Toast doesn't shrink DVD backed up with MacTheRipper.

[MovingParts]

Hi,

I first read the sticky about DVD2One + Toast, but I saw that DVD2One is not for free and I did not find a PPC-Mac-Version at a quick look.

I saved a DVD (about 6GB big) to my internal drive with MacTheRipper 2.6.6 under 10.4.11(PPC). I then Opened Toast Titanium 7 and tried a to "burn DVD-Video from Video-TS" and put in a 4,5GB DVD-R. Toast asked to "shrink" the DVD to fit (it used another word for shrink, but...). I clicked "yes".

After the shrinking bar showed progress, it stopped somewhere and gave an error.

What am I doing wrong?
Is it maybe the source?

Thanks for any advice.

[Case]

What is the exact error message that Toast gave?

MacTheRipper 2.6.6 is from 2005. If you ripped a commercial DVD from a later date, then perhaps this DVD has some characteristics (e.g. deliberate bad sectors as a copy protection measure) which may prevent Toast from requantising it to a smaller footprint (Fit-to-DVD). It is possible that a newer version of MacTheRipper would provide a more “clean” VIDEO_TS folder, that Toast wouldn't have trouble with.

[jman98]

The OP is living in the past and trying to use a pre-Intel Mac, so he has painted himself into a corner. New versions probably don't support PPC.

[MovingParts]

What is the exact error message that Toast gave?

MacTheRipper 2.6.6 is from 2005. If you ripped a commercial DVD from a later date, then perhaps this DVD has some characteristics (e.g. deliberate bad sectors as a copy protection measure) which may prevent Toast from requantising it to a smaller footprint (Fit-to-DVD). It is possible that a newer version of MacTheRipper would provide a more “clean” VIDEO_TS folder, that Toast wouldn't have trouble with.

Thanks, I will give you the Toast error message tomorrow.

MacTheRipper said "found deliberate bad sectors" for one DVD (belonging to a box of three DVDs, one Season spanned over three discs). All the others went fine. (It was not the one Toast had problems with). Also all other Seasons of the Series.

Mpegstreamclip said about every disc I tried to convert, that it had to repair "time code errors". (Handbrake went well, but for some reason forced me to use deinterlacing for a device that doesn't need deinterlacing. The result was no interlacing artifacts, but then I got slightly flickering straight lines on windows, doors, etc.)

@JMan98: I am no native speaker, is your statement meant to be offensive to me or is it just an observation, that I use old equipment and that I therefore will probably not have taken a later version, because it is not supported.
It was hard to find the PPC version at all, so I do not actually know, if there is a later compatible version, but I will do a "researching session" tomorrow
I bought my last Mac in October 2005 (new then), which I use still. I need it for Office and Internet, do not use "grimace"book and I do not (or barely) watch youtube or other flash video stuff online. So why do I need a new Mac?
Can you tell me the Etymology and Semantics of "to paint oneself into a corner" (is it a colloquial expression for "he has limited himself" or is it more like "he is so stupid, he lives in his own world).

[rumplestiltskin]

Reading jman98's post, it is obvious to me (a native English speaker) that he means no offense. It is, indeed, the colloquial expression for "he has limited himself".

[MovingParts]

Hi,

sorry for answering that late! I now am burning the discs (that I backed up with MacTheRipper 2.6.6) with Toast 7.

Interestingly the one and only disc MacTheRipepr said to have "deliberate bad sectors" went smooth through compression and brurning. It then did hang up on writing lead-out (which I do not know, if it is caused by the sleep mode of the screen, not updating after wake-up or maybe because of the SATA-PCI-Card, that holds the Drive with the Sources. I did reset and the DVD appeared on the desktop and could be played without problems.

Only thing I am experiencing is, that sound is varying in loudness (Toast's compression engine's fault?)

By the way what percentage of compression is ok for a DVD, when compressed with Toast by keeping mpeg2. I mean it says "42% good" or "35% very good" depending on the source disc, but how good is good. Is it right that one can take 3MB/s as minimum for mpeg2 as a guideline? (The original discs have about 6800kbps, so 42% is about 2800kbps).

Sorry for such stupid questions.

As soon as I get the Toast error message which I was referring to in my initial post, again, I will post it.

[Case]

Only thing I am experiencing is, that sound is varying in loudness (Toast's compression engine's fault?)

