|
|
 Top Rated Products |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| News Update | Reviews | Guides |
| |
|
The Mac Guy: Toast's upgrade adds functionality for disc-burning |
| 2008-04-12 |
Source:
San Antonio Express |
| |
|
| |
Ah, spring ... that glorious season when a young man's fancy turns to software upgrades. New versions seem to be popping up all over, faster than we can mow them down. Today, I want to tell you about a nice upgrade to an invaluable utility, Roxio's Toast Titanium.
Toast is, essentially, a disc-burning program, and that may cause you to wonder why you would need it since you already can burn a disc in the Mac OS X Finder, in iTunes and in iDVD. Why would you possibly need to run out and pay money for a separate program?
Good question, and the answer is pretty simple. Toast does things that those other applications don't; and where the capabilities overlap, Toast often outperforms the others. Toast is a critical part of my workflow, especially for burning data discs that will be swapped with users of other operating systems (yes, I'm referring to Windows here).
Roxio's new version, Toast Titanium 9, builds on the program's solid feature set, refines the interface and adds new functionality as well. The biggest new feature is Blu-ray and HD DVD authoring support, the first on the Mac platform. You can take HD content recorded from television or HD video camera and preserve all of its glorious definition onto the HD-formatted disc of your choice. Now before you all write in and tell me that Blu-ray won the format wars and HD DVD is dead, just remember those hundreds of thousands of Xboxes out there with built-in HD DVD players. Somebody still is going to want to burn them.
Toast even allows you to burn Blu-ray formatted content to cheaper DVD¡ÀR, DVD¡ÀRW and dual-layer media. These discs don't hold as much, but if you simply want to share a 20-minute HD home movie, this feature can save you serious bucks.
The Blu-ray HD DVD features are provided with a plug-in to the main Toast application and costs a little extra. The HD/BD Plug-in runs $19.99 over and above the cost of the application itself, but this is well worth it if you want to have a full HD workflow. Roxio includes 15 new widescreen HD menu themes to complete the package.
Toast has offered support for TiVo and EyeTV for a while now, and Toast 9 extends this in an exciting way. The new Roxio Streamer allows you to access your recorded content over the Internet so you can watch on your iPhone, iPod Touch or computer. Videos are served directly from your Mac, and viewers need a password to get things rolling. No other software is needed on the viewing end; you see the movies in your browser. You can even edit the shows before serving if you want to cut out unwanted content.
The program's interface is much clearer, and valuable features are no longer hidden as they were in previous versions. The bar that indicates how much space is left on the blank disc is easier to understand. The screen has a row of five icons representing common tasks: Data, Audio, Video, Disc Copies and File Conversions. Once you select an icon, you see options for what you can do. Each option has an info tab that reveals a pop-up with a more detailed explanation of what the program will do.
After that, all you have to do is drag files into the Toast window or use the application's Media Browser to look through your iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie libraries or other common places for media files and to drag them in. Once you have all your content arranged, just hit the big shiny red button and you are burning away.
The file conversion feature of Toast is an excellent selling point. Toast easily will convert video files for use with common devices such as the Apple TV, iPhone, iPod, PSP, BlackBerry, Treo, Xbox and Playstation 3 among others. You also can customize the settings if you have other needs.
The Toast package contains several helper applications to do some specific tasks. One that many people will like is CD Spin Doctor 5. This great little app helps you record music from LPs and cassettes and convert them to a digital format that you then can burn to CD or use with your iPod. CD Spin Doctor has an assistant to help you capture from your analog sources, including advice on how to hook up your devices to your computer. This new version includes advanced audio fingerprinting to help assign song and artist names to tracks before sending them to iTunes.
Want to record audio from an Internet stream? How about the theme song to your favorite video game? CD Spin Doctor's Audio Recording Assistant will help you record anything you can hear on your computer.
Roxio Toast 9 Titanium is available now directly from Roxio (www.roxio.com) or from other retailers of Mac software. The program retails for $99.99, and the HD/BD Plug-in is $19.99. Roxio offers instant discounts for owners of previous versions if you order directly from them.
To use Toast 9 Titanium, you will need a Mac with a PowerPC G4 processor or better. For dealing with HD content, you will need a PowerPC G5 or Intel processor. You also will need a CD, DVD or Blu-ray recordable drive, Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5, and up to 15GB of free drive space when you are burning discs.
Toast is the kind of utility program that does so many different, useful things that after you use it for a while, you wonder what you did without it. From burning to recording to converting to streaming, Toast 9 Titanium is a great tool to have in your repertoire. |
| |
| Most Popular Product Reviews for Windows |
 |
Aimersoft DVD Ripper can rip and convert DVD to all popular video formats including MP4, H.264, AVI, WMV, MOV, RM, RMVB, MPG, MPEG, 3GP, 3GPP, MPG, ASF, FLV, VOB, WMA, M4A, AAC, MP3, AC3, WAV, etc.
|
| |
|
 Most Popular Product Reviews for Mac |
| iSkysoft DVD Ripper for Mac |
 |
iSkysoft DVD Ripper for Mac can rip DVD to all sorts of video files and extract DVD audio to various audio files. This DVD Ripper for Mac users can rip DVD to video formats including MP4, WMV, AVI, MOV, M4V, 3GP, MPG, MPEG, FLV, and VOB; and it can convert DVD audio to MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, AC3, etc.
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
| Related Tags: Convert DVD, Rip DVD, Convert DVD to iPod, Convert DVD to PSP, Convert Video to iPod, Convert Video to PSP, DVD Converter, DVD Ripper, DVD to iPod Converter, DVD to PSP Converter, DVD to Zune Converter, DVD to MP4 Converter, DVD to MP3 Converter, Convert DVD to MP3, Convert DVD to MP4, Convert DVD to MP3, DVD Ripper, Video Converter, iPod Converter, iPod Video Converter, Convert Video to iPod, PSP Converter, PSP Video Converter, Convert Video to PSP, Zune Converter, Zune Video Converter, Convert Video to Zune, MP4 Converter, MP4 Video Converter, Convert Video to MP4, DVD to MPEG, DVD to AVI, DVD to MP3, DVD Player |
|
| |
|
|
|
