Upgraded Toast 7 Burning Options
A Review of Toast 7.01 Titanium from Roxio and Sonic Solutions
By Michael Bean



Toast 7.01 Titanium Unleashed
With the release of Toast Titanium 7 several AMUG members wondered if the new Toast Titanium 7 is something that will add significant value over their current Toast Titanium 6 software. This review will cover the new features that have been added to Toast Titanium 7 so that you might decide if the upgrade meets your needs.

New Features
Toast 7.0 has a considerable list of new features. Toast 7 includes the ability to span large files, folders and applications across multiple CDs and DVDs, and the ability to restore an entire disc set or a single file. Toast 7 can personalize data discs with custom icons and backgrounds. Hybrid discs can be created with unique contents for Mac or PC users. Toast 7 adds a media tab that gives you fast access to your iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and even EyeTV recordings. Toast 7 audio upgrades include the ability to create audio DVDs with as much as 50 hours of music, on-screen TV menus, smart playlists and shuffle play. Toast 7 creates music DVD's using Dolby Digital with data rates of 128 to 448 kbps or PCM audio. You can create a music DVD using individual songs or entire iTunes playlists. In addition, Toast 7 can also convert audio files to OGG, FLAC, and AAC. For iPhoto users Toast 7 includes Motion Pictures HD software that turns still photos into cool movies. It allows you to add image pan, zoom effects, transitions, titles, cross fades, and soundtracks. Toast 7 video upgrades include the ability to compress and copy an entire 9 GB dual-layer DVD video to a standard 4.7 GB recordable DVD disc. Download DivX movies and create DVDs to watch in your living room. You can also turn iMovie HD or Final Cut HD projects into DivX HD discs. Toast 7 now has several new DVD menu styles. You can also convert video files to DivX, 3GPP, H.264, iTunes and more. As you can see Toast 7 is a major enhancement. Lets take a closer look at Toast 7 and test some of these features.

Data Tab
Toast 7 uses tabs to open four different areas. Data, Audio, Video and Copy are the options. In the Data tab you can format your disk in several ways. Mac Only, Mac & PC, DVD (UDF), and ISO 9660 are all available. You can use the add buttons or just drag and drop your content into the data window. Using the data tab you can backup computer data, archive your photos and create disks that can be used on both Macs and PCs. If you select the Mac Only format, any data larger than your CD/DVD will be copied to additional disks. Think about this. Now Toast 7 can backup data of any size, and break through the CD and DVD size limitations that every other burning software has, including Mac OS X. Imagine the possibilities. Backup your entire iTunes library, iPhoto library, super large iMovie projects, even if they are larger than the largest DVD. Best of all, you don’t need Toast to restore the spanned discs as each disc has a small restore tool on it. You can take these discs to any other Mac OS X system and restore right from there.



Audio Tab
In the audio area you can create an Audio CD, Music DVD, MP3 Disc or an Enhanced Audio CD. The new Toast 7 media button allows you to easily select iTunes playlists or individual songs. Using the Music DVD option in the graphic below, I selected four iTunes playlists and created a music DVD using the Digital Dolby option with 320kbps sizes. Toast 7 converted my AIFF, AAC and MP3 file formats to Digital Dolby and then burned the Music DVD. This feature turns the DVD player into a giant jukebox filled with a very long music party mix. You can take it with you to any DVD player. Toast 7 can also create a music DVD in full quality 96 kHz/24 bit PCM sound, the highest possible audio quality available on a standard DVD. Audiophiles who use CD Spin Doctor’s DVD quality recording levels to convert their LPs to digital form will appreciate this.Toast 7 does not work with Apple protected AAC files directly. It simply excludes them from being copied to the burn window. However, you can burn an audio CD using iTunes and then use that CD as a source disk for burning your Apple Music store purchases with any Toast 7 project. When iTunes creates an audio CD it converts the audio to AIFF which removes the Apple protected AAC format. Toast 7 supports any non-protected QuickTime audio file, including AIFF, MP3, WAV, M4A, and MOV, as well as non-native formats, such as OGG, FLAC, and Dolby AC3 (2.0 and 5.1).