The requantising done by Toast only works on the video and leaves the audio as-is.

[jman98]

By the way what percentage of compression is ok for a DVD, when compressed with Toast by keeping mpeg2. I mean it says "42% good" or "35% very good" depending on the source disc, but how good is good. Is it right that one can take 3MB/s as minimum for mpeg2 as a guideline? (The original discs have about 6800kbps, so 42% is about 2800kbps).

Sorry for such stupid questions.

This is a good question, but let me explain why it's impossible to answer. People have different tastes. For example, people who like rap music may not like classical music very much, and vice-versa. So if you tell a classical music fan that the latest release from 50 Cent is really good, probably he won't ever listen to it. Some people are incredibly sensitive to compression in video and audio and others are not very picky. I had a friend who some years ago was making truly terrible recordings from a low quality over the air TV signal. The videos he recorded had constant snow and drop outs in them, and he still kept them and thought they were fine. We've got a thread where the original poster started it over a year ago about recording some VHS tapes and over a year later he hasn't gotten anything accomplished because every time he records something, he decides it's not good enough quality so he stops for a while. So I have no idea how picky you are or what your viewing conditions are. You will just have to try various compression levels and see what is acceptable to you. 3 Mbps is pretty low for DVD though. If you have animation, it should be fine. But if it's an action movie, it may be too low. You might try getting rid of some audio tracks to allow more bit rate for video if you must shrink to single layer DVD size.

[MovingParts]

Sorry, for coming back so late! Thanks for your answers.

I don't know why, but the Toast error message didn't appear in any of the several DVDs (8 seasons, 2-3DVDs per season).

On the quality thing in toast. I learned that the percentage shown doesn't have to do anything with the words it shows above it "good", "very good", "excellent". Sometimes "good" is 40% cut, sometimes it is 20%, same for "excellent" once it is 16%, the other time it is 35%, while this is "very good" the next time.
Which makes sense, I try to explain this to me like, if there is a not so complex movie you can maybe cut off 45% and it will be considered "good", but other sources may have more Details and even just cutting off 20% will lead to "good", while the not so complex movie may show the predicate "very good" or "excellent".
So I guess Toast is somehow "case"-sensitive. I did only few burns with "good" and often chose to use a DVD-DL instead. Because one showed pixel in a part were the scene was slowly blackened out. I don't know how to describe, but it was like having different shades of "black".

A bit off topic, but is Toast somehow able to produce mpeg2 from DV-files or do I have to first convert via iMovie (by sending to iDVD, which I find not so good, because as far as I remember you can not choose the size. It will just fit the given DV-file so that it will fill the whole 4,7GB DVD space) or with mpegstreamclip.
---> found answer here http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCD_on_a_Macintosh.html#Encode
PS: I think I am just to stupid, they say something about creating an Image and then a video-clip m2v and audio m2a first and then letting Toast compile it, etc. I now found, I can easily choose Video-DVD from the Toast-menue and it offers conversion. I thought I need mpeg2 to create a universally compatible SVCD or Video-DVD. I see that Toast can use DV as source, I see that I can choose the bitrate, but there is nothing shown about the output format (it should be mpeg2, I guess, but I will have to try the next time I have the time. Burn, than mount and see, if the files on the DVD are mpeg2 or .vob.).

[Case]

[...] I did only few burns with "good" and often chose to use a DVD-DL instead. Because one showed pixel in a part were the scene was slowly blackened out. I don't know how to describe, but it was like having different shades of "black".

I've seen what you are describing in quite a few online videos. I suppose that means too much compression was used.

I now found, I can easily choose Video-DVD from the Toast-menue and it offers conversion. [...] I see that Toast can use DV as source, I see that I can choose the bitrate, but there is nothing shown about the output format (it should be mpeg2, I guess, but I will have to try the next time I have the time. Burn, than mount and see, if the files on the DVD are mpeg2 or .vob.).

If you set Toast for DVD-Video, it will output / convert to a VIDEO_TS folder with VOB files.
If you choose to write an image file (File > Save As Disc Image), you can check the output without burning a disc.

[MovingParts]

It's very nice you answer my off-topic questions, which some people would not even consider answering or would directly point to google (which I have searched already)!

