AVI to DVD (Via Toast)... 3+ Hours?!!!
What the...? 
I have a new MBP 17" and I have an AVI file that I imported into Toast and burned (actually, I'm still burning) it to a DVD (4.7 single layer) using the internal "Super" (cough, cough) drive. It's been more than three hours and it's still burning. What gives?!
Is this because the drive is slow or because the Mac is slow?
On my XP system, this would have been done over an hour ago. At least an hour ago.
I have a new MBP 17" and I have an AVI file that I imported into Toast and burned (actually, I'm still burning) it to a DVD (4.7 single layer) using the internal "Super" (cough, cough) drive. It's been more than three hours and it's still burning. What gives?!
Is this because the drive is slow or because the Mac is slow?
On my XP system, this would have been done over an hour ago. At least an hour ago.
Comments
I use my Athlon 1900+ machine to do all of my media encoding/decoding (and thats pretty slow, especially compared to current apple hardware) because i can let it sit there for a while. it takes its merry time doing full dvd->xvid rips (3 hours usually) but i can just let it sit there. I wouldn't ever use my laptop for something like that...
The max write-speed of the MBP 17" is 6x. Chances are, your xp machine is a desktop, and has a much faster dvd-burner in it. DVD burning isn't so much a processor drag as it is a drag on the optical hardware.
I use my Athlon 1900+ machine to do all of my media encoding/decoding (and thats pretty slow, especially compared to current apple hardware) because i can let it sit there for a while. it takes its merry time doing full dvd->xvid rips (3 hours usually) but i can just let it sit there. I wouldn't ever use my laptop for something like that...
If it were burning at 6X I'd be happy! It seems like it is 1X or 2X.
I can't even see in Toast WHAT it is burning at.
It is now burning at 3x (which is still super slow!)... so I am guessing that Toast itself is the bottleneck.
so I am guessing that Toast itself is the bottleneck.
You guess right. I would not recommend using Toast for anything that needs encoding. You may also find that after all that time, the audio is out of sync or the video is squashed.
What you should do is encode the AVI to DVD using software like Visual Hub or ffmpegX (usually about 15-20 minutes to encode a DVD), author it to a DVD image and then burn the image (should take 12 minutes at 4x) with either Toast or Disk Utility. All in all, it should take just over half an hour.
Visual Hub or ffmpegX...
Which produces better results?
Thanks for your help. I can't believe Toast takes 3+ hours to do what these other tools can do in minutes.
Which produces better results?
They both have their advantages and I still use ffmpegX on occasions but I'm hardly using it at all these days
ffmpegX
+ is free apart from the requantization feature
+ has a few more features than Visual Hub, though not that many important ones
- it's tricky to install
- it complains about frame sizes a lot
- it has very strange aspect ratio problems sometimes
- it will sometimes fail during encoding and the errors don't make much sense
Visual Hub
+ very easy to use, drag, drop, encode
+ supports a good amount of formats including fast H264 encoding
- it's not free, but it doesn't cost that much so it's not bad
- I have encountered some audio sync issues converting some AVIs
Overall, I prefer Visual Hub and I actually bought it through my frustration with ffmpegX. I am most impressed with the speed and output quality. I just tested it while posting this and I did a 45 minute TV episode in 8 minutes - no sync issues (I think it depends on the source AVI). The output file size was only 350MB but the quality was almost identical to the AVI and I only used high quality not best. At those settings, you could fit 6 full length movies on one DVD.
Visual Hub also encodes Flash video, DV, DivX and the PSP/ipod formats.
Thanks for your help. I can't believe Toast takes 3+ hours to do what these other tools can do in minutes.
It's frustrating if you buy Toast under the assumption that the encoding feature will actually be usable. I use Toast all the time and as a burn app I think it's great but if I didn't need the burn features, I'd be just as well with liquid CD (free) and Visual Hub.
You will need DVD authoring too and there are a couple of options. I posted on another thread about how to get round idvd's inability to use mpeg-2 files. This could allow you to add chapters and a menu. Or you could use something like DVD Imager or MovieGate. The latter is probably the easier option as the idvd method would require converting the audio track.
It's frustrating if you buy Toast under the assumption that the encoding feature will actually be usable.
Yes. I thought it was a "one stop shop" -- and it is... it's just not a very efficient shop.
You will need DVD authoring too and there are a couple of options. I posted on another thread about how to get round idvd's inability to use mpeg-2 files. This could allow you to add chapters and a menu. Or you could use something like DVD Imager or MovieGate. The latter is probably the easier option as the idvd method would require converting the audio track.
Toast lets you make menues and stuff... are you saying that this is part of the encoding process (which is a now a no-no for me) with Toast?
Oh, and when you are converting TV shows and the like, are you converting them to DVD images or something else? And when you copy them to a DVD, are you making it so the files are an actual DVD (you can put it into a DVD player and it looks like a movie) or just copying files so that you have to open them on a computer?
Toast lets you make menues and stuff... are you saying that this is part of the encoding process (which is a now a no-no for me) with Toast?
Yeah but it's a small part and only takes a few minutes. The big slow-down in Toast is the actual movie encoding.
Oh, and when you are converting TV shows and the like, are you converting them to DVD images or something else?
I convert them to mpeg-2 movie streams in Visual Hub and then I author them in another program. I like DVD Studio Pro, which handles .m2v files. It doesn't always like the movies Visual Hub produces though and I haven't figured out why. You have to be careful with the framerates converting PAL to NTSC etc.
Visual Hub actually has two options, mpeg-2 and DVD. The DVD option makes an image that will play on a DVD player and you can specify a number of chapters. The DVD option doesn't have menus though, it will just start playing when you put in the disc but you can skip through it. I just prefer the mpeg option as it gives me the ability to add menus if I need. Also, if I remember right, I had a couple of problems with the DVD image not being created.
And when you copy them to a DVD, are you making it so the files are an actual DVD (you can put it into a DVD player and it looks like a movie) or just copying files so that you have to open them on a computer?
Authoring a DVD produces an image that is playable on a standard DVD player. I never burn a DVD for watching on the computer because I just use the AVI.
Visual Hub actually has two options, mpeg-2 and DVD. The DVD option makes an image that will play on a DVD player and you can specify a number of chapters. The DVD option doesn't have menus though, it will just start playing when you put in the disc but you can skip through it. I just prefer the mpeg option as it gives me the ability to add menus if I need.
Okay, I bought VisualHub! Thanks for the info!