Roxio Toast 8 - cannot burn an avi file. Just get spinning beach ball!

[Ivor Bigone]

I have an .avi file that previews ok (eventually) in Quicktime but when I drag or add to burn to DVD all I get is the spinning beach ball. After waiting some time I then have to force quit which tells me that the app is not responding. Is there a quick fix for this as it has happened before? Is it codec related? I have Toast 8.0.4

I investigated further and found that the file did NOT open in either Quicktime, DivX ( saying it is corrupt) and Realplayer which surprised me. However the file DID open and view ok using VLC. Meanwhile I still cannot burn this avi file using Roxio Toast. Are there any other reputable apps that I could try to encode and burn this file? Would appreciate any help.
Thanks

[aedipuss]

check the tools section here for video repair/fix and see if any will run on a mac. if so try to repair the file.

[ffooky]

Are you wanting to burn it as a data file for playback on a DivX/Xvid capable player or convert to DVD spec MPEG 2?

It's probably best to use something like MediaInfo Mac or failing that Command-I in VLC to try to get the specs of your file. If it's not obvious to you from them why it won't play nice, post them here.

If QuickTime won't play it then you could try conversion with ffmpegX.

[Ivor Bigone]

Are you wanting to burn it as a data file for playback on a DivX/Xvid capable player or convert to DVD spec MPEG 2?

It's probably best to use something like MediaInfo Mac or failing that Command-I in VLC to try to get the specs of your file. If it's not obvious to you from them why it won't play nice, post them here.

If QuickTime won't play it then you could try conversion with ffmpegX.

I want to play the DVD in my stand alone DVD player attached to my TV. Can I assume that this is MPEG spec as I am sure it is not DivX? Previously I have encoded 700 mb avi file and burnt to DVD giving a final size of around 4.6GB. Sorry if it's a bit vague but up to now I've just downloaded and dragged n' dropped! That's about as much as I know.

Also referring to the previous post I had a look at the Mac tools but not sure and need a bit more help please! There are so many references and avenues!

[ffooky]

OK, for starters download MediaInfo Mac, open your troublesome file with it and copy/paste the results here.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to sya hit the red button and export to a text file which you can copy from.

When you say dragged and dropped, I presume you meant into Toast's DVD window and then it took (a fairly long) while and produced a DVD Video, right ?

[Ivor Bigone]

"When you say dragged and dropped, I presume you meant into Toast's DVD window and then it took (a fairly long) while and produced a DVD Video, right ?"

Yes ..... normally encoding and burning takes about 3.5 hours. I just drag the avi file into the window and click burn and hey presto ...

I shall have a look at the solution you have given me and post back later.
Thanks again.

[ffooky]

As something else to try, D-Vision 3 might be of of some use.

Launch the app, hit the blue Tools button in the top right, select Fix from the top line at the next little window, choose the file and output folder and check the for DVD/DivX player box (though I guess this just unpacks the bitstream which is not your problem but may as well). This creates a "task" but you have to then launch that once the task window appears.

[pixel zombie]

if it won't play in quicktime toast won't be able to convert it...try using visualhub to convert it first..taost is very slow when it comes to converting videos in case you haven't noticed...

[Ivor Bigone]

As something else to try, D-Vision 3 might be of of some use.

Downloaded and tried it and success!! Great little app to solve a problematic video file.

However after solving the problem I attempted to find the app and found it wasn't in my applications folder as it is a only a mounted image. Am I correct in this? If I remove it from my desktop does that mean it disappears for good? As I may need to use it again I don't want to lose it. Advice please!

[ffooky]

Yes, it's a terrific and rather overlooked tool. It's the best thing for joining AVI files that have been prepared in two or more CD-sized blocks and its sister app, D-Subtitler is probably the best native program for extracting subtitles still within a VIDEO_TS folder to SRT.

As with all OS X apps that don't come with an installer (the majority really) you need to drag it from the mounted image into the Applications folder and then eject and trash the DMG.
Sometimes there will be several items in a draggable folder but if there's, say, an app and an associated readme/help file packed loose in the DMG I always find it best to drag the readme onto the desktop, prepend the name of the application to the file name and then drag it into /Applications, otherwise you'll end up with multiple readme files and no way of knowing which application they apply to.

[Ivor Bigone]

Thanks ffooky .... sorted!