Help With Toast 11

[Sean869]

Dear All, I’m looking for some help with using Toast Titanium 11, I have tried their forum and can’t find the answer.
I’m new to Mac’s I purchased a late 2012 Mac Mini i7 in November last year having moved from Windows XP.
I have loads of video files in .avi format some of which I want to put onto DVD. When I first tried to do this Toast 11 wouldn’t recognise them so following advice on their forum I installed ‘Perian’
Now Toast will allow me to work with the files. The problem I’m having is that the quality of the DVD is very poor. They look fine when played on my Mac with MPlayerX, I have also encoded the same files to DVD using Nero on my old Windows laptop and the quality is good although it takes almost 2hrs. So it can’t be the fault of the file itself.

I have set the output of Toast to ‘Best’ I have even tried the custom output, setting everything to maximum and its makes no difference. The way I see it the problem is one of the following.

1. Toast 11 Titanium is rubbish
2. The video Codec from Perian is rubbish
3. I’m just doing it wrong

Any help would be appreciated, as waiting 2hrs for my old laptop to do it is not an option. By the way my I7 2.3 Mac Mini does it in 12 mins

 

[Macman45]

Toast is the issue which is why I held off buying it.

You would be better off using

Make MKV ( will rip Blu-Ray as well)

And Handbrake ( Free ) which has pre-sets for Apple and Android devices.


Make MKV is not free, but is fast, rips anything, and above all, you won't lose quality.


Handbrake:

http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php


VLC is a must have companion and is also free:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html


Make MKV can be googled.

Armed with these, you should be fine.

 

[phrehdd]

I can't go to far into your issue with Toast but have a couple of questions -

The DVD you created that looked like rubbish - was that playing it on a TV or on your computer?

One option, though not a native solution is to run Win XP on your Mac via virtual (Fusion or Parallels) and continue with Nero.

Ultimately, DVDs use VOB files which is what your avi files would be converted to and ideally, you would want to do a straight avi to VOB conversion. You can use Toast to create a final DVD using those VOBs.

I am unsure why Toast does such a lousy job for you but you might want to investigate some of the converter software that are free for Mac before making any purchase. If you use any trial software (try before you buy), make sure you have on your Mac at least one good (worth paying for) application that helps uninstalls the software (unless the try before you buy comes with its own uninstaller).

Last thought - there are other settings in Toast with respect to frames per a second. You may need to see how those are set up and if your avi match the frames per sec of a typical VOB file (29.x , 59.x etc). If there is a mismatch you might be getting some problems and if your avi is interpolated as opposed to progressive. Hope you find a good solution that is free or near free.

 

[Sean869]

Thanks for your help. I will keep trying

 

[jwjsr]

Uninstaller

An good uninstaller is exactly what I want. Could you recommend one? Preferably it would also uninstall programs installed under parallels>windows8.Thanks

I can't go to far into your issue with Toast but have a couple of questions -

The DVD you created that looked like rubbish - was that playing it on a TV or on your computer?

One option, though not a native solution is to run Win XP on your Mac via virtual (Fusion or Parallels) and continue with Nero.

Ultimately, DVDs use VOB files which is what your avi files would be converted to and ideally, you would want to do a straight avi to VOB conversion. You can use Toast to create a final DVD using those VOBs.

I am unsure why Toast does such a lousy job for you but you might want to investigate some of the converter software that are free for Mac before making any purchase. If you use any trial software (try before you buy), make sure you have on your Mac at least one good (worth paying for) application that helps uninstalls the software (unless the try before you buy comes with its own uninstaller).

Last thought - there are other settings in Toast with respect to frames per a second. You may need to see how those are set up and if your avi match the frames per sec of a typical VOB file (29.x , 59.x etc). If there is a mismatch you might be getting some problems and if your avi is interpolated as opposed to progressive. Hope you find a good solution that is free or near free.

 

[wlossw]

I have the same problem with toast. I wonder if anyone has success making decent playable standard DVD video from h264 source.

 

[phrehdd]

An good uninstaller is exactly what I want. Could you recommend one? Preferably it would also uninstall programs installed under parallels>windows8.Thanks

Best way to remove programs in Windows is through windows itself which has its own uninstall functions for devices and software. (Sometimes the installed software comes with an uninstaller.)

I use one that works moderately well for Mac - Appzap. I am sure there are superior uninstallers but it works well enough for me.