12-17-2010, 03:05 AM

I use Toast Titanium v.10.0.8 to burn movies in AVI or MOV format to DVDs from my iMac. However, in something like 1:10 cases, Toast will suddenly stop in the middle of encoding for no obvious reason. This will happen over and over again with the same file. It does not appear to be due to damaged or corrupt files, as the movies will play without problem from hard disk.

Can anyone suggest a reason, and if possible a solution?

12-22-2010, 01:45 AM

Does it give you an error? or just stop burning?

12-22-2010, 04:00 PM

Commercial movies often have software called 'blockers' recorded in to prevent copying. Should not occur with home movies.

12-23-2010, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by Cube1

Does it give you an error? or just stop burning?

It doesn't stop while burning, but before that, during the encoding process. It just sort of gives up and stops, with one of those unilluminating error messages to the effect that it has "encountered a problem"!

I don't think it can be a "blocker", because if I try again, it drops out at a different point - say after encoding 76% rather than after encoding 51%. The only thing consistent is that when a file decides to do this, it will do so at some point...

12-23-2010, 03:55 PM

Are you copying commercial movies? If so it will not burn.

12-26-2010, 11:52 AM

Problem solved, and it had nothing to do with the type of content (commercial movies or otherwise). The solution was provided by theoldarchiver on the Roxio forum, to whom all credit goes.

In case anybody else has a similar issue, the first thing to do is check the Problem Report generated by Apple. It's mostly gobbledigook to non-techies, but look for any references to "BAD ACCESS" or "CRASHED THREADS". In my case, these where:

.................................................. .........
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x000000000a652000
Crashed Thread: 8
.................................................. ..........
Thread 8 Crashed:
0 com.DivXInc.DivXDecoder 0x02bdda36 AVIMovieImportGetFileType + 33494
.................................................. ..........

The solution was simple: removing the DivXDecoder (in /Library/QuickTime/) and install Perian.

The files which kept failing can now complete their encoding and be burbned to disk.

Anyway, thanks to all who offered suggestions!