Toast error message - unsupported ffmpeg file format

[Mildew]

I wanted to get three TV episodes onto a single DVD-R. I followed the instructions in this tutorial, http://railheaddesign.com/downloads/various/DVD_Authoring%20Experience.rtfd.sit

I converted the AVIs to DVDs (ffmpeg) using ffmpegX. They burn fine as single DVDs using DVD-ROM (UDF). However, when I tried the method as outlined in the tutorial, Toast gives me the following warning:

"Four files are in an unsupported format and cannot be imported."

What files did ffmpegX create that Toast is choking on under the DVD Video setting?


To spare you the hassle of downloading and reading the tutorial, here is the relevant part that I followed:

Part Five
Capturing, encoding, burning. Now it’s time to put your work onto a DVD so you can watch it with your set-top DVD player or any other DVD player you want — and this is where Roxio has added a bit of confusion with their latest update to Toast. The Toast 6.0.7 update added support for burning VIDEO_TS folders, which is great — unless you’re archiving things like me: several shows onto one DVD. Look at this screen shot: [see tutorial for screenshot]

To take advantage of this new feature in Toast, I would NOT be doing what you see above. I should either select “DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS” and drag a VIDEO_TS folder onto the interface, or I should be on Toast’s Data tab, selecting “DVD-ROM (UDF)” and dragging my VIDEO_TS folder to the interface. As you can see, I’m doing neither.

Why not? Using the steps I’ve been detailing this week, I’ve encoded my videos into VIDEO_TS folders and now I want all those videos on one DVD. Problem 1: a DVD can only have one VIDEO_TS folder — and I have three. Problem 2: you can’t just rename the files inside the three VIDEO_TS folders and drag them into one VIDEO_TS folder and hope it works — it won’t. So how do I get all three of my VIDEO_TS folders merged into one? One way would be to use another piece of software, Sizzle, and join them into one file making each video track a chapter. That would result in one VIDEO_TS folder to use via the aforementioned methods.

Too much work for me.

That puts me where you see the screen shot above: on Toast’s Video tab with “DVD-Video” selected. Simply drag your first VIDEO_TS folder onto Toast, click the Edit button, and enter your description for the chapter (you can see I opted to use the show name, episode and season). Next, drag the second VIDEO_TS folder onto Toast, edit the names, then repeat until your DVD is full. That’s it! Slap a blank DVD into your Mac and press the Burn button.

But wait — something happens. You’ll notice Toast does a bit of modification at this point…something called “remuxing” is taking place. Don’t worry, that’s normal. Remux (or mux) is a video editing term that means the video and audio tracks are being merged into one file, and it won’t take Toast very long to do so.

Depending upon your system and how fast your DVD writer does its thing, you’ll be ready to pop your hot-off-the-press DVD into your home entertainment system and revel in your handiwork. Pretty sweet, eh?

[major]

Open terminal.app from Applications/Utilities and try this command: ls -a (drop here your VIDEO_TS folder)

It should print the following. If there are any ".DS_Store" files (generated by OSX) you may delete them.

. VIDEO_TS.BUP VTS_01_0.BUP VTS_01_1.VOB
.. VIDEO_TS.IFO VTS_01_0.IFO

[Mildew]

This is what I get:

. VIDEO_TS.BUP VTS_01_0.BUP VTS_01_1.VOB
.. VIDEO_TS.IFO VTS_01_0.IFO VTS_01_2.VOB

There's an extra .VOB file. Should that be there?

[major]

Yes, extra VOBs are present depending on the size of the movie. I don't have Toast 6.0.7 for testing. Perhaps you should find a VIDEO_TS that works and it could be the starting point to find any differences.

[Mildew]

Perhaps you should find a VIDEO_TS that works and it could be the starting point to find any differences.

Okay, I'll try converting one of the AVIs using the DVD (mpeg2enc) preset instead of DVD (ffmpeg) preset.

BTW, when I converted the AVIs using the DVD (ffmpeg) preset, I enabled the following options: "4 motion vectors" and "Trellis quantization."

Could those be the source of the problem?

[major]

I don't think so, though they are not standard for DVD encoding.

[Mildew]

I posted in Roxio's forums and got this answer:

"This means there are .IFO and .BUP and other files that relate to instructions for the DVD player. These are the ones that produce the Toast message about some not being acceptable."

I'm still not sure what he means by "files that relate to instructions for the DVD player." Why would Toast reject these if they're intended for the DVD player?

[alph]

Just some ideas that may help.

Each movie may be 1 or many vobs.

Make sure to have at least Toast 6.0.9. The current version is 6.1.1. Since 6.0.9, Toast pads the video streams to compensate for the less than standard nature of ffmpeg.

Go to the Video TAB of Toast, select DVD Video, drop the 1st vob of each movie on to the window and then save as disc image. You should get a multiplexing message at this point. This image will be good to burn if it's final size fits a DVD-R.

I've not tested this since I use the "create DVD menu" option, but I think Toast will create chapters with each movie you add if you turn the menu option off.

The only time Toast accepts .ifo and .buf files is when you burn a Video_TS folder directly in "DVD-Video from Video_TS folder" mode, but then you can only burn 1 folder. All the other options in Toast's video tab look for video files only and that is why it rejects the other files. In all modes but the DVD from Video_ts folder, Toast creates all the required secondary files (buf, ifo, etc) it needs to since it creates it's own Video_TS folder containing all the movies you've added.

Alph

[Mildew]

Just some ideas that may help.

Each movie may be 1 or many vobs.

Go to the Video TAB of Toast, select DVD Video, drop the 1st vob of each movie on to the window and then save as disc image. You should get a multiplexing message at this point. This image will be good to burn if it's final size fits a DVD-R.

