Alternatives to Toast

[danielmak]

I have been working on a soccer video that has Spanish commentary with a good quality image and English commentary with a very poor image. I have demuxed the file, synced the English sound with the Spanish image in iMovie, and then muxed my new audio file with the Spanish video. I have muxed in FFMPEG, Toast, and MPEG2 Works and I run into the same problem no matter which tool I use to mux. The problem is that when I burn with Toast the image is fine on my computer but jumpy on my SDTV. The image looks fine on my HDTV but the sound is fast. I have had this problem since I switched to a Mac with an Intel processor, upgraded from Toast 7 to Toast 10, and updated MTR to 3.0 14. I deleted Toast and reloaded it when this problem occurred in the past and I was able to burn a good copy of another DVD that I was doctoring in the same way, but by the second burn my image was screwy again.

All of this leads me to believe that there is some problem when Toast multiplexes. I would like to test an alternative burning option to see if Toast is the problem. I downloaded a program called Burn but apparently it has not been updated since OS 10.3 and it crashes on me. Are there any non-compression burning alternatives that can multi-plex?

[pixel zombie]

if you have mpeg2works, you should be able to author as dvd and simply use toast to burn as a UDF disk..this way toast will not re-encode your video files

[rumplestiltskin]

Are you sure you haven't altered the frame rate accidentally?

[danielmak]

Are you sure you haven't altered the frame rate accidentally?

Thanks for both replies.

@pz: I'm going to test your suggestion right now.

EDIT: Tested mpeg2works by authoring a DVD from my MPG file. My final burn with Toast leaves me with the same problem, which is maddening. So, I'm wondering if something is happening when I extract with MTR, when I demux with MPEGStreamclip, or when I mux with mpeg2works. I do not think it is the mux since I have all the proper settings per my email exchanges with Serbian.

@rumplestiltskin: Here's my process:
1. I extract as a single VOB with MTR (as far as I can tell I haven't changed anything in terms of framerate by doing this).
2. I drag the VOB into MPEGStreamclip (if the DVD-R is one I recorded myself, I always get a message about fixing timecode breaks and I fix those breaks/when it is a DVD-R from someone else sometimes there are timecode breaks and sometimes not).
3. I separate the VOB into an M2V file and an AIFF file with MPEGStreamclip (for my English commentary I just use MPEGSTreamclip to just extract an AIFF). Although the original sound file is AC3, I extract AIFF to save converting an AC3 to AIFF for iMovie (see below).
4. I use MPEGStreamclip to create a DV file. I then drag the DV and the English AIFF into iMovie. I sync the sound to the good video. I export the AIFF from imovie and convert the AIFF to AC3 in ffmpegx.
5. I have used a variety of programs to mux the files to create an MPG1 file (Toast, MPEGWORKS--which I like the best, and ffmpegx). Note that the M2V has just sat in the folder the whole time (seemingly unaltered unless there is something I am missing in MPEGStreamclip).
6. I burn in Toast's Video Tab setting. My video tab settings in Toast are set to Custom with Video: MPEG2, 4.0MBPS (8.0 mbps max), reencode never, 4:3; Audio is Dolby Digital 448KPS. I have had this same setting since I was using Toast 7. And I have burned to various media: TDK -R, Sony -R and +R, Verbatim -R, and Memorex +R. All are burned at DVD 4X.

I have tried creating a Disc Image and seeing if there are bad sectors to fix with MyDVDEdit and I have just burned. Either way, the video looks fine on the computer an is jumpy on my SDTV. This last DVD that I have edited to mix English commentary with Spanish sound actually looked fine on my Toshiba HDTV but the sound was sped up, whereas on my SDTV and on the computer the sound was fine (and on the SDTV the image was jumpy).

Sorry this is taking so long but one more addition. Anytime I extract with MTR and drag those files into Toast (even if it is a single VOB extraction that does not need to be edited to replace commentary--e.g., someone sends me a DVD that has multiple highlights sections and I only want to copy one of those highlights--and I burn that with Toast, I have problems. If I use Toast for extraction, there are no problems. But this won't work if I need to replace audio commentary since I can't do that in Toast. So, something is happening with MTR and Toast for me. Is there a setting in MTR that I might have accidentally hit that would create this problem? And if I did hit something, why would it only be a problem when extracting certain titles only but not when I do a Main Feature extraction or a full DVD rip?

[rumplestiltskin]

Just for grins, after authoring you might try burning with Burnz, available here: http://www.thinkertons.com/

It will let you create a UDF disc into which you'll drop the VIDEO_TS folder you've previously authored. If it plays well, then your problem is, indeed, with Toast.

[danielmak]

Just for grins, after authoring you might try burning with Burnz, available here: http://www.thinkertons.com/

It will let you create a UDF disc into which you'll drop the VIDEO_TS folder you've previously authored. If it plays well, then your problem is, indeed, with Toast.

I have tried every configuration possible and it seems that my culprit is MacTheRipper. If I drag my VIDEO_TS from the DVD, open the first VOB with MPEGStreamclip and open as a stream, extract my m2v in MPEGStreamclip, mux in mpeg2works and then create a VIDEO_TS in mpeg2works from the muxed MPG, that VIDEO_TS can be burned in Liquid CD or in Toast and it plays fine on my SDTV. I will test again just using drag>drop, MPEGSTreamclip, and Toast to see what happens when Toast multiplexes, but at this point extracting with MTR seems to do something to the file. I know that folks who work with MTR say that it is not meant to extract from DVD-R/+R but I have been using it in this way for years and never had problems.

[rumplestiltskin]

Frankly, if your DVDs aren't encrypted, MTR isn't needed as MPEG Streamclip will rip the stream from the set of VOBs...but you already know this part.

I haven't used MTR is quite a few years; kind of disappointing that you're having such an issue with it.