OK, I understand. The link I provided also talked about the .mov file in iMovie's folder, that could easily be used for burning a (mpeg2) DVD. I tried to use this as source, but it didn't accept it.

Is there an answer to the question whether which of the following would be best for converting to mpeg2, given that the settings were the same?

I have available:
- iDVD 5.0.1
- iDVD 6.0.0 (did delete updates 6.0.3, because suddenly I got snow in the preview picture)
- Toast Titanium 7
- Handbrake 0.9.1 and 0.9.4 (it seems it also supports mpeg2 as an output format, but I couldn't find whether version 0.9.4 does. I do 0.9.1 doesn't only support DVDs/streams as source, so mpeg2 output would make no sense. 0.9.4 does support DV as input source for example, but I haven't OS 10.5 and handbrake 0.9.4 installed at the moment, so can't just test it myself.)

[terryj]

I would recommend since your on PPC that you also get a copy of ffmpegx. (Donation Ware, not free) .
Under your older setup, I use to use this all the time to make viable .mpeg2 ( or even author compliant
VIDEO_TS folders) to use with Toast.

Since moving to Intel based hardware though, I stick with VisualHub

[MovingParts]

I already have Handbrake. ffmpeg is part of handbrake and it's free! So, it could be that handbrake can create mpeg2. But as I said I will have to test it (9.0.1 does not and it also does not accept DV as source, but 9.0.4 can use DV). I suppose one will have to buy the mpeg2 component, which isn't present in the old OS+Quicktime.

I will have to try that under my system, were I have Logic installed, where the mpeg2 came with it. As of now, I would like to stick with free software, since Toast and iDVD can do it, the barrier to "invest" more money in ffmpeg/mpeg2 is a bit higher, mentally.

[phase52001]

Just in case it's of interest.
You can still download older versions of DVDRemaster from here:http://www.metakine.com/products/dvdremaster/faq.html#faq8
The oldest version is 4.5.1.
Not sure if that runs on a PPC Mac or not. It's available as a demo if you want to try it out.
It's not free, but I found it worth the cost of purchase, and have been using it for years.
If I author a DVD, and it comes out at 6Gb; I just run it through DVDRemaster and make it 4.4GB. Easy.

[MovingParts]

I now found, I can easily choose Video-DVD from the Toast-menue and it offers conversion. [...] I see that Toast can use DV as source, I see that I can choose the bitrate, but there is nothing shown about the output format (it should be mpeg2, I guess, but I will have to try the next time I have the time. Burn, than mount and see, if the files on the DVD are mpeg2 or .vob.).

If you set Toast for DVD-Video, it will output / convert to a VIDEO_TS folder with VOB files.
If you choose to write an image file (File > Save As Disc Image), you can check the output without burning a disc.

Sorry, for resurrecting this old thread. You said, I can choose, whether to make VIDEO_TS folder or create an Image, in order ot not first burn the file. Well, I can choose DVD and use a .DV file (from iMovie) as source and I can choose which bitrate I want the encode to be, when creating the mpeg2 file. Unfortunately, it will directly burn and there is no option like "save VIDEO_TS folder first" or something. If I choose "Image-file", I can't use .DV as source, and can't even choose to encode it to mpeg2. Did you mean something different, perhaps? (I am using Toast 8 now).

[Case]

Unfortunately, it will directly burn and there is no option like “save VIDEO_TS folder first” or something. If I choose “Image-file”, I can't use .DV as source, and can't even choose to encode it to mpeg2. Did you mean something different, perhaps? (I am using Toast 8 now).

I do not have Toast 8 installed, but I’m pretty sure you can set up a DVD project and then choose the Save as Disc Image option in the File menu.
The option to set the destination (optical drive or image file) was not always in the main window, like in the current version.

[MovingParts]

Unfortunately, it will directly burn and there is no option like “save VIDEO_TS folder first” or something. If I choose “Image-file”, I can't use .DV as source, and can't even choose to encode it to mpeg2. Did you mean something different, perhaps? (I am using Toast 8 now).

I do not have Toast 8 installed, but I’m pretty sure you can set up a DVD project and then choose the Save as Disc Image option in the File menu.
The option to set the destination (optical drive or image file) was not always in the main window, like in the current version.

Sorry, for being so blind. It is like you say: it is in the main menu and not in the Toast-window. Thanks for your patience!