Roxio Toast Titanium 8
Reviewed by Ted Bade
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Roxio $100 USD. Discounts and competitive rebates available. System Requirements: Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, or Intel processor; CD, DVD or Blu-ray Disc recordable drive; Mac OS X v10.4.8 or higher; 250 MB of free disk space to install; Up to 15 GB of temporary free disk space during usage; QuickTime 7.1.3 or higher. Optional Equipment: iPod®, PSP™ or other portable video player, TiVoToGo requires a TiVo® Series2™ or other TiVoToGo compatible DVR connected directly to your Mac or to your home network. This will not work with DIRECTV DVRs with TiVo service. See www.tivo.com for more information, EyeTV video recorder. Universal code support: Yes Experience needed: minimal MacCompanion rating: 5 Strengths: Easy to use, very comprehensive package, Weaknesses: DVD menu options limited. Reviewed with a G5/1.8GHz and Dual Core based Mac Mini. |
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Version 8 of Roxio’s Toast Titanium is the most full featured and robust disk burning application anyone can buy for MacOS X. It will let you burn any type of CD or DVD format you can imagine and even supports the newest “Blu-Ray” HD format (provided your Mac has the necessary burner). The package includes a suite of helper applications that provide labeling, organizing, interaction with older analog sources and Tivos, and making photo slide show disks. This program is a must have for anyone serious about working with any type of burnable disk!
Toast 8 offers a simple to use interface that I found very intuitive. The basic user needs only decide what type of disk they are making, then drag and drop the data onto Toast’s window. Ease of use doesn’t mean Toast is lacking in features. Tucked away inside this program is the ability to handle just about, if not every, CD/DVD format that exists. It can even handle some legacy formats that only people with special interests might even know about.
The Toast 8 interface window makes it easy to set up and burn a disc. On the left side you’ll find a list of the four major burn types that Toast handles, (Data, Audio, Video, or copy). When you click on one type, the menu expands to show the various sub types applicable to the selection. For instance, in the data type area you can select Mac only, Mac & PC, DVD-ROM, ISO9660, or photo Disc. If other options exist for your selection, a menu below this area lists them. For instance, if you selected Mac only, you can also select to compress, encrypt, and/or make the CD auto open. If you want to get really fancy with your CD/DVD you can add a background color or image to its open window. A feature I really like is the ability to easily set the layout of the data when the CD opens. (I usually forget to set my data CD to show in list view, which I prefer.) With Toast 8 you can select list, icon, or column view with a click of the mouse. Toast 8 not only burns the disk for you, but also helps you set up how the data will be presented when it is used! In my experience working with other types of disc burning software, you could do most of these things, but none of them make it as easy to do.
Once you have the format of the CD taken care of, you simply drag and drop the data you want to burn onto the right side of the window. You can pick and choose items from all over your drives or simply drag a folder with data onto the window. You can even send things to Toast using the Finder. After you install Toast you will discover a new contextual menu called “Toast It”. Right (or option)-clicking on any item in the Finder adds the file or folder to your open Toast project or starts Toast and a new project containing the item you selected. This is a handy feature to easily and quickly back files up to a disc.
When you select a type of project, Toast will automatically select the media type that goes with it. This is used to calculate available space on a platter. In the case of large volumes of data, Toast can break the data into several different disks creating an archive which Toast can re-assemble for you when needed.
The Toast interface includes a media browser, which is essentially a Finder window inside of Toast that lets you browse and locate various files to burn. It has direct links to your iPhoto, iTunes, and Movies folders, as well as the Tivo storage folder if you have one. The media browser also can directly access Apple’s Spotlight search engine. If your Mac is networked with other Macs, you can use the media browser to search the drives on networked machines for files to move to your disk.
Toast 8 offers some nice features for making a video DVD. If you like DVD menus, you can use one of the ten styles offered Toast or can buy additional styles from Roxio. I couldn’t find any way to just import or create a style. However, you can change the background image of a canned style. Once you have a menu style you might want to show an image in it.
I was disappointed with their means of selecting an image for the menu frame. A little drag pointer attached to a small video box lets you slide through the video to choose a scene to use. This slider doesn’t seem to let you view every frame of the video. When testing this feature, I found the frame containing the Title of a show was one of the ones I couldn’t get to no matter how much or how carefully I moved the pointer back and forth. Sliding the pointer isn’t all that exact. You click-and-hold on the pointer and drag your mouse. I could find no way to go frame by frame with arrow keys or something less coarse then the mouse drag. One might be better off using a dedicated DVD video package like iDVD if you are creative or exacting. However, for a quick video, Toast 8 works well. If you are moving video from your Tivo, Toast’s abilities might be your only option.
Toast 8 also lets you create video DVDs video formats such as DivX and Video_TS. You can also make Video and Super Video CDs if that is a format you are interested in. This format is great for using up all those CD blanks you’ve collected!
If you want to share your photos with a CD, Toast offers a neat feature called the Photo CD. Drag and drop images onto Toast and it selects the Photo CD option. The disk it creates includes a slide show mini application that lets you view a slide show of the images. You can even set this up to automatically start when the CD is inserted. It’s pretty cool. To make the disk even more fun, select an image from the slide show to fill the disk’s open window. Now when you mount the disk it will display a window containing the image.
This process can be even further enhanced by selecting the add on application called “Motion Pictures”, which lets you control the order of images, the transitions, how the images slide back and forth or turn, and so forth. Motion Pictures lets you grab images from iPhoto, put them in the order you choose, select transitions, and then select music from iTunes to finish the slide show.
