---- Randy Quimpo <randy.qui
...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Kieth,Some comments:
> 1. I dunno how you do it, but I just make DVDs in Toast - no fiddling with
> settings or anything, and it almost always plays fine. However, I DO stay
> away from 16:9 or anything else - plain QT, DV codec. I just drop the QT
> file in Toast and let it do everything (encode and all).
Ya know, I used to do that and never had any problems -- AFAIK. Just relied on the default settings. But when I customized things a bit, I noticed no problems either -- on the one, newer DVD player we have at home and my Mac's DVD drive. Never tested it on other players so I had no way of knowing -- and still don't -- if this was the cause of the problem.
> 2. If I had an issue, it is almost always the media I use. I have used el
> cheapo no-name DVD_RW that works once or twice and then no more, but still
> works.
Hmmm... that's something I hadn't thought of. I suppose I could buy a TDK or Maxell and see what happens. Right now I have a no-name brand, but I THINK it's actually a make that Verbatim or somebody uses. But I'm not sure.
> 3. Come to think of it, I DID have a skipping issue, and my use of Toast
> simplified the things to tweak (there weren't much). The reason for the
> skipping was because I was burning at 4x - did burns at 1x and that fixed
> it.
Hmmm... I've been using a 1x DVD-RW to not waste DVD-Rs in my troubleshooting. I think it's a TDK or something. But I generally will use a lower write speed then the max on any burn.
> 4. In conclusion, maybe you should just stick with Toast - its good enough
> for a whole bunch of things.
Oh goodness Randy. I don't know what's true any more! Or what's right or wrong! Or... oh never mind with the melodramatics.
> BTW, Toast is nice because it is a great tester, thanks to its reduced
> tweakability. Just yesterday, I had problems burning a DVD in DVDSP and I
> received an "unacceptable media" error message or something like that. I
> burned the same disk in Toast and got a perfectly fine DVD - this eliminated
> my hypothesis that DVDSP was rejecting the media brand I was using.
Okay well that knocks out any idea I had of taking a shot with DVDSP. Way too expensive a mistake to make.
> One more thing - you said you reduced the bitrate in Toast - how did you do
> that? There is no such setting in the Toast I use.
I'm using Toast Titanium v7.1.3. In the disc options thingie on the left side of the application window there's a button for "Automatic" and one for "Custom". Hit "Custom" then hit "More", the bottom-most button. This will take you to a dialogue window with two tabs. Select "Encoding", and you'll find a number of disc-burning options.
I'll stick with Toast (like I have a lot of options?) and I'll experiment with name-brand discs. I'll also consider re-installing the app. Perhaps something's gone awry. I dunno. Maybe I'll purchase the latest version of the software (9.0??). I promised I'd get a DVD in the mail to someone 2 days ago. Hard not to lose my composure over this mess, so I appreciate you folks who've chimed in on this for me.
Keith
