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General discussion

toast titanium encoding AVI files

Jun 22, 2008 3:02PM PDT

Know what I love?

How Toast Titanium lets me put a 4.37GB DVD-R in my powerbook G4, then lets me drag like 20 AVI files into the Toast screen, then when I press record it starts encoding and takes forever to encode each one, and then when it's all finished after about 12 hours of encoding... THEN is when it chooses to tell me:

"Not enough space on the DVD-R"

and aborts the whole burning process.

What in the HELL. Is there any way to have Toast tell you how many AVIs you can put on one DVD-R BEFORE encoding them?

Thanks,
mike

Discussion is locked

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(NT) Is there anything about this in the Manual?
Jun 22, 2008 9:55PM PDT
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stinking manual?
Jun 23, 2008 3:06AM PDT

you mean mac help? i don't think i've ever been "mac-helped" in my life, and I'm an avid manual-reader. But no, nothing in the help file at all.

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I was referring to the Toast manual
Jun 23, 2008 6:41AM PDT

not the Mac Help which has nothing to do with Toast.

P

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Nothing new here but how long have you been doing this?
Jun 22, 2008 11:31PM PDT

I can see if you were new to video work how you could think this is all messed up. Let me bring it down to one truth.

-> We can't know the final size until the video is encoded for it's final destination.

Feel free to tell me that it shouldn't be this way.
Bob

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weak
Jun 23, 2008 3:08AM PDT

Well... it shouldn't be this way, but whatever.

So fair enough, that's just a crappy part of encoding video.

So is there any possible way i could estimate this? The AVI's are all different sizes and what not. Do I just have to keep removing one at a time and hoping that it's the right number and then wait another 12 hours while it encodes and then tells me "nope, try again."

What would you do if you had to encode say 50 or so AVI files of different sizes and burn them to DVD-R with Toast?

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On average yes. But exactly? No. Here's why.
Jun 23, 2008 3:14AM PDT

What you need to ponder is how compression works. A video with little movement compresses very well. Silence in audio compresses well too. Given the variation of video content you can't write "uncompressed video compresses at ten to one when making a (standard) Video DVD."

Also your content is compressed so the uncompressed size is not known and leads to further unknowns as we don't know what we are starting with.

-> This is why I'll not tell the Video DVD creation software to make a DVD but rather a Video DVD "image." I let it create a .iso file which if it succeeds I can burn at my time of choosing.

Video compression standards are fun since we have so many to choose from.

Hope this explains it in another way.
Bob

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that makes sense
Jun 24, 2008 3:40AM PDT

i see what you mean. so does creating an iso file in Toast take less time then? I'd assume it does. I've never done this, I'm gonna go try it.

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not being familiar with either Toast or the Mac
Jun 23, 2008 3:25AM PDT

i wonder:
why do you have to encode them? is it possible to burn the avi files as a "data-disk" ala CDBurnerXP Pro (and yes, i know it's for Windows, but at least it lets you know the size of the DVD and exactly how many files you can burn)

jonah "hooked on windows" jones

.,

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The size of the AVI files is not in doubt,
Jun 23, 2008 6:51AM PDT

and burning the AVI's as data does not help here.

Here's how I deal with AVI files.

Using Visual Hub (Not free but relatively so) I convert the AVI files with the output set to DVD.
This produces a folder containing two other folders. VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. The VIDEO_TS folder contains the VOB files while the AUDIO_TS file is empty. (But required)

Using TOAST, you can now create a DVD using the UDF option. Just drag the two folders created by Visual Hub and Toast will then figure out the size, compress if necessary and produce the finished DVD.
You will be able to see at a glance what size the original files are.

Visual Hub will convert an entire movie from AVI to DVD in under an hour.

P

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now i see it ;-)
Jun 23, 2008 12:54PM PDT

i used to have the same problem (burning a VCD), then modern technology invented the DVD player that plays avi files (i beleive it's the divx that allows this?) and since then any avi file i want to watch on the TV is copied to a 4G flash drive and 'voila!'


jonah

.,

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so Visual Hub produces a folder
Jun 24, 2008 3:43AM PDT

similar to what you'd have if you ripped a DVD using MacTheRipper, right? But see, I want to put a bunch of 15minute AVI files on one disk and have a menu where you can select between episodes and scenes and what not. Would Visual Hub work for this?

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Exactly like that,
Jun 24, 2008 4:21AM PDT

I have not explored too deeply with VH but I do know that when a bunch of AVI files are batch encoded, each AVI is a separate chapter on the DVD.

I have not tried a menu but it "may" be possible. I'll take a look tonight an see if there is an option for that sort of thing.

P

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Didn't see anything in Visual Hub to do that, but
Jun 24, 2008 9:59PM PDT

take another look at the Toast manual. It has mention of making menu's


P

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i want to encode them
Jun 24, 2008 3:41AM PDT

because I want to watch them on a DVD player and have a menu for each AVI (each episode) so I can choose which one to watch

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Burn button
Feb 17, 2009 5:25AM PST

In my version of Toast, when I drag the files to the window, the little curved "bar" next to the burn button is green when the files will fit (based you your encoding specs). If it's red, then it won't fit.