Toast is great for Audio discs as well. You can select a group of mp3 files and make a standard audio CD with them. (However, due to Apple’s DRM, you won’t be able to burn CDs that contains protected music bought from the iTunes Music Store). You can use Toast’s media browser to locate and select the music items you want or simply drop the files you want onto Toast’s window. The interface provides the means to fade in at the beginning of the CD or out at the end as well as cross-fade between items and also control the pause between tracks. You can choose to include CD-text that will send Title, Artist, and Album info to a player that can display this while you are listening. This information is editable, but if the MP3 tags are correct, you shouldn’t need to.
You can also apply a variety of audio effects and enhancements to each track. There are 16 different effects you can apply to a track. When you select a particular effect a window opens letting you control the parameters of this effect. This is some pretty advanced stuff, which might be fun for enhancing your audio CDs but could be a real benefit for artists creating their own music CD! Some examples of the effects available are a Dynamic processor to add dynamic range to music, graphic equalizer to enhance audio at various frequencies, and matrix reverb, which processes the music to sound like it is in a variety of spaces. You can add up to three effects to each track and each track is controlled separately. Home users will probably find the dynamic processor the most useful to put back a little of the dynamic range lost in making the MP3 file.
The bottom line is, if you are burning a disk, Toast 8 can make the task easy. I was really impressed with how Mac-ish the interface is. From the drag and drop of adding files to using contextual menus to “Toast” a folder. But there is a lot more to the Toast package.
When you install this program, several other helper applications are added. All help you work with the discs or the material you are placing on the discs.
The package includes an application called DiskCatalogMaker: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008942/library/diskcatalogmaker/
Note: There is no information concerning a upgrade path to the full version at this site.
Initially I didn’t think this was going to be a very useful feature, but then I discovered how it was integrated into Toast. This application reads the directory information of a data CD or DVD, then bring this information along with the title of the disk into a database. You can then use its search features to locate a particular item you backed up.
What is cool about the integration is when you burn a disk with Toast, it automatically adds the disk information into this database. While this might seem like a minor thing, it isn’t. It is all too easy to forget to manually add the disk information, or just never get around to it. Then the day comes and you need to find something you saved to CD, you end up spending a long time reading through poorly done labels or inserting CD after CD into your machine. I can attest to having done this!
If one were to make every back up or storage CD with Toast, the process of keeping track of it’s contents would always be done automatically. It’s a real time saver and one I really appreciate. I liked it so much, I began feeding it my previously burned data disks, letting the program gather all the information.
Searching in this application is basic, and only as good as the name of the file. For instance, if you are looking for a particular photo and don’t remember the name was something like dcn12345.jpg, there is little chance you will find it. But if you named the file you are looking for, “Letter to Fred”, then searching for the word, you will be more likely to find the file.
Another integrated feature is the disk labeling package that is included with Toast. Toast comes with a limited edition version of BeLight Software’s Disk Cover. There are several things left out of the LE version, you can check out BeLight’s web site for the total information including upgrade price by visiting:
http://www.belightsoft.com/products/disccover/roxioedition.php
DiskCover is a great little program for making fun labels for your burned disks. It includes a number of pre-made templates and well as a ton of graphics you can use to make your own creations. One could easily write a complete review of this product alone. I will just say that I like working with DiskCover and its an excellent choice to include in the Toast package.
I was very interested in this version of Toast because of the “Tivo-To-Go” for the Macintosh feature that is included. What this add-on does is let you download files from your Tivo DVR and either burn them to disk or watch them on your Mac. One thing I had hoped for and actually got, was the ability to burn the video to a VCD or SVCD rather then only to a DVD. In my case it was more about having a lot of blank media around that I wanted to use then favoring the format. Obviously the quality of the video placed on VCD is less the a DVD. This may or may not be a problem, depending upon the quality of the video you get from your cable company and Tivo. If you are only getting VHS quality video you gain nothing by formatting it for a DVD other then you can record a two hour show if you want.
When you select the Tivo Transfer option an application runs that looks for Tivos connected to your home network. If you have given the Tivo’s names (you do this on the Tivo support site), they show up on the browser. Select a particular Tivo and then select a show you would like to transfer. The .tivo file is transferred to a folder in your home directory. Once it is transferred you can watch it or you can let Toast Burn if to a disk.
Mac users have waited for over two years for this feature to show up on the Mac side. Having worked with the Windows version of Tivo-to-Go, I think Mac users got the better deal. I could find no way to burn a VCD with the Windows version and I don’t think the quality of the video was as good. Unless you record all your Tivo files in best quality the quality of the video may be lacking. But if you are a person who is interested in archiving the shows you love and have a Tivo, this is a very easy to use solution.
A feature that might be valuable to multiple Mac households is the ability to use the burner on a remote networked computer to burn a disc. For instance, in my household my desktop machine doesn't have a DVD burner, but the MacMini upstairs does. This feature, called ToastAnywhere lets your use a drive on a network connected drive or even a drive connected via the Internet!.Interesting!
Toast 8 is a superb application. There is so much to this program one could write volumes about it. The best I can say to sum it all up is that it is the best disc burning application I have ever used. It makes working with burnable discs a real breeze, offers every feature I could imagine for burning disks and comes with add-on applications that provide many different features for those disks you burn, from working with the Tivo, to organizing and labeling your discs, to brining your legacy analog music into the digital realm, Toast 8 has it all. This application is a definite must have for anyone serious about working with burnable disks.
