Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

Follow these steps:

1. Choose your layer-break point from the cells available
2. Create DLTs or DDP image files on DVD-ROM (UDF)
3. Read the DLT's back as an image file. (Making the test disc from the DLTs ensures your customers are seeing the best representation of what will be on the pressed discs.)
4. Using the latest Toast (it must be 6.1 or higher) mount the image file and burn the test disc.

This method will often result in a disc where the layer-break matches the final pressed disc. However, please see John Brisbin's comments:

'This method generally works because of elements of necessity and elements of luck.

First, none of the readily understood disc image formats on Mac OS contain explicit information about the layer break on a DVD, if any.

Therefore, Toast evaluates the disc to determine an appropriate layer break point. If necessary, it will insert a non-seamless cell to make an appropriate layer break. With a DVDAfterEdit image, however, this is never necessary since a dual layer image will always have at least one appropriate break already in place.

When the disc is very nearly full, there will probably be only one legal layer break and Toast will use the same layer break as DVDAfterEdit did, and you will get an exact match with the tape.

The only awkward case occurs when the disc is significantly less than full, allowing more than one legal break, perhaps at one of several VTS boundaries or non-seamless cells. In such a case, Toast may well choose a different break than you did when you were presented with the option in the Mastering dialog.

While it does not represent exactly what is on the tape, it is usually of no consequence since any non-seamless cell is equally good as a practical matter, so long as it meets the other criteria for a layer break.

It should be noted, however, that Toast could do almost anything in its algorithm that results in a legal break, so unless you verify the position either with Toast's information or with a DVD info utility of some kind, the break may not match the tape.