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).
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.
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.
4. In conclusion, maybe you should just stick with Toast - its good enough
for a whole bunch of things.
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.
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.
rgds/ RandyQ
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 4:26 PM, <kyakoub
...@adelphia.net> wrote:
> Hey Carlin, thanks for all that info. Based on some of what you said, I
> was spurred on to make some experiments.
> First off was the data rate experiment. I halved the data throughput in
> the Toast setup dialogue, but to no avail. All I got was a more obviously
> compressed DVD that still skipped.
> I tried going directly from AE to Toast, as opposed to constructing a
> project in Final Cut Express HD. I made a movie from an AE project, DVD'd
> it, and to no avail.
> I tried messing with iDVD, but it seems to lack options I want, like
> widescreen, should I decide I wanna give prospective clients/employers a
> choice of either 16:9 or 4:3 letterbox.
> I do not know how I can be sure that those receiving my DVD will see it
> play properly. And I need this to be the case. Playing back the disc in
> their presence on a personal player is one thing. But unless they use my web
> site, they'll require a disc that they can look at before they decide that
> they wanna call me in for an interview.
> I do not want to spend money on a new burner or any new software, like DVD
> Studio Pro. That's a hell of an investment that would really sting should it
> not work.
> I thought of sending a VHS cassette as a backup, but that's a pain, what
> with all the bulky cassettes and all the labels I'll have to create.
> I suppose I could give my movie project to a service bureau of some kind,
> but I have a feeling that such places would consider a job as small as mine
> a bother. (Not to mention that there's no guarantee I'd be able to get DVDs
> out in a hurry, should a prospective client need one immediately, as I will
> have to get to one that's opened late and can knock one out for me on the
> fly. I could make bunches of copies, but there's a gamble there, as my work
> evolves over unpredictable time frames.)
> In short, I may just have to continue to make DVDs that may not play well
> and just hope for the best.
> Keith
--
Randy Quimpo
Corporate Film maker
http://www.q2digitalstudio.com
