Toast has come a long way since its first incarnation in 1994. What started as a basic app for authoring and duplicating CDs has transformed into a full-fledged suite of media tools for Mac users. The latest version, Toast 9, is a media converter on steroids, loaded with an abundance of new features—and it’s especially attractive if you own portable devices and high-definition (HD) equipment.
Toast 8 introduced the first round of powerhouse features, such as Blu-ray-disc data burning, file recovery, TiVoToGo support, and DVD compression. Toast 9 takes things to the next level, allowing you to burn HD-DVD data discs, create Blu-ray and HD-DVD video discs, edit TiVo recordings, and stream and share media.
The first change you’ll notice is the refined interface. One of Toast’s big selling points is ease of use, and the latest version makes things simpler than ever. To begin working on a project, just drag a video or audio file onto the content area and start tinkering. It’s hard to make mistakes: Toast pops up warnings and reminders as you work, an approach we appreciate and think will benefit those who want to jump right in without first reading a lengthy manual. And the Project Tool Tips feature explains functions when you move your mouse cursor over their information icons.
Users of Apple’s iLife will appreciate how smoothly Roxio integrates with the suite. The Toast Media Browser that floats alongside the main interface gives you quick access to your iLife libraries. In the browser, you can preview a file before you drag it onto the content area; photos display as thumbnails next to the file name, for example. This makes Toast’s drag-and-drop method that much easier, letting you avoid hunting for files. Even if you don’t use iLife, the browser is a handy way to find and see what a file is beforehand; the tool supports Aperture libraries, TiVo recordings, DVDs, and more. For those who have upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Toast can take advantage of the OS’s new Quick Look function to preview media and text files, PDF documents, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents—all within Toast.
Possibly the program’s most unique and fun feature is the new Streamer utility, which lets you stream content over the Internet to a remote computer or Wi-Fi-connected iPod Touch or iPhone. During setup, Streamer creates a dedicated URL to which you point your browser. Drag videos onto the Streamer (Toast will convert them automatically) and click the Start Streaming icon to stream the content.
While the setup process on the Toast end is foolproof, we forgot to set up port forwarding on our router to allow remote devices to access our Mac; unless you have a router that will automatically open and close ports (UPnP or NAT-PMP), you will have to manually tell your router to do this. This could be a major issue for those who aren’t networking-savvy or familiar with their router. Once we got that working, though, we were able to view our content from an iPod Touch, as well as remote Macs and PCs. (We weren’t able to access Streamer from a Nokia N800 Internet tablet, though.)
Another extremely handy feature is the convert function, which changes the format of videos—including unprotected DVD-Video discs—to better suit your playback device. An HD video on your computer, for instance, might be far too large for your iPod, iPhone, or PlayStation Portable, so Toast can convert that video into the appropriate format. Toast also has export profiles for a variety of devices, from Apple TV to Xbox 360 to BlackBerry, so even if you don’t know which format works best, you just have to know what type of device you’ll be using. Toast can even generate a 16-second preview of what the converted video will look like. Conversion is processor-intensive, but you can pause the job and resume it later to free up your computer for another task.
On the other hand, you won’t be able to use Toast for anything else while you’re converting. Another quibble: There’s no option in the conversion-format menu for e-mail or Web upload. So you can’t automatically put a file into the right format for YouTube, for instance. (You can do this manually, of course.)
Video-conversion times will depend on your equipment. On a 1.8-GHz Power Mac G5, for example, a 206MB MPEG-4 video took 1 hour and 20 minutes to convert into a high-quality, iPod-friendly, 640×352-resolution format. Speeds will improve with smaller file sizes and lower-quality resolutions. Converted video looked good, unless you’re trying to convert a lower-quality video to a spiffier one.
Toast 9 also adds a range of high-definition options. You can burn Blu-ray and HD-DVD data discs, as well as create high-def video discs—allowing you to show off HD material you’ve captured on your AVCHD-compatible camcorder.
Because high-def disc burners have yet to reach critical mass (Apple doesn’t currently offer a Blu-ray option on its new Macs), few consumers will be able to utilize this function. It also explains why Roxio didn’t bundle it in the package; the Blu-ray/HD-DVD plug-in costs $19.99 extra. But Toast offers the option of creating standard DVDs with HD content that can be read on standalone Blu-ray and HD-DVD players. While you’ll get only 20 to 30 minutes of footage, it’s not an issue if you have short video clips. Plus, you don’t have to pay dearly for expensive writeable high-def discs. (Another DVD plus: Toast lets you compress 9GB of information onto a 4.7GB standard DVD. Toast 9 will not work with encrypted DVDs, however.)
Along with that, Toast now lets you edit video and television programs you’ve recorded and transferred from your TiVo. (Toast 9 also supports Elgato’s EyeTV television-tuner devices.) This allows you to trim out commercials or other unnecessary footage without using another piece of software. It’s especially handy for making on-the-fly edits before you commit to disc.
Besides its video prowess, Toast also has handy features for those who work with audio. CD Spin Doctor 5 helps you create digital copies of analog recordings from LPs and cassettes or streaming audio from the Internet, from equipment setup to audio fingerprinting that helps you identify tracks.
The software has some downsides. We encountered software crashes and hangs more than once, even when we simply left it open in the background. What’s more, although Toast 9 supports Macs with PowerPC G4 processors, you’ll get a better experience with G5 or Intel processors, especially for encoding or viewing HD content. And if you’re using anything older than Mac OS X 10.4, you’re out of luck.
But these cons are overshadowed by the available features. While most software comes with features that are little more than filler, you’ll want to use everything Roxio has devised.