Video Tab
If you want to make a CD or DVD that contains photo slide shows or videos this is the place. Toast 7 supports any QuickTime video file, including AVI, DV, MOV, MPEG-1, and MPEG-4, as well as non-native formats such as MPEG-2, DivX, XVID, VOB, and iMovie projects. In addition, image formats that are supported include any QuickTime image file, including BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, PSD, PNG, and TIFF. Toast 7 supports many more video formats than iDVD does. In addition, the ten new themes added to Toast 7 are a nice improvement. In my opinion, iDVD themes still look more elegant than a standard Toast 7 created video, but Toast 7 allows the user to import many video formats that will not work with iDVD. Adam Fingerman of Roxio informed me that Toast 7 menu styles are simple Photoshop PSD files. You can edit and even create new Toast 7 video menu themes. This will be a very nice feature. Roxio will be posting a tutorial on their web pages shortly which explains in detail how to customize these PSD files. Roxio wants to open up the menu themes so that anyone can create their own. They are optimistic that designers and artists will produce some great ones. If you want to find the existing PSD file in Toast 7, control click on the application and click "Show Package Contents". Now open Contents:Resources:Toast DVD Menu Styles. Inside you will find the ten existing menu themes in psd format.



DVD-Video from Video_TS
Toast 7 adds two new features in the video tab called DVD-Video from Video_TS and DivX Disc. Toast 7 will only work with video that is not encrypted. Toast can compress and copy an entire 9 GB DVD video to a standard 4.7 GB recordable DVD disc using the DVD-Video from Video_TS method. If Toast sees multiple movies on the disk it will give you the option to copy the main movie. This is a nice feature if a 16:9 and a 4:3 version are on the same disk and you only need one of them. Most of us just place a Video_TS folder in the Toast window and burn it, but if you place a non-encrypted Video_TS folder on the desktop or on a mounted DVD with Toast 7 open to DVD-Video from Video_TS and then push the Media button you will see the titles in the DVD material. From here you can select the title(s) you want to burn. Toast 7 tells you if the source is 16:9 or 4:3, the video size and the audio type when you hold the curser over each title. This makes using Toast 7 with Video_TS material very easy. You can go one step further and view the individual DVD chapter data by navigating the button below the DVD menu to the "Title" that you want to view individual chapters from (as shown in the image on the right). If you want to create your own director's cut by eliminating or importing chapters you can do so at this level when creating a DVD with Toast 7. If you do not use the Media button or do not have the VIDEO_TS folder on the desktop or in the DVD drive you will miss all of these features as they are not available in any other way within Toast 7. This navigation method is not very intuitive. I would rather have the ability to double click on a "Title" and show all of the chapters below it, rather than have to navigate with the two button system provided in Toast 7. In addition, Toast 7 has no DVD preview mode while iDVD does. The lack of that feature can make it a little more difficult to be sure your DVD is just the way you want it before burning. Even though you can export a single chapter as a test, a Toast DVD preview capability would be a welcome addition to this software.

Toast 7 VOB to DivX Conversion
The Toast 7 DivX Disc feature allows you to create DivX DVDs from your selected video or export a DivX encoded video to disk instead. I encoded an 87 minute video to DivX using the default Home Theatre Profile with high quality selected in Toast 7. The conversion worked, but when viewing the file it was not as wide as the original and had a horizontal compressed look to it. I found that when compressing a 16:9 movie to DivX I could not use the default settings. To get the movie to display with the correct proportions I had to open the DivX advanced video settings and check remove black bars. Next, I selected the custom setting and set it for 720 x 320. Using the default 720 x 368 setting created improper proportions in the video. Another setting that works well is 704 x 304 pixels which is the same size as some AVI encoding programs use.



It would be nice if the DivX encoder included with Toast 7.01 would work correctly when the default settings where selected for encoding a 16:9 video. However, once you know how to correct this issue you can get the video to look good. I would suggest that you use the "Preview Video" button as shown above to verify that the proportions are correct before proceeding to encode any DivX video. Unfortunately, the preview mode does not include audio. Toast 7 can easily create a DivX video file that uses the directors track for audio instead of the movie sound track. I tried to prevent this type of error by encoding one chapter within a title to use as a preview test. The correct audio played back in the chapter sample, but when encoding the entire title the directors audio track was used by Toast 7 instead. I found no way to specify which audio track to use with the DivX encoder. As a result, using the Toast 7 DivX encoder can be tricky when multiple audio tracks are present. Without DivX video and audio preview capability you may find the final DivX output is different than what you expected.

