Dropped frames (or jerky video) from Toast DVDs, but not Visual Hub

[chrjohns]

I have a frustrating problem. Using Toast 7 (full version) or Toast 8 (Basic), DVDs have this annoying frame skip every few seconds. I have tried various media. DVD-R DVD+R DL and DVD-RW. All exhibit this problem. Brands have been Memorex and Maxell. I have tried burning the MPEG-2 files from an EyeTV 3 HD recording and .avis from the internets. Strange thing is that I finally tried Visual Hub (demo) and the DVD did not exhibit the frame dropping. However, with Visual Hub, there is no way to make a DVD with menus, which is a bummer if you want to make a DVD with multiple episodes of a TV show.

Roxio's official response to another poster with a similar problem is this:

"Ok, this is getting old. We have established that the problem is related to playback in some players for sure.
Yes, we know there are differences in the encoders from older versions of Toast to the current, however we are still within specifications and as such, that makes this not a Toast problem. We are still trying to work around it however but I am closing this thread down as the discussion is lingering on for months on end.
If you want us to look at your files, send me a private message and we can work from there on getting ahold of them and testing them."

found here:

http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=16411&st=60&start=60

Should I forsake Toast and its easy interface with eyetv and nice menu creation utilities?

Is there some setting within Toast that might solve my problem?

Should I just buy Visual Hub?

Is there a simple way to create menus with some alternative application?

Could I encode with visual hub and use Toast to create a DVD menu for a DVD with multiple episodes?

Does Roxio suck or not?

[pixel zombie]

yes, roxio does suck..i try to use toast 8 to make custom dvds with vob files and not only does it take a while but it seems to choke on certain files without any sort of error, on the other hand i can use mpeg2works for simple dvd authoring without any major problems and without re-encoding..granted, they don't have menus but at least i have a working dvd...

[pixel zombie]

i forgot to mention, when i do use toast for such a thing i will save a disc image of the dvd before burning anything, this way i can check the disc before wasting any media...

[terryj]

You all forget the golden rule:
Toast depends upon Quicktime for encoding.
If Quicktime doesn't have a robust set of codecs
to handle your internet avi's, it can choke, drop frame rates, etc.

Visual Hub, ffmpegx, et al do not.

A simple solution that you can do that makes the best of both worlds:
Have Visual Hub or ffmpegx encode your movie files to MPEG-2,
and then drag/drop those into Toast 8, and tell it to not re-encode
the assets.

If you set your bitrate targets correct in VisualHub ( see "Advanced" in manual)
you can achieve a perfect fit to DVD-5 or DVD-9 media,
without having to "squish" it to fit, and then by setting Toast
8's settings to not re-encode the media, you then can create a menu
and burn. Thus you get the best of both worlds:
Visual Hub's non Quicktime based engine
Toast 8's Menu creation.