon. Drag the right half of the triangle to where you want the edit to end. You can do this multiple times. The part between the triangles is the part that gets excluded. This does nothing to your original video file so you don't lose anything.

 

Toast automatically adjusts the compression used for encoding the video so that it will fit a single-layer disc, presuming your total amount of video is less than about 3 hours. You will have some trial and error but blank discs are cheap and you'll figure it out quickly.

 

In order to use videos from iMovie you must first "Share" the movie from iMovie. See Toast Help about this.

[tsantee]

Roxio stopped including the DVD-making application a few years ago. I cannot explain why the product description still has DVD in its name. You need a DVD-authoring application. Toast is one but you can find others by searching macupdate.com.

[sheryltoo]

I figured out how to drag my video into Toast and was able to burn a few DVDs until I updated the software for Toast. Now I have two DVD's that can't be viewed on my DVD player connected to my TV set. The only thing I did differently with these two DVD's is to edit the title and add some chapters. I don't know if that would cause a problem. I don't see why it should so I'm wondering if the problems lies in the fact that I updated the software. I figured I'd see if anyone can help me here. If not, I thought I'd uninstall the software and reinstall it and then just not do an update.

[tsantee]

I figured out how to drag my video into Toast and was able to burn a few DVDs until I updated the software for Toast. Now I have two DVD's that can't be viewed on my DVD player connected to my TV set. The only thing I did differently with these two DVD's is to edit the title and add some chapters. I don't know if that would cause a problem. I don't see why it should so I'm wondering if the problems lies in the fact that I updated the software. I figured I'd see if anyone can help me here. If not, I thought I'd uninstall the software and reinstall it and then just not do an update.

I don't know what would cause this but others have experienced a problem with playing back DVDs on some players. I don't know if updating the software is the issue because others using the updated Toast don't have the problem. My brother says Toast will make playable discs on one of this disc burners but not on the other he has that is newer. It could be the brand of blank discs you are using because different manufacturers make differing quality media. Something to try is to copy the VIDEO_TS folder from the disc to your hard drive. Now choose DVD-Rom (UDF) as the format in the Toast Data window. Click New Disc and then add the VIDEO_TS folder. Now click the burn button. See if this newly burned disc will play.

[sheryltoo]

I'm using DVD's from the same package and trying to play my burned DVD on the same DVD player. I did try and see what would happen if I tried to play the DVD on a different DVD player but got the same results. I guess I'll try your suggestion and if that doesn't work, I'll go back to the original software or perhaps I might first try importing my recording into imovies and then drag that file into Toast.