As a test, I used the same VOB source and created an AVI file using HandBrake. The file was converted to an AVI file in 37 minutes vs the 99 minutes that the Toast DivX conversion required. In addition, the Handbrake created video did not suffer from a distorted view when using the default settings. Handbrake created an AVI with a size of 704 x 304 pixels that kept the screen looking sharp and unaltered in dimensions. HandBrake also allows the user to select which audio track will be used. As a result, Handbrake will be my tool of choice when working with VOB files. I asked Roxio the following question - "The DivX compression time can take as much as 3 times longer than creating an AVI using Handbrake and the same source material. Is that expected?" Roxio's answer - "Yes. To explain, DivX 6 (which we include) provides a robust set of encoding options, where users can choose performance over quality if they want. We focus on quality and compatibility over performance -however, you can adjust the settings to focus on performance instead. Our research shows us that many of our users understand that encoding takes time, and they have indicated that they prefer quality over speed. Open source projects like Handbrake may have better performance - but Toast is the only software that can guarantee playback compatibility and adherence to the official DivX format on the Mac." My thought concerning this topic is that if the Toast 7 DivX conversion quality were superior to the same Handbrake AVI conversion I would understand the extra time spent processing the VOB file. In my humble opinion, the AVI looks just as good. You may want to try this comparison for yourself and see what works best for you.

Toast 7 DivX Conversion from other formats
Toast 7 has the distinct advantage that it can convert many different video formats to DivX while Handbrake is limited to VOB files. This makes Toast 7 DivX compression worth trying when you want to compress large video files of various formats. Toast 7 can compress MPEG-2 recordings from EyeTV to DivX. A 3.56GB MPEG-2 EyeTV recording was reduced to 1.15GB after Toast 7 converted it to DivX. When using the default DivX compression settings in Toast 7 sometimes a DivX compressed EyeTV recorded video looks very good while other times it appears jerky in some scenes. The DivX quality appears to be based on how much action is in the video and whether the Mac is dedicated to just compressing video. There are compression options you can adjust but from Roxio's advice in the previous paragraph the default setting may be where you want to start for high quality output. If you still have quality issues the DivX 6 Pro codec offers 2-pass encoding options (default is 1-pass) which may be a better choice when converting fast motion video.

Both AVI and DivX video can be played using the Philips DVP642/37 DVD Player on your TV or home theatre. The Toast 7 install provides a plug-in that allows QuickTime to play DivX movies on your Macintosh too. In addition, VLC will play DivX and AVI movies on your Macintosh with OS X installed and it is FREE. VLC is a great application to download for video playback usage as it supports many formats that Quicktime player does not.

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. Toast is the best solution I have found for making a copy of a CD or DVD. It is intuitive and works great. One-click copying of unprotected CDs, DVDs, and disc images is one of Toasts best features.



Additional Software Included
Backup
Toast 7 now includes version 3.1 of Deja Vu. This version is Tiger compatible. Deja Vu is installed in the Mac OS X System preferences when you install Toast 7. You can schedule backups of folders or an entire bootable volume. If you want the backup copy to be 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. You can monitor the progress in the menu bar and it provides a log once completed. Deja Vu is a nice inexpensive backup program that is $24.95 if purchased separately.



Motion Pictures HD 2.01
Toast 7.01 includes an application that allows you to easily select images from your iPhoto library and music from iTunes with which you can create slide shows with multiple images on one screen. The program is Motion Picture HD and it allows the user to export these slide shows as a DV movie for use with Toast, iMovie, iDVD, email, .Mac or Quicktime. The Make Motion Pictures button is the farthest button on the right top side of the application. You may have to drag the window out to see it. I created several different slide shows using iPhoto images and AIFF music files. My iPhoto library has Photoshop images in it as well as camera photos. Motion Picture HD 2.01 was able to work with all of the various formats well. Motion Pictures HD handles several image formats but if you have problems compiling a slide show it may be that you are using version 2.0 instead of 2.01. A free update of the Motion Pictures HD application is available from Roxio. Motion Pictures HD provides the first HD slideshows on the Mac. The multi-image display effect is unique, along with the widescreen aspect ratio and the true 1080i and 720p output. Not everyone can afford an HD camcorder, but most people have high quality digital still cameras that can take 3+ megapixel photos. These beautiful photos deserve an HD slideshow.



