The Ultimate Toaster

Strengths: Most diverse product for producing CDs and DVDs on the Macintosh. Creates wide variety of data CD/DVDs. Can import many video formats. Chapter markers made in iMovie 3 can work in Toast. Encodes Video CD/DVDs. Can save video CD/DVD as an image file. Creates Audio CDs from many formats. Easily copies CD/DVDs (non-encrypted). Allows you to use a DVD recorder over the network. Includes Dej Vu for automatic backup to a server, hard drive, CD/DVD (bootable). Includes Motion Picture for making moving slide shows with audio. CD Spin Doctor 2 included for converting analog audio. Provides a vast amount of CD/DVD recording options Writes to DVD-R RW, DVD+R RW. Supports a wide variety of recorders and media.

Weaknesses: Lacks the cool animated themes of iDVD. Chapters are created but cannot be menu navigated. Lacks the ability to "auto-play" through your video DVD menus. Documentation is light on some features.

Most software upgrades improve the product a bit and perhaps add compatibility for a new operating system. Not Toast™. Toast 6.0 is a HUGE upgrade from Toast 5. It's almost another program. So many features have been added that you may find yourself using Toast 6.0 as a multimedia creation tool, as much as a CD/DVD burner. It took me a while just to get my arms around all the features Toast 6 provides.

New Features
Toast 6.0 new features include Toast It (the ability to burn with one click from the desktop), ToastAnywhere (use any burner on your network), QuickRecord, 128-bit encryption with password protection, data compression, automatic backup to CD, DVD, or network storage. Converts WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC or any iTunes track into an audio CD, creates photo media shows with sound, creates VCD and SVCDs with menus, create DVDs with menus, buttons and chapters, Plug & Burn (burn disks automatically from your camcorder), universal video converter and Disc Extractor (extract and reuse an iDVD or Toast disc). Wow, that is a mouth full. Lets take a more in depth look at these features.

Video Tab
If you want to make a CD or DVD that contains photo slideshows or videos that are playable on your DVD player or computer this is the place. You can combine video and photo content or import directly from your DV camcorder. Each imported source becomes a button with up to three buttons per screen. With the Plug & Burn option you can import video directly from your camcorder, add other video or slideshows, choose which portions of the video files from the camcorder you want to use and record a final video disc. I found that while Toast video DVDs do not have the fancy themes of iDVD it works well controlling a firewire camera and importing video. It also allows you to save the project as an image or burn to an internal or external burner. You can do transitions and effects in iMovie with Toast captured movies and burn them with Toast.

Copy Tab
The copy area is where you go to copy a CD or DVD. You can mount images of video DVD/CDs you saved and test them or burn them on your Macintosh. Lots of formats are supported as you can see.

More on New features

Creating a Video DVD
Toast does not have the option for cool animated themes like iDVD. The background and menus are all the same. According to Adam Fingerman, the Sr, Product Manager for Toast 6 the focus is on good video and keeping it simple. "Menus are important to people, but you spend a few seconds looking at your menu vs up to 90 minutes looking at your video" , said Fingerman. Another feature Toast lacks is the ability to "auto-play" through each video you label with a menu button. Instead, Toast 6 plays the associated video or photo slideshow and then returns to the menu where it stops. This means you cannot use the menus to mark chapters, instead they are treated as totally different movies and cannot play continuously. This is the reverse of how most DVDs work. To have a series of video segments play continuously, Roxio recommends joining them in iMovie and then burning the iMovie project in Toast. This solves the continuous playing issue but leaves DVD menu navigation limited.

Toast can create chapters but there is no way to navigate through the chapters from the menus. When pushing the chapter advance button on the DVD remote, users never know what segment of the film they are going to next. You can set chapters to be created after a certain amount of play time, but if you want to go directly to the "Birthday Party" its impossible, unless you want to treat it as its own movie using menus. It would be nice if chapters could be navigated by menus like most other DVD software allows. iDVD and ADS Instant DVD using CaptyDVD both have "auto-play" capability. This allows menus to be used as chapter designators. Roxio's Adam Fingerman sent us an email on this topic saying, " Roxio tests indicate that our video quality equals iDVD & DVD Studio Pro (at considerably more affordable prices) and very much exceeds CaptyDVD (in quality and encoding time). The auto-play feature is something we will certainly consider for a future update, and since we have provided free updates every few months for previous Toast versions this may arrive soon ".