Alph

Don't I need to also add the second vob file of each movie?

[alph]

If your vobs are properly made, which should be the case, Toast will automatically find the second, third, or how many vobs there may be, provided they are all in the same directory, once you give it the first of each movie. This is per show, you do not need to put all the vobs from all the shows in the same directory.

To confirm this, just look at the time, duration, Toast indicates for each movie. Even if you only give it the first vob, it will indicate the total time.

Cheers.
Alph

[Mildew]

If your vobs are properly made, which should be the case, Toast will automatically find the second, third, or how many vobs there may be, provided they are all in the same directory, once you give it the first of each movie. This is per show, you do not need to put all the vobs from all the shows in the same directory.

Alph

Okay, I dragged the 3 VIDEO_TS folders into Toast (DVD Video option) and selected save as disc image. Each VIDEO_TS folder was 1.37 GB in size. Toast proceeded to re-encode all three folders.

It took six f**king hours on a 2.0 Ghz G5 iMac. What the hell is Toast doing? I already encoded the DVDs. I just want to burn them.

When Toast was finished, I had my DVD disc image that was now only 2.27 GB in size (it should've been just over 4.1 GB). I mounted the disc image and had a look inside. There were three vob files, each was around 760 MB in size. I had a look at the original VIDEO_TS folders that ffmpegX created. Each had two vob files, the first about 1 GB, the second about 380 MB in size.

What did Toast do? Did it re-encode at a lower bitrate and reduced the quality of my DVD? If so, why?

[alph]

You should be dragging the vob files, not the video_ts folders themselves.

How about you try them 1 by 1 and see what toast does. Sometimes 1 bad movie will cause them all to get re-encoded. Drop vob 1 from 1 of your video_ts folders on the Dvd video tab of toast and "save as disc image" As you drop on the video it should tell you the runtime of the entire movie, and when you Save as disc image, it should say multimplexing. If it says anything other than multiplexing then it's re-encoding because for some reason it did not like the original file.


Alph

[Mildew]

I compared the vob files using MPEG Streamclip. For some reason, Toast lowered the bitrate and changed the framerate. I have no idea why it would alter the framerate. I've starred the changes in the comparison results:

Original VOB file (from ffmpegX):

Stream: VTS_01_1.VOB
Type: VOB program stream

Duration: 0:45:22
Data Size: 1.37 GB
*Bit Rate: 4.32 Mbps *

Video Tracks:
224 MPEG-2, 720 × 480, 4:3, *23.976 fps*, 4.00 Mbps, *progressive*

Audio Tracks:
192 MP2 stereo, 48 kHz, 224 kbps

Stream Files:
VTS_01_1.VOB (1023.97 MB)
VTS_01_2.VOB (377.56 MB)


Results after Toast re-encoded the VOB files under the DVD-VIDEO option:

Stream: VTS_01_1.VOB
Type: VOB program stream

Duration: 0:45:21
Data Size: 782.90 MB
*Bit Rate: 2.41 Mbps*

Video Tracks:
224 MPEG-2, 720 × 480, 4:3, *29.97 fps*, 4.00 Mbps, *lower field first*

Audio Tracks:
192 MP2 stereo, 48 kHz, 224 kbps

Stream Files:
VTS_01_1.VOB (782.90 MB)

[major]

Possibly it re-encodes since ffmpeg doesn't add the 3:2 pulldown signals for NTSC FILM encodings. You may try the following and check if any works,

- demux the ffmpeg-encoded vob file, use the "Pulldown" tool on the m2v file, and remux it with the audio.
- try a small clip encoded with mpeg2enc

[Mildew]

Possibly it re-encodes since ffmpeg doesn't add the 3:2 pulldown signals for NTSC FILM encodings. You may try the following and check if any works,

- demux the ffmpeg-encoded vob file, use the "Pulldown" tool on the m2v file, and remux it with the audio.
- try a small clip encoded with mpeg2enc

Hi Major,

I demuxed the original vob file with ffmpegX, but there's no audio file, just the m2v file. It creates seven temporary AC3 files (0 K each) but then deletes them. The audio is in .mp2 format. Is there an app that can extract it? Or should I use the elementary streams?

BTW, using 3:2 pulldown while encoding with DVD mpeg2enc did work. Toast accepted the file. Now I just have to figure out how to extract the mp2 from my other vob files.

[alph]

Toast only supports NTSC and PAL. For it to accept "NTSC film" it requires 3:2 pulldown. Toast does not apply 3:2 Pulldown itself so it's re-encoding to increase the framerate to 29.97.

For each show:

-I'd try demuxing your shows with MPEG Streamclip using the "Demux to m2v and m1a" option from the File menu.
-Use the pulldown button in FFMPEGX's Tool tab to apply Pulldown to the m2v.
-Still in the Tool tab, Mux as DVD the new pulldown-ed m2v with the original m1a.
-Drop the newly created mpeg on Toast's video Tab in DVD-video mode, and Save as disc image and watch that it only re-multiplexes and does not re-encode, and test in DVD player that the audio is still in sync.

If it passes this test for 1 show you can think about doing the same for other episodes, perhaps 3 per disc.

Alph

P.S. I always use NTSC film with pulldown to save a little extra space per disc, and I use ffmpeg with manual pulldown to save on encoding time. Since Toast 6.0.9 and newer this option is nearly 100% compatible with most standalone dvd players too.

[Mildew]

Thanks for your help.

Re-muxing with the m1a file caused the audio to be slightly out of sync. I re-converted the files and kept the elementary streams and re-muxed with the original mp2 audio file.