Best video tools program for Mac?

[nStyle]

I don't really need to do any editing to the actual video, I just need to make compression adjustments.

Will Nero Recode or something be the best for this? Again, I don't need any effects that Final Cut Pro might have, I just need to resize and compress so this 5gb video will fit on a regular DVD.

Not sure if I like Recode or Nero in general though because I know I have tried to burn a video to a DVD and the video has only been like 2-3 gigs but it would not fit on one DVD for some reason. The program told me I would be using much more space than the DVD could suffice.

Also, will MKV play on most players?

Any help appreciated guys! Love this forum.

 

[spinnerlys]

I don't really need to do any editing to the actual video, I just need to make compression adjustments.

Will Nero Recode or something be the best for this? Again, I don't need any effects that Final Cut Pro might have, I just need to resize and compress so this 5gb video will fit on a regular DVD.

Not sure if I like Recode or Nero in general though because I know I have tried to burn a video to a DVD and the video has only been like 2-3 gigs but it would not fit on one DVD for some reason. The program told me I would be using much more space than the DVD could suffice.

Also, will MKV play on most players?

Any help appreciated guys! Love this forum.

There is MPEG Streamclip for compression issues (www.squared5.com), I don't know if Nero or Recode have Mac OS X versions (you could look it up though).

If you burn a DVD with the Joliet file system, files can be no larger than 1GB I think (that's why .vob files are split when they reach a certain size).
The ISO 9660 standard will give you 2 to 4GB per file.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660#The_2.2F4_GiB_file_size_limit

I don't know about the MKV part if you meant physical video DVD players for TVs by "players".

 

[nStyle]

Yes, sorry. I meant physical players.

The files I'm trying to write are .MKV's... and some .AVI... Still seems like Nero won't write these to the DVD even when they are under 4 GB. It says I'm going way over.

I'm not messing with VOB lol.

 

[spinnerlys]

Yes, sorry. I meant physical players.

The files I'm trying to write are .MKV's... and some .AVI... Still seems like Nero won't write these to the DVD even when they are under 4 GB. It says I'm going way over.

I'm not messing with VOB lol.

So you have a Mac, but use Nero? How?

There is Toast Titanium and Burn (free) to burn data and video to a DVD in Mac OS X.

 

[nStyle]

I have a Windows box and Mac. I was just gonna make sure one was no better than the other.

Its weird this is no built in burning feature on a Mac... but there is on Windows.

 

[spinnerlys]

Its weird this is no built in burning feature on a Mac... but there is on Windows.

To burn a CD or DVD:
Insert a blank disc into the optical drive.

If you see a dialog, choose Open Finder from the pop-up menu. Select “Make this action the default” if you want to open the Finder every time you insert a blank disc.

The disc appears on your desktop.

Double-click the disc to open its window, and then drag the files and folders you want to burn to the window.

Aliases to the files are placed in the disc’s window. The original files are not moved or deleted.

Arrange and rename the files.

When the disc is burned, the items on the disc will have the same names and locations that they have in the disc window. After the disc is burned, you cannot change them.

Choose File > “Burn [disc],” and then follow the instructions.

The files that the aliases point to are burned to the disc. In addition, if any folder you added to the disc contains aliases, the original files for those aliases are burned to the disc as well.
from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8398.html
via http://support.apple.com/kb/index?p...ambiguation&q=Burn a CD or DVD using Mac OS X
via http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&src=support_site.kbase.search&locale=en_US&q=burn dvd

 

[nStyle]

Ok, thanks.

Is there any advantage to having Roxio Toast vs just using Mac for burning?

 

[martinX]

Ok, thanks.

Is there any advantage to having Roxio Toast vs just using Mac for burning?

Greater flexibility. Toast lets you create all sorts of disc types, as well as letting you create DVDs easily and simply. It's even quicker than iDVD and will do a recompress of a dual layer onto a single layer.

 

[arjen92]

Yes, sorry. I meant physical players.

The files I'm trying to write are .MKV's... and some .AVI... Still seems like Nero won't write these to the DVD even when they are under 4 GB. It says I'm going way over.

I'm not messing with VOB lol.

You probably compressed the files to another codec than MPEG-2. This means that when you import it into Nero (or any other program for making DVD's) it will compress it again into MPEG-2, however the settings are probably for "high" quality. Therefore the file will be pretty big.

So when you compress make sure you use the MPEG-2 codec. (on the mac I believe you have to pay to use this codec).

I know someone who compresses all his files, for example all godfather movies on one single layer DVD.

(I never do this, because when I download movies I just watch them on the mac, and I believe that it is really bad quality).

 

[nStyle]

I'm having trouble finding many differences in Toast and iDVD.

Neither will work with .wmvs? Odd. (Well I could imagine iDVD having problems but not Toast).

Question: why would anyone simply want to change format of a video to another format, for example, using Compressor or something similar? I have yet to find a purpose when the burning programs do all the encoding for you.

 

[EMU1337]

I'm having trouble finding many differences in Toast and iDVD.

Neither will work with .wmvs? Odd. (Well I could imagine iDVD having problems but not Toast).

Question: why would anyone simply want to change format of a video to another format, for example, using Compressor or something similar? I have yet to find a purpose when the burning programs do all the encoding for you.

Well I for one encode videos to be played on my ps3, or if I want to make a movie smaller. Maybe a video is super big like 1080p, you can use programs like Handbrake or FFMpegX to make the filesize smaller, and the picture smaller, maybe to 720p. Not sure if thats what you were asking...but thats an example where you would encode a video and potentially change the format because .mkv's kinda suck for some situations.

 

[spinnerlys]

I'm having trouble finding many differences in Toast and iDVD.

Neither will work with .wmvs? Odd. (Well I could imagine iDVD having problems but not Toast).

Question: why would anyone simply want to change format of a video to another format, for example, using Compressor or something similar? I have yet to find a purpose when the burning programs do all the encoding for you.

.wmv is a Windows Media Video file, so you might need Flip4Mac to properly use them.

Also what do you mean with format?

There is the container for video files, mostly recognizable by the suffix: .mov, .mp4, .avi, .wmv, ...
and then there is the codec that is used to en/decode the video:
H264, Divx/Xvid, MPEG-2, DV, ....