why does Toast reencode certain files?

[pixel zombie]

i decided to give Toast 7 a try today and was surprised it actually worked with VOB and mpg2 files....nice and easy menus so i figured i'd add some more files and then i noticed that %^%*&*& annoying behaviour, it wants to encode a VOB file ripped from one of my dvd's....so i run the file through mpeg2 works 4 and change the audio from ac3 to m2v and mux the 2 files together and sure enough it wants to encode it yet again!!!!!!!...i set reencode to never and it still wanted to reencode, the file in question is at 5.00 mbps which is within the range of the preferences so i don't know what else to try...

[chikanakan]

Well, it re-encodes because there is something wrong with the file. Look in the converted items folder and see what file is getting converted, the audio or video. It's possible the video has multi-angles, closed captions, or was just authored wrong.

People think that just because a VOB comes from a DVD that is without error. But lots, if not most, DVD have MPEG and AC3 errors that will cause problems when re-suing the files.

You should use the Toast media browser to extract the files. In most causes this will allow the file to work without re-encoding.

[pixel zombie]

it looks as if it was reencoding both the audio and video......Toast was still trying to reencode it this morning after i let it work the whole night...

[Frobozz]

I want to reinforce what chikanakan stated above. When you only want some content from a VIDEO_TS folder or DVD use the Media Browser to bring in the videos from your VIDEO_TS rather than dragging the VOBs to Toast. Toast 7 lets you select individual chapters or titles. I've noticed that dragging VOBs directly to Toast 7 is problematic.

Of course if you are wanting to burn the main title from a VIDEO_TS folder that's too big for your DVD media then you should use the DVD-video from VIDEO_TS setting in Toast 7 and then select the compression option, the same as if you were using Popcorn.

[mephoneno]

Did you make sure that the video quality slider was at the Best setting?
Anyplace else would have Toast chewing away at your files for however long it takes...

I used Toast 7 to make a DVD using VOB files - Three of them 918MB and the fourth 522MB. The VOBs are from a VHS > DVD dub on an LG DVD Recorder. The video is just under 3 hours long.

I checked the Auto Play and the Play All Items buttons and added a single JPEG image Slideshow (5 sec) as I didn't like any of the menu themes. I moved the slider to the Best Video Quality position.

It took about 25 minutes for Toast to do what it had to do - burning included -
Interestingly, only the first VOB appeared in the Toast window but if I moved the slider under the preview, I could scan through all of the VOBs.
Also - the disc capacity indicator over the burn button, never registered any capacity, at all.

The sizes of the four Toast-created video VOBs are three 1008MB and one 674MB files (Toast created 8 other files)

Does anyone know where those themes reside? I'd like to be able to add a background image and buttons of my own design.

I had a look in the package/rescources folder, but couldn't identify the themes.

Dave

[macuser25]

here's info about the themes. they are photoshop psd files, so they can be edited.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050828135331105&query=toast+7