[macintologist]

I have three mpeg2 files (all with the .mpeg extension) that I'd wish to burn to a single DVD. All three files are 1GB in size, so it will fit on a DVD-R.

How can I convert rather than encode the three files into a single VIDEO_TS folder? Can they be merged so that each file is a chapter or something like that?

[removed oversize image --tooki]

My bad, screenshot link

[foo2]

Originally Posted by macintologist

I have three mpeg2 files (all with the .mpeg extension) that I'd wish to burn to a single DVD. All three files are 1GB in size, so it will fit on a DVD-R.

How can I convert rather than encode the three files into a single VIDEO_TS folder? Can they be merged so that each file is a chapter or something like that?

[removed oversize image --tooki]

My bad, screenshot link

Fire up iDVD and use bookmarks/menus as appropriate?

[Spoffo]

Toast 7 is a real simple way to do it. You can't (easily) combine the three into a single title with three chapters, but you can put them on a single disk as three titles and set an option in Toast to play through them continuously.

Just drag the three MPEG files into the video window on Toast, set the menu style and thumbnails you want and go. It won't waste time re-encoding them if theyre already in DVD-compatable MPEG, it'll just mux the soundtrack and burn away.

Or, if you want to be safe, you can have it save everything to a disk image. Then after you're sure it runs right, you can just burn that using either Toast's disk copy function or its "burn DVD from VIDEO_TS file" option.

[macintologist]

I have Toast 6 and I put the videos in, but it seems like it's going to reencode them.

[Uncle Skeleton]

320x240 is not a valid resolution for DVDs. 352x240 (for NTSC land (America)) or 352x288 (for PAL land (most of Europe)) are, and Toast will probably use the more common 720x480 or 720x576. You can attempt to use other MPEG encoding software (like DVDSP) to re-encode to the correct resolution (and if necessary, framerate (29.9776etc for NTSC or 25 for PAL) and see if Toast will accept those as valid, or try to author with Sizzle which doesn't encode anything.

[jswitte]

I record stuff using EyeTV set to MPEG-2 720*480, 29.97 fps, 4 MBbps VBR (6 MBbps Max), IBP frames, 48kHz, 224 kbps audio.

Toast 6 still insists on reencoding the mpg file that EyeTV exports! Is there anything out there that I can use to take the raw MPEG2 container file EyeTV creates (which can be opened by VLC), allow me to set in/out points, and then convert it *directly* to appropriate VOB files to burn to a UDF DVD? Currenlty I have to record in EyeTV, compact in EyeTV, export from EyeTV, then reencode in Toast, copying the same video data *3 times*, which seems a bit excessive..

What I'd *really* like is something that can do all of that, and then just burn the DVD from a buffer that it creates in memory on-the-fly (no re-encode as VOB on disk at all). But that might be a it too much to ask for, from either the processor to keep up with the drive, or the burning APIs (can anything burn directly from such a "streaming buffer" in memory?)

Anybody know a good book on programming MacOSX MPEG-handling applications?

Thanks,
Jim Witte