Toast 10 – Blu-ray Frustration

[Walter Biscardi]

We have used Encore in the past to create a Disc Image which Toast will burn, but have never tried what you’re doing as I’ve never heard anything good about Toast authoring BluRay discs.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Chris Borjis]

I know it’s possible as others have done it.

make sure on the type of mpeg in compressor you choose “blu-ray” and nothing else.

the resolutions and frame rates can only be:

1920x1080P 23.98fps
1920x1080i 29.97fps (note that 30P is not part of the blu-ray spec)

1280x720P 59.94fps
1280x720P 23.98fps

set the average bitrate to 25mbps and the max to 30mbps that should be plenty
and well within specs.

encode the audio as Dolby AC-3 442kbps (whatever the highest is)

see what happens.

have you updated your toast10?

[Chris Babbitt]

Chris,

I contacted Roxio Support, and this was their response:

“The default video settings for a Blu-ray Video project in Toast 10 are:
– Video: MPEG-4 AVC, 8.0 Mbps (16.0 Mbps max)
– Audio: Dolby Digital 192 kbps

If you create a video file using these settings Toast will not re-encode the file. You can also change these video settings if you wish to use different settings (such as mpeg2).”

First-of-all, what is AVC? Is that the same as H.264?
Doesn’t the bit-rate seem kind of low?

[Chris Borjis]

[Chris Babbitt] “First-of-all, what is AVC? Is that the same as H.264?
Doesn’t the bit-rate seem kind of low?”

yeah AVCHD is H.264 for Blu-Ray
8-16 is pretty low, I’m surprise they advocate that. 18-25 is pretty common.

mpeg2 is all I use and works great even at 15mbps bit rates.
but even at 20mbps average and 30max with 1 pass vbr looks great
and fits a 2.5hr movie usually.

if you make sure compressor is set to do an mpeg 2 with “blu-ray” as
the type it should definitely pass through without transcoding.

I’ve done that on 2 other BD authoring apps (one of them also made by roxio)
and it always works….toast should too.

this might help:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/taming_the_wild_blu_2.html

[Chris Babbitt]

Unfortunately, Bruce didn’t cover encoding outside of Toast in his article. I’m still trying to get this to work with MPEG-2, and Roxio is incommunicado at the moment.

[Kevin O’brien]

HI Bruce,
I have been having a similar problem with H264 that Toast turns to mush when it muxes.
Giving that up,I let it do an MPEG2 encode at 15-20 setting and although source was progressive and destination was 720p/60 it had obvious interlace artifacts. Don’t know how it managed this.
After much reading of blogs and testing my conclusion is that Toast can’t make a decent Blu-Ray disc to save it’s life.
I’m currently trying to get Streamclip to mux my H264 so I can make a Blu-ray without Toast re-encoding.
I’ll let you know if I succeed.
Blogs say the answer is Adobe Encore, but that’s expensive.
Sorry to have more problems than answers.
Maybe others can help.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Chris Babbitt]

Since I last posted here, I have gotten excellent Blu-ray results by encoding in Compressor (Mpeg2) and muxing/burning in Toast 10. The secret to preventing Toast from re-encoding is to make all the settings in Toast manually rather than selecting “Automatic.”

[Kevin O’brien]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for the update. Glad you found some success.
I am making a BD5 which is a Blu-Ray disc burned on a regular DVD-R.
For that reason, I was hoping to stay with H264, which is more efficient to maximize quality at lower bit rates.
I may have to resort to MP2. How exactly did you set your Toast settings to keep it from re-encoding?
Was your audio good? What format was your audio?
Toast muxing seems to frequently mess up the audio.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Chris Babbitt]

So far, I have done a couple of 2 hour programs and the video and audio are excellent. I have not tried H.264. My audio is AC3 @ 192 kbps. The secret is to make sure your settings in Toast exactly match the properties of your video and don’t rely on the automatic settings. I also tried burning a couple of Blu-Ray DVDs (BD5), but they won’t play on my Samsung BDP-1400 player.

[Kevin O’brien]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for the setting advice.
I’ll try this and report back whether it works on Toast 9, which is what I have.

Thanks,
Kevin