Even more stuff
CD Spin Doctor 3.01 is also included with Toast 7.01. This program allows you to import audio from LPs, tapes or a microphone into Toast to create CDs. Spin Doctor can reduce hiss and pops that are found in many older analog recordings when importing them into your computer. Once you have an audio file open in CD Spin Doctor you can install the desktop recorder widget 1.01 using the CD Spin Doctor menu. I tested the recording widget 1.01 and CD Spin Doctor 3.01 with an iBook built-in mic and with the USB products, iMic and MicPlug on a PowerMac G5. Both worked well. The initial recorder widget 1.0 release would not work with USB mics but Roxio has fixed this with the release of CD Spin Doctor 3.01 which contains recorder widget 1.01. This upgrade is free. 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.

Toast 7 & EyeTV
If you are an EyeTV user you will find EyeTV libraries and Toast 7 integrate very well together. Toast 7 has added a "Media" button that allows you to select files directly from any iLife library or an EyeTV library. This allows you to instantly access your entire EyeTV library within Toast 7 when burning DVDs of your EyeTV recordings. Using EyeTV software I could already burn a DVD for an individual recording, but now with the Toast 7 integration I can easily burn multiple EyeTV recordings to a single DVD with menus using the Video Tab and "DVD-Video" setting. I can also burn the recordings to disk in their native format using the "Data" tab and the "DVD-ROM (UDF)" setting. Before Toast 7, if I wanted more than one EyeTV recording on a DVD (which I always did), I had to export the movie file to the drive and then drop the multiple movies into Toast for burning. The new Toast 7 integration with the EyeTV Archive is totally hot! With this new feature you can save several steps and lots of time archiving EyeTV recordings to DVD.



System Requirements:
PowerPC G4 processor or faster
Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later
300 MB of free disk space to install
Up to 15 GB of temporary free disk space during usage
QuickTime 7 or later
CD or DVD burner and recordable media

Optional (but makes Toast more fun):
iLife 05 software
EyeTV PVR hardware (www.elgato.com)
DivX Certified player (www.divx.com/hardware)
Stereo cable (for converting audio with CD Spin Doctor)



Pros
Most diverse product for producing CDs and DVDs on the Macintosh.
Integrates well with iLife and EyeTV.
Can convert most video formats to DivX.
Creates wide variety of CD/DVDs.
Can import many video formats.
Chapter markers made in iMovie 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 Deja Vu for backup.
CD Spin Doctor 3.01 included.
Provides a vast amount of CD/DVD recording options.
Supports a wide variety of recorders and media.
As low as $85 at resellers.
$20 rebate available for upgrades.

Cons
DivX audio selection options are limited.
Some DivX conversions may look squeezed using default settings.
DivX conversions are more than twice as slow as some other AVI methods.
Disc Spanning is disabled when using compression or encryption.


Roxio Toast 7.01 gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
Now to the question we need to answer, "Is Toast 7 worth the upgrade?" At Amazon you can get Toast 7 for $84.99 and a $20 mail in upgrade rebate reduces the cost to $64.99 shipped. What do you get for that $64.99? As a partial list, you get the ability for data to span multiple disks, cool iLife and EyeTV menu driven file selection integration, Music DVD creation, OGG, FLAC audio support, ten new DVD themes, DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS options, DivX conversion capability, the ability to compress a 9GB dual layer DVD to a low cost standard 4.7 GB recordable DVD disc and the latest version of Deja Vu for Tiger users. While there are other new features as well, this list alone is enough for me to give a thumbs up to Toast 7. There are very few programs that provide the functionality and value that Toast 7 has. The multiple capabilities of Toast 7 are awesome and Roxio is working hard to make it the best CD/DVD creation utility available for the Macintosh. If you would like a copy you can get it at Amazon.

Roxio, Inc.
455 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 367-3100 or (408) 842-9632
http://www.roxio.com/
For information on Roxio's parent company visit Sonic Solutions.

Copyright 2005
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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