Chapter Creation
It is possible to use chapter markers made in iMovie 3 in Toast. Simply create your project in iMovie, add the chapters at the desired scene (e.g., the birthday party), add the iMovie file to Toast, and select "Automatic" from the DVD Chapters option in the Edit sheet. Toast will detect the chapters and write them to the finished disc. You can then use the DVD player remote to jump forward and backward to a specific scene in your video. This chapter detection also works with Final Cut Pro chapters as well. This procedure will not allow you to navigate to a chapter with a menu but it is a nice feature that can help.

DVD Player Compatibility & Media
When testing Toast video DVDs on several players I found it played on all of our newer players well. Toast video DVD meets the official specifications from the DVD forum. Tests showed DVD players older than two years have a 50% chance of iDVD and Toast video DVDs failing to play on them. Part of the issue is that some older DVD players were never designed to play DVD-R media. The other issue is that different DVD media has different compatibility. For instance, from my tests the Accu DVD-R media and the Matrix DVD-R 4.7GB 1X-4X bulk media had the best chance of working on the widest list of players I tested. The DvdPro DVD-RW 4.7GB Media had the best compatibility for a DVD-RW media tested. I also tested DVD-RW 2X 4.7 GB by optodisc and found that while it recorded easily on the Macintosh, DVD Player compatibility was limited to only one of the five players tested. Understand that DVD-RW media will always have more chance of failing to play in an older player than DVD-R media. The Optodisc DVD-RW OW470-000 burns and plays well on a Macintosh but will not play on any of the five video DVD players I tested. The HQ 1X-4X DVD-R 4.7GB Blank Media I tried would not even burn a DVD 75% of the time on a Macintosh with a Pioneer 105 DVD-R recorder (ROM ver. 1.33). It did not matter what speed I tried to burn at, they just kept failing to write. Most DVD media resellers do not test their product for Macintosh compatibility even though Mac users buy a substantial amount of media. Be sure the media you buy has been tested on a Macintosh or has a return policy that does not leave you paying to test their media.

Moving Pictures & Toast Video Strengths
Another cool program that also ships with Toast 6 is Motion Picture. It lets you make photo slide shows with transitions and music. It does a very nice job of making still images look like moving video. Even though Toast video DVD has some limitations it also has some advantageous. For instance, Toast will burn on almost any CD/DVD recorder internal or external. Not iDVD. Toast will burn on DVD-R RW and DVD+R RW disks. Not iDVD, only on DVD-R. Toast can burn your digital video to disk directly from the camera with plug & burn. Toast can save your video to a disk image without having to burn it first. Not iDVD. Toast video is one more option in your bag of tricks at no extra cost. It's hard to argue with that.

Backup
Toast 6 includes a backup program called Deja Vu. It is installed in the Mac OS X System Preferences. You can schedule backups of certain folders or an entire bootable volume. You designate where to backup the files to. If you want the backup copy bootable you select an entire volume. You can schedule daily, weekly or monthly backups. You can backup to a local disk, remote server or a CD or DVD. You decide if the backup is a mirror of the original or cumulative. Only new files are backed up to speed up the process. I found no way to cancel a backup once started and documentation is limited. However, you can monitor the progress in the menu bar and it provides a log once completed. Over all, it's a nice backup program and a wonderful addition to Toast.

Even more stuff
CD Spin Doctor 2 is also included. This program allows you to import audio from LPs and tapes into Toast to create CDs. Spin Doctor allows you to reduce hiss and pops that are found in many older analog recordings when importing them into your computer. Another program included is Discus RE label creator. With this program you can create disk labels and CD liners on your computer. It's a nice program to give your CDs and DVDs a professional look.

Roxio Toast 6.0 gets 5 AMUGs out of 5
Toast is THE standard for burning DVD and CD on the Macintosh. If you are looking for a CD/DVD program that provides lots of options making video, audio, and data CD/DVDs, Toast is it. As if that weren't enough, Toast 6 adds automatic backup, networked recorders, moving photo slideshows with music, and video DVD encoding. Toast can encode any file QuickTime can handle to DVD or Audio CD format. There is a lot of value in this package.

Copyright 2003
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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