Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

I don't think there is a truly definitive answer to this unfortunately - all we can offer is anecdotal evidence. The DVD spec only describes which files should be in the VIDEO_TS folder. By implication, there shouldn't be any others. So strictly speaking, they shouldn't be there.

As you know, DS Store files are created when OS-X opens a folder to view the contents, and record info like icon layout, window size & position etc. Since this happens after the build, the authoring application won't take account of them, so I guess potentially they might cause sector errors or similar problems. This isn't an issue when writing DDP with DVDAE, since the files are excluded by default, and anyway sector correction takes place automatically - however I don't know if Toast does this. Since they are effectively ROM files though, they should be placed at the end of the disc anyway, in which case they shouldn't cause a problem !

Finally we burn all our test discs using Toast, and I'm not aware that anyone has had any mysterious problems which might be attributable to stray DS Store files.

So all in all I think they are unlikely to cause problems for direct playback, but that's only an opinion. And, since I don't like taking risks, I would always prefer to remove them, especially for replication purposes - which should be possible through the Terminal too, I think ?

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Ian