April 4, 2007

Developer: Roxio
Price: $99.99
Requirements: G4, G5, or Intel Mac running 10.4.8 with CD, DVD, or Blu-ray recordable drive

When CD and DVD burners were less common, Toast was the required Mac software for burning optical disks. Since that time disk burning has been built-in to OS X, and many other freeware and shareware software options have become available. At first glance, many Toast features appear to be redundant. What does Toast provide that isn't already available?

The Finder is easily used to backup data. Insert a blank optical disk, and within a few seconds the disk's contents can be created simply by dragging content from the hard drive. When the contents are complete, click burn and the disk is created. OS X also includes Disk Utility for creating, loading, and modifying disk images. iTunes burns standard CD audio, MP3 CD, and music DVD disks. These built-in tools are not only easy, but they have been available to OS X users for years.

iLife owners have a plethora of additional media tools, and anyone who has purchased a new Mac in the last fews years already has iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, and GarageBand. For most people these applications provide more than enough media formatting and burning options. For example, GarageBand does great analog recording from line input and includes editing with noise reduction, fades, and other effects.

In addition to Apple's offerings, there are many other freeware and shareware applications that offer features similar to Toast. Amadeus Pro, Audacity, and SoundStudio all provide excellent audio tools for recording, editing, and effects. Burn, Burnz, Disco, DiskBlaze, Dragon Burn, FireStarter FX, and LiquidCD can all handle PC disk image formats that Disk Utility won't read. Roxio promotes Toast's ability to re-encode media formats that Quicktime doesn't like, but D-Vision, ffmpegX, HandBrake, and iSquint are just a few of the many other audio and video encoding tools available.

Is Toast still necessary, and what does it offer to make it worth the price? The answer isn't simply in what Toast 8 Titanium provides that can't be done with other software. Toast provides a package of streamlined and specialized features that is often more reliable than using dozens of other third-party applications.

Installation

Whether purchased online as a download or on CD-ROM, installation starts by dragging the Toast folder from the disk (or disk image) to the Applications folder. Launch Toast, enter the registration number, and a Setup Assistant appears with additional options. These options only pop up the first time Toast is used, but if they are needed again for additional installation the Toast Setup Assistant is available in the Help menu.

Data Backup

Need to backup something and it doesn't fill an entire disk? Finder burning doesn't allow for sessions, in which the blank space on the disk can be used at a later date. Toast allows multi-session burning, but that isn't enough to justify its purchase. BurnX Free, CD Session Burner, Disco, and Dragon Burn all offer this feature.

IMAGE: There have been many interface updates, including a more informative disk status display.

Sometimes there is more data than will fit onto a single disk, especially for media professionals with large digital video and audio files. The Finder's disk burning doesn't offer any solutions, but Toast can divide files to span multiple disks. The multi-disk backups also include a utility to automatically reassemble the data. We had no problems burning or restoring Toast's spanned data disks, either in OS X or Windows XP. (Disco can create multi-disk backups, but unlike Toast it cannot split a single large file to span multiple disks.)

IMAGE: Disk snanning backups also present a dialog for labeling purposes.

The new Photo Disk format archives images at their original resolution with Mac and Windows slideshow options. When a completed Photo Disk is inserted into a Mac, it uses OS X 10.4's slideshow feature. When inserted into a PC, Windows automatically activates the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. We only tested this feature on the most rudimentary level, but it appears to add a cute alternative for sharing photo archives with friends and family. Unlike burning a video DVD with a photo slideshow, the original high resolution images are on the Photo Disk and still available for editing and printing.

At the time of this review, Toast 8 Titanium is the only Blu-ray solution for the few on the bleeding edge who own a Blu-ray burner. We were unable to test Blu-ray compatibility because we don't have a Blu-ray burner. According to the documentation, Roxio's Blu-ray drivers allow burning both in Toast and from the Finder.

ToastAnywhere (activated in preferences) lets other Toast users on other Macs burn disks to a single recorder. This feature is undoubtedly still useful for MacBook owners without a DVD burner or when sharing a single Blu-ray recorder, but it also requires that each computer have its own copy of Toast. With only one licensed copy of the software, we didn't test this feature.

Scheduled daily, weekly, and monthly backups are possible with the included Déjà Vu software. Installed into the System Preferences, this feature works with both local and networked files. Déjà Vu worked predictably, although since we have no use for this feature our tests were not extensive.

A nifty new feature is DiskCatalogMaker, an included application that automatically catalogs data burned in Toast. The programs work together seamlessly, and when DiskCatalogMaker is opened a list of disks and their contents appears. Everything is searchable, and other disks not burned in Toast can be added to the catalog individually or in batches.

The Toast interface for burning data disks is superior to anything else we've seen to-date, and improved over previous versions. Files and folders on the blank disk can be organized and renamed however necessary and without changing the originals. Disk options and info are easily accessed within the Toast window. Multiple data formats are available, even legacy formats (activated in preferences).

Disk Cover RE is included for printing disk labels, inserts, booklets, and case covers. It offers integration with iTunes, iPhoto, and iDVD, and can read contents from Toast disk info files. A limited selection of templates and clip art is provided, but more is available with upgrade and registration to the full version. Labels can be output to a standard printer, printers with Direct-on-CD printing, and LightScribe-capable disk recorders. The software worked well when we printed to a standard printer, but we were unable to test the Direct-on-CD and LightScribe features.

Disk Copying

Many Mac software disks can't be imaged or copied using OS X's Disk Utility. Unlike Disk Utility, Toast consistently works when imaging and copying disks. The ability to archive and backup aging software disks is invaluable. Even more impressive is the new Disk Recovery feature, in which Toast tries to recover files from damaged disks. In 3/4 of our tests, we were able to create working disk images with intact files from damaged CDs with serious read errors. The process takes longer than creating a normal disk image, but it was well worth the time required to recover lost data. Disk Recovery isn't perfect, but we were surprised at how well it worked.

Toast can mount and burn non-Mac disk formats, but it isn't alone is this ability. While Toast isn't the only software that can handle ISO, BIN/CUE, CDR, and NRG images, we found it to be more reliable than many other disk utilities.

Audio Features

CD Spin Doctor is a convenient application for recording analog sources, such as vinyl or tape, for digital conversion and archiving. Recordings are created using a step-by-step assistant or with "advanced" settings. Once the audio has been recorded, filters are easily applied and the software can auto-detect pauses between songs to create separate tracks. The tracks can then be burned to disk using Toast or added to iTunes.

As with iTunes, Toast can create audio CD, music DVD, and MP3 disks. Enhanced Audio CD and Mixed Mode CD options are also available, along with tools for applying normalization (making tracks a consistent playback volume), fades, and effects. The features were easy enough to learn and use that we created custom seamless cross-fades between tracks in only a few minutes. Many of Toast's new audio tools are recognizable as coming from Roxio's earlier Jam software.

A floating "Media Browser" window is available with content and playlists, so accessing music, video, and photos for burning doesn't require digging through folders on the hard drive. Toast also provides several audio export options including basic pre-sets for editing, Windows, iTunes, and PSP along with more advanced options for AIFF, WAV, AAC, Apple Lossless, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis exports. Of course, media purchased through the iTunes Store cannot be accessed using anything but Apple applications... so don't expect to use Toast to burn the latest album purchased online or export into other formats.

Video Features

Apple's basic software isn't much use when dealing with non-Apple media formats and peripherals. For example, iDVD won't create a video DVD from sources incompatible with iTunes (such as 3G, DivX, Xvid, Windows Media, or many MPEGs). Third-party Quicktime codecs can be used to convert media to formats compatible with iTunes and iDVD, but this is a separate time consuming process with additional limitations for DVD quality and length.

Toast reads AVI, DV, MOV, MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, and VOB video formats. The files can be dragged into the Toast window or added with the Media Browser. To our surprise, Toast handled many video files that had been problematic with other video tools. Even better, the new media export features can save video for other applications and devices. Automatic export settings for iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, PSP, and iTunes are available. More advanced DV, HDV, Quicktime, MPEG-4, H.264, 3G, DivX, and Windows Media exports provide added options. We were impressed to discover that Toast automatically exports PSP video in either the appropriate 4:3 or 16:9 ratio, a feature not available in many other video converters.

Toast automatically manages video conversion when creating Video CDs, Super Video CDs, video DVDs, and DivX disks with choices for basic and advanced video quality settings. Previous Toast versions demonstrated a disappointing lack of DVD menu possibilities, but thankfully the DVD menus have been improved with custom backgrounds, highlight settings, scene menus, and slideshow menus.

Burning DVDs from VIDEO_TS files created in other applications is easy, especially with the Fit-to-DVD setting. If a VIDEO_TS folder contains more than the 4.3 GB possible with a standard DVD, Fit-to-DVD compression will re-encode the content so that it fits onto one disk and is useable with consumer DVD players. We tested Fit-to-DVD with two VIDEO_TS projects, and while the final quality wasn't as high as the originals the results were still acceptable.

EyeTV owners have been able to directly archive their recorded video with Toast since version 6, but the Media Browser now conveniently accesses EyeTV recordings and info without having to use the EyeTV software. As long-term EyeTV users, we appreciate the additional features and integration.

Toast now provides TiVo Series 2 and TiVoToGo compatible DVR users with a useful Mac solution for accessing their recorded video. TiVo Transfer uses a wireless network to grab media from the DVR, which can then be exported or archived using Toast. We don't have a compatible TiVo or DVR, so we were unable to test these functions — but we looked through the Roxio support forums to research user feedback. Many users have reported good experiences, but many others have had reliability problems. Roxio is working on resolving reported issues with future updates.

Motion Pictures HD is included as a separate application that creates Quicktime movies from photos with accompanying background music. The video output can edited in iMovie or burned with Toast or iDVD.

Results: Good

Even though we couldn't test the new Blu-ray and TiVo features, we were pleasantly surprised by everything else possible with Toast 8 Titanium. The data backup and disk copying are better than any other Mac options we have explored, and after using them for a few weeks there is no going back.

The other features are impressive, but their value not as concrete. Many of the applications packed with Toast are available separately. DiskCatalogMaker is $19, Déjà Vu is $24.95, Disk Cover is $34.95, and Motion Pictures is $39.99. Users that only have need for a few of the included tools might be better off purchasing the applications separately or using freeware and shareware alternatives. On the other hand, Toast is a great value if more than a handful of its abilities are necessary.

There are only a few things we would like improved. While Toast nicely integrates many audio tools previously only available in Jam, we couldn't find some of the CD audio master functions and information used for commercial disk duplication services. In addition, video menus are improved but still disappointing. Toast's DVD menus just don't show off content in ways that people have come to expect. We feel more interactive menu options should be available without creating DVD content in other software and importing the project into Toast.

We had concerns about Toast's merit and continued viability when we started testing for this review a few weeks ago, but since then our perspective has radically changed. Toast 8 Titanium's software interface, integration, and reliability combine with the extensive feature set to make it a good purchase. Toast has evolved to be much more than just a disk burning utility.