I have been using Toast 6 for about a year for burning avi files with no trouble at all playing the finished movies on my stand alone DVD player. I should also point out that I usually converted those files within iDVD then burned them with Toast. Recently I switched to Toast 8 and the new iDVD that comes with iLife08. Since then I've been having some trouble with the DVDs I've burned. All of them play fine on my comp but about 50% fail to play in my stand alone. I get a message that says "Disc Error" and then it spits the DVD out. I have also been using the same brand of media the entire time (Maxell) This is the process I use to burn. I convert the avi in iDVD and save them as disc images. Then I either burn through Toast with one of two options. Either as Image file under the Disc copy option. Or I mount the image and use Disc Copy again and read from the 'Pseudo' disc mounted on my desktop. I've found if I slow the burn process down to 4x as opposed to the 8x that I used to do it at, more come through working fine. But it hasn't solved the problem all together. My biggest problem is with pre-made DVD IMG's or ISO's. According to my in computer dvd player they were all NTSC which is what I want. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've already posted the same problem in three different DVD help sites and have yet to get one response.
well you're burn speed is fine between 4x and 8x i wouldn't burn faster than that. ok a few things try using Taiyo Yuden and or Verbatim blank media instead of the Maxell and see if that helps. the Maxell media is made by several company's and I'm not sure who right now you can use DVD Identifier to fine out what it codes out as. try updating the drive/burner firmware, check here http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_all.php try a different burning program like nero or IMG burn and how old is you're burner? it could be wearing out causing playback problems
Thanks for your response. I've only had the burner since about January of this year. As far as the Maxell is concerned, I didn't think it was a problem seeing as how I've been using it for a year without any trouble until recently. Should I still look into it? I just updated the firmware in the past two weeks as well. I should also note that I'm on a Mac so Nero won't work for my comp. I don't seem to have much trouble when I use iDVD to convert avi then burn. The biggest problem I have is using IMG's or ISO's. I've also tried extracting the VIDEO_TS folders and burning them but that doesn't seem to do it either. Do you think it's most likely Toast?
it could be have you tryed a clean reinstall? i would double check the maxell media and make sure what you're using now codes out the same as it was a year ago. or try some Verbatims http://dvd.identifier.cdfreaks.com/
I tried burning the ISO I have with the disc utility program instead of Toast and it still wont work. I'm thinking that at least for the ISO's that they just won't burn well with Mac's, does anybody think that sounds like it makes sense?
Okay, I think I may have it figured out. I've tried burning a couple of new movies from multiple sources since posting here. Some pre-built img's, some video_ts folders and a couple of avi's that I encoded myself. Not a single one has played in my DVD player. I verified each and every one after burning with Toast, and I also checked the DVD ident on all my discs with Toast as well. Thanks for that idea by the way I didn't even realize discs weren't always what they say they are. Most of the discs checked out okay with videohelp.com and verified as being 100 percent okay. Then I checked out my DVD player (Zenith DVB216) on Videohelp.com. I can't think for the life of me why I hadn't done this already. It appears according to the site that my dvd player doesn't support any type of burned dvds, whether dvd-r, dvd+r or any other (although one or two people say they've gotten dvd-r's to play). The puzzling part about this is that I've played DVD-R's on the player for quite some time with only minimal problems. But I guess it was never supposed to in the first place. So would everyone lean towards it being the player? Or is it possible that it's still a media problem or software issue? Just in case I intend to get only Verbatim DVD's in the future, and I've looked into Book Typing as well, but it appears that it's not so easy to on a Mac with my Lacie DVD drive. Also is there a way on a Mac to make sure a disc will work in most DVD players outside of verifying it in Toast? It seems that using Toast isn't a guarantee that it will play. I know it can't simulate every old player, it's just that almost any DVD will play on a computer so I wanted something with a little broader scope.
