Burning DVDs

Toast 6

I did two tests in Toast 6, one the 80-minute cartoon I had failed with in iDVD 4, the other a compilation of seven short movie clips totalling three minutes, again using 80¢ discs:

encoding 80 minutes took about four hours = movie duration x 3
writing 80 minutes took about 50 minutes = movie duration x 2/3
encoding and writing 3 minutes took about 10 minutes = movie duration x 3
you get one button per video-file
- if your DVD is one long movie, there's just one button at the top
- if you have multiple movie-files, you get one button for each, grouped at the rate of three buttons per menu

The project name at the top of the main toast window: it says 'My DVD' by default, and doesn't look to me like something you are expected to edit: but if you don't, you get 'My DVD' as the file name of the finished disc in the Mac Finder:

The 'edit/text' panel will be the text of the menu title: if you don't do anything you get the file name, date and film duration:

but you can change that to anything you want, in up to three lines of text:

The 'edit/video' panel:

choose one still frame for the one button per movie-file:
choose how you want chapters to work: none, or automatic, or every 2, 3, 5 or 10 minutes:

Edited, ready to burn:

Toast doesn't give you buttons for chapters in the final DVD like iDVD does, but your DVD player - TV or Mac - will skip between chapters one at a time if you click 'next' or 'previous': that's to say, you can find your way around the movie if you don't want to see it straight through: but the chapter-markers didn't actually come in the right places, and the names were hopelessly mixed up - some come twice while others are missing completely; they all show up correctly in the movie as it was exported from Final Cut Pro 4, when I open it in QT Player

the movies on both discs look fine played on the Mac; on the TV most is also just fine, but some parts flicker in a disturbing way I haven't seen any other video disc do, and which they don't do on the Mac; I haven't had time to explore this in any detail...

Delightful, empowering:

Great promises not fulfilled, and five days wasted:

Fine for what it does:

The smooth - and via eBay even affordable! - solution:
Capturing video and making a DVD in Mac OS Panther

iDVD3

iDVD 4

Toast 6

DVD Studio Pro 2

One user's solutions

*Delightful, empowering:*	*Great promises not fulfilled, and five days wasted:*	*Fine for what it does:*	*The smooth* - and via eBay even affordable! *- solution:*	*Capturing video and making a DVD* in Mac OS Panther
iDVD3	iDVD 4	Toast 6	DVD Studio Pro 2	One user's solutions