DVD Burning Question

if you haven't tried it before maybe try Toast Titanium, I'm not sure how much time it will save, but it might be worth trying.

We burn a ton of dvds at my work, we use toast.

If youre burning duplicates you could use a mutli-dvd copier but it sounds like each dvd is different correct?

pussyfooterWe burn a ton of dvds at my work, we use toast.

If youre burning duplicates you could use a mutli-dvd copier but it sounds like each dvd is different correct?

Yeah, each is different, we have like a 5way duplicator but it doesn't do us much good, we will keep playing with toast and try to speed it up. Thanks!

cydwhitYeah, each is different, we have like a 5way duplicator but it doesn't do us much good, we will keep playing with toast and try to speed it up. Thanks!

i'd suggest a new delivery method ;p


but really dvds are a PITA

pussyfooteri'd suggest a new delivery method ;p


but really dvds are a PITA

It is ridiculous, it seems like modern man has still not figured out a good way to burn a DVD. I wish we could switch delivery methods but that is kind of the point, home videos to DVD....

cydwhitIt is ridiculous, it seems like modern man has still not figured out a good way to burn a DVD. I wish we could switch delivery methods but that is kind of the point, home videos to DVD....

I mean, trying to cram modern expectations into a 20 year old technology is hardly realistic. It's like trying to stream Netflix on a dial-up connection. Modern man instead invented better technology that doesn't have DVD's decades-old limitations.
I'm sure you know, DVD burning is bottlenecked at two points. The first is transcoding to MPEG-2. All DVDs are MPEG-2 formatted. If you drop a iPhone Quicktime into Encore or Toast, the "transcoding" step is turning the video from an MOV to an MPG/M2V. You might be able to speed up this process by encoding your videos to MPEG-2 before importing into your burning software. For instance, if you have a CUDA accelerated system, encoding your videos in Adobe Media Encoder and then importing into your DVD software (and therefore skipping the "transcoding" step in the DVD software) will be faster than importing the Quicktime file into Encore or Toast and letting the transcoding occur there.

If you can record directly to MPEG-2, you'll be able to save a LOT of time. Matrox's MX02 Mini device will capture directly to MPEG, so you skip the transcoding step in your DVD software, but it might not work with your workflow. The other direct-record option is to play out directly to a DVD hardware recorder that records in realtime. If you can describe your workflow in more detail I can probably offer more concrete advice.

The second bottleneck the actual burning part of the process where the laser etches the disc. What write speeds are your DVDs and the DVD drives? (16x, 18x, 24x...) Theoretically, the faster the DVDs and the drive, the faster the DVDs will burn, but in reality there isn't much time difference between 16x and 24x. Obviously the discs will burn quicker if there is less data being written onto the DVDs, so compressing the MPEG-2 files more will speed up the burn process, but there isn't a lot that can be done here if you're already using fast-write DVDs in a fast optical drive.

This turned into a long tech-intensive post, but hopefully this helps a bit.

HolteI mean, trying to cram modern expectations into a 20 year old technology is hardly realistic. It's like trying to stream Netflix on a dial-up connection. Modern man instead invented better technology that doesn't have DVD's decades-old limitations.
I'm sure you know, DVD burning is bottlenecked at two points. The first is transcoding to MPEG-2. All DVDs are MPEG-2 formatted. If you drop a iPhone Quicktime into Encore or Toast, the "transcoding" step is turning the video from an MOV to an MPG/M2V. You might be able to speed up this process by encoding your videos to MPEG-2 before importing into your burning software. For instance, if you have a CUDA accelerated system, encoding your videos in Adobe Media Encoder and then importing into your DVD software (and therefore skipping the "transcoding" step in the DVD software) will be faster than importing the Quicktime file into Encore or Toast and letting the transcoding occur there.

If you can record directly to MPEG-2, you'll be able to save a LOT of time. Matrox's MX02 Mini device will capture directly to MPEG, so you skip the transcoding step in your DVD software, but it might not work with your workflow. The other direct-record option is to play out directly to a DVD hardware recorder that records in realtime. If you can describe your workflow in more detail I can probably offer more concrete advice.

The second bottleneck the actual burning part of the process where the laser etches the disc. What write speeds are your DVDs and the DVD drives? (16x, 18x, 24x...) Theoretically, the faster the DVDs and the drive, the faster the DVDs will burn, but in reality there isn't much time difference between 16x and 24x. Obviously the discs will burn quicker if there is less data being written onto the DVDs, so compressing the MPEG-2 files more will speed up the burn process, but there isn't a lot that can be done here if you're already using fast-write DVDs in a fast optical drive.

This turned into a long tech-intensive post, but hopefully this helps a bit.

Yeah, totally! I personally hate DVD's with a vengeance but for a lot of people they are still just more convenient. For our target audience, parents and grandparents, DVD's are still super useful. Our Workflow is basically Video is captured on an iPhone and uploaded to Amazon's S3 server, we download it and burn it to DVD and mail it off to customer, basically getting them a physical copy of their iPhone videos. I don't really see a way for us to record directly to MPEG-2 so we are now just looking at burning as many different DVD's at once as we can instead of improving the burn time.

Thanks for all the info, really informative post!