Toast 10 Titanium, Roxio’s latest release of their CD/DVD burning software, can burn many different formats of CDs and DVDs. If you have the necessary hardware, the Pro version ($149.99) burns Blu-ray discs as well.

The burning of CDs and DVDs has been Toast's major selling point for many years, and the software does it well. Toast burns data discs as Macintosh-only or ones that you can read on both Macs and PCs. It also burns DVD-ROM format, ISO-9660, and Photo Discs. In addition to plain old CDs, it burns Music DVDs, Enhanced Audio CDs, and MP3 CDs that play in your car, if your car head unit supports that format. Toast also supports burning video DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and can archive onto DVDs, the AVCHD video format that many video cameras use to record video, without the necessity of converting.

Main Burn Data Window
If you have a Tivo, Toast also burns DVDs of recorded programs from your Tivo. To do this, you need a Tivo with a network connection. For many people, this is makes Toast worth the $99 price tag, because you can record shows on your Tivo, and convert them to play on your iPhone or video iPod; all inside of Toast.

Toast Media Browser

Toast 10 Titanium comes with the Toast Media Browser that helps your find your digital files, including pictures, movies, and music. It reads your iPhoto library, Aperture vault, or your iMovie projects and other sources. It displays thumbnails of these items and shows these items using a module that looks similar to QuickLook. I was not able to get Toast to display any of my images; a window pops up and shows "Loading..." for several minutes. As a point of comparison, the Finder displays the same images with QuickLook in under a second. Other MacNN reviewers did not experience this image viewing problem though. You cannot rename photos in the Media Browser because it would mess up iPhoto.



Media Browser and iPhoto
The Toast Media Browser can show movies that you are watching over the Web, and then convert them into other formats. I tried this with a YouTube video and converted it into a QuickTime movie. It worked with both Safari and Camino in my tests. You can even preview the file right in the Media Brower. Unfortunately, it did not work with Hulu, or I would have an iPod full of TV shows. Toast comes with presets to convert QT and video for the iPhone, the AppleTV, the Sony PlayStation, and several other devices, plus you can create custom settings. My only complaint is that Toast gives the file a funky numbered name and you have no option to give the file a real name, except in the Finder after the conversion completes.



Media Browser and YouTube

Interface Issues

I noticed a few minor interface glitches when using Toast 10. I have two monitors on my system, with the main monitor with the menu bar on the right. When a disc finishes burning, a sheet pops up on top of the window, asking if you want to eject or mount the newly created disc. If I put the Toast window on the secondary monitor, it moves onto the main monitor to display the sheet, and then moves back when you dismiss the sheet. The window then displays another sheet showing how to label the disc, but that sheet doesn't cause the window to move. Interestingly enough, even if a burn fails for some reason, the sheet directing you to label the disk still appears, as if the burn was successful. In some cases, when asked if you want to eject or mount the burned disc, the disc ejects, no matter which option you choose. Also, when converting a movie, the progress bar shows percentage done, but I don't really care if a conversion is 34% done. I want to know in how many minutes it will be finished, like Toast shows in the burn window.



Convert Progress Bar



Burn Progress Bar

by Marshall Clow and Ilene Hoffman, Editor