Toast 6

[spooledu]

Hello everyone!

I have a question about using Roxio Toast. I'm trying to burn a dvd on to a blank dvd-r. The dvd file is 7.5GB is there a way to compress it using toast? IIRC there was a way to compress the file to make it fit on to a standard 4.5GB dvd-r. If anyone knows please share!

Thanks,
Andrew

[ElDiabloConCaca]

It depends on what you're trying to burn -- are you trying to burn a video DVD (like a movie) onto a single-layer 4.7GB DVD-R and expect it to be playable in a set-top DVD box? Or are you trying to burn a data DVD (a backup, for example) and want to compress the files to fit on a single-layer 4.7GB DVD?

If the former, check out DVD2One, Popcorn, and FastDVDCopy, all available from versiontracker.com. Toast 7 also offers video DVD compression, if you choose to upgrade.

If the latter, check out StuffIt, available from versiontracker.com, or simply use Mac OS X's built-in .zip archiving.

[spooledu]

yeah I recently bought dvd2one. I was hoping that there would be a way to compress video files for a dvd on toast. However, it seems like its not possible. Oh well if there is a way,, please let me know.

Thanks,
spooled

[perfessor101]

Like all JPEG and MPEG file formats, the compression used for standard DVD video files uses "lossy" algorithms. In other words the video is compressed by physically discarding data. As a result there is a severe limit on how much a video can be compressed and not become so pixilated that images are really ugly at best and indecipherable at worst. So while iDVD can render and encode roughly 60 minutes of video at full resolution in 4.7GB and is capable of getting as much as 90 minutes of video on the same 4.7GB disc the image gets really really ugly -- fast.

If you were not concerned with playback on a standard DVD player you could convert the video to Quicktime and then reduce the image size. File size is reduced, or increased by the square of the image size change. so going from a 640x480 video image to 320x240 will reduce the file size to 25% of the original. But if you try to play the 320x240 image at 640x480 it will be very grainy and pixilated.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Toast 7 does DVD compression.