Help-want to burn one DVD from multiple bitvice encodes

[hurdsam]

I just bought BitVice and have Toast Titanium 6. I want to create one DVD disc out of Toast that includes several encoded files from BitVice (preferably as selected menu items on the burned DVD). There's supposedly a way to do this in Toast but I can't figure it out. I'm not too interested in buying additional software (like DVD2One) unless I absolutely have to - any advice?

Thanks in advance

[hurdsam]

boy do I feel stupid - just figured it out - drag m2v files created from bitvice to the video window within Toast and it takes care of everything. It also automatically grabs the associated audio files if the file names are the same.

[WiseWeasel]

Watch out, if you do that, Toast will re-encode the video and audio, thus eliminating the benefits of using the bitvice encoder. If you want Toast to leave the files alone, you'll need to master a real VIDEO_TS folder for DVD Video using DVD Studio Pro or the freeware Sizzle. Then, you can put Toast in Data mode - DVD-ROM (UDF) format, and it will burn them to DVD-R.

[AntnyMD]

Toast 6.0.3 and later will not re-encode audio or video if previously encoded to spec.

[hurdsam]

well, now I'm worried. I do have Toast 6.0.3, but when I tried the above with a test file that was a 20 minute video, I watched it do something for well over an hour, it wasn't even half way through the sequence, and I finally killed the job. I monitored the Roxio Converted Items folder and there was a file and a folder created in there - how do you tell if it's reencoding the video? The audio was an aif file but does Toast take that long to encode 20 minutes of aif to xxx (I confess I don't know the format of the encoded audio - is it mp2 or mp3?)?

It does display a message in its window that it will leave MPEG2 and AC3 files alone...but I'm wondering now. Any counsel?

[WiseWeasel]

Toast 6.0.x WILL re-encode the video no matter what spec it adheres to. To avoid Toast re-encoding the video and audio, you MUST master a DVD folder (VIDEO_TS) using DVD Studio Pro or Sizzle. Once you have a proper VIDEO_TS folder mastered, you can then put Toast in Data mode, and choose DVD-ROM (UDF) from the format options in the advanced options in the left side column. Then, you can drag the DVD folder (a folder with the same name as the original DVD, containing at least a VIDEO_TS folder) onto Toast's window and burn to DVD-R.

[AntnyMD]

WiseWeasel may be experiencing something that I am not. I have made several DVDs in Toast 6.0.3 using material I captured with my ADS Instant DVD box. The only thing Toast does to the video is literally examine the entire file to make sure (a) the entire video file is up to spec [i.e., GOP lengths and bitrate most likely], and (b) the audio is up to spec [i.e., bitrate when considered along with the video stream, sample rate, and DVD compatible format (i.e., MP2, PCM or AC3)].

The longest DVD I made in this way held about 3 hours of material, and Toast's examination of the process took about 35 minutes. I also recall a separate time when I captured the audio at 44.1kHz and not 48kHz and Toast did re-encode the audio.

[WiseWeasel]

Hmmm, maybe I've underestimated Roxio on this one. What format is your audio in? It still shouldn't be taking hours with the preparing steps unless it's doing some serious re-encoding. If it does re-encode, you might want to verify that it didn't degrade the video quality and/or reduce the total playtime you can fit on DVD-R.

[Frobozz]

I've been reading about this on the Toast 6 forum. Toast 6.0.3 will re-encode the MPEG video if it exceeds the maximum bit rate specs for DVD. Otherwise it leaves it alone.