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First published in New Zealand Macguide Magazine - Issue 25

I've been a big fan of Toast for ages. The kind that you can put crunchy peanut butter on as well as the software that many Mac users have enjoyed for many years to burn CDs and DVDs with. Toast has always been an easy program to use and recent versions have seen new software and additions that make it well worth the purchase price. Toast 7 is no exception. It's that and much more…

Review
Installation & Documentation
Ease of use
Value for money
Price approx.	$79.95 USD
Software/Hardware Requirements	PowerPC G4 processor (G5 recommended for viewing DivX) Mac OS X v10.3.9+ 300 MB of disk space Up to 15 GB of temporary free disk space during usage QuickTime 7 or later CD or DVD burner and recordable media
Available from	Buyers Guide

I was curious to find out just what had changed with the latest version of Toast and I'm pleased to report that the changes are fine balance of improvements you'd expect with changing technology, as well as some enhancements in the multimedia area that surprised me, but are also very welcome.

Roxio could have taken the high road when developing Toast and refused to deal with odd file formats, iLife apps or "VIDEO_TS" folders. Instead, they've realised that in order for Toast to remain in the game, it must fit in not only with how we use our Mac but also with the variety of activities we want to ask of it.

First perhaps, one thing that people may not be aware of is that Toast comes with a number of applications, including a backup application. Déjà Vu is an application I purchased some time back and would still be using if not for my decision to get a .Mac account recently and use Apple's Backup program, although I'm contemplating changing back. The nice thing about Déjà vu is that you can set up backups to other volumes or simply tell it to backup to Toast, which will prompt you to insert a CD or DVD. With the superb new "Data Spanning" feature, the data you copy onto disc can now be spread across one or more discs without any issues. Toast will handle the spanning of discs for you, although you can't use compression or encryption when data spanning.

Toast also includes an application called CD Spin Doctor, designed specifically for importing the tracks from old vinyl records (remember those?), removing scratches and hisses and creating digital audio files of your music, ready to burn onto those cool new CDs you can buy that, umm, look like vinyl records. CD Spin Doctor is useful application and I'm about to break out my 150+ vinyl LPs and start the arduous process of importing them. A very welcome add-in (you have to install it from the Spin Doctor menu which is a little odd) is a dashboard widget that you can use to capture audio coming from your Mac. Really handy if you want to capture a conversation, audio from a broadcast or movie clip.

A couple of CD cover programs are also included with Toast also, but I've never really liked them. One program that I surprisingly do like however is Motion Pictures, which now joins the throng of programs to have an "HD" slapped on to the end of their Title. Motion Pictures HD can best be described as an application similar to the Ken Burns effect within iMovie. I like MP HD more though because I feel it gives more control and is easier to drop multiple images onto. I often use it to take a series of images and create sequence that can be used in the opening zones of an iDVD theme.

Integration with iLife
Toast now recognizes and connects to iLife applications, meaning you can select iPhoto images and iTunes music from within Toast (or Motion Picture) and drop them into the development window. Motion Picture and Toast also now have many screens or ways of working that are very reminiscent of iLife applications.

A new feature of making music DVDs lets you put over 50 hours of music on a DVD and allows you to add menus, smart lists, shuffle play and Dolby sound, as well as drag your iTunes play lists across and have the album cover artwork included, making your DVDs sound great but have some visual appeal even when just listening to songs. There are a few visual themes to available to develop the menus for these programs, but I think Roxio need to improve on the number and flexibility of these themes.

DivX and more
An interesting change to the Toast software is the new ability to deal with DivX formatted files. DivX is a format that no multimedia user can really avoid and has a lot of strong supporters, so it was wise of Roxio to bring in simple drag and drop functionality to import and burn DivX movies. The disappointing news is that it seems very slow to encode.

With Toast now being able to convert a variety of movie files you can also use it to convert and export to DivX, 3GPP, H.264 and transfer these to cell phones, PSP or even iPod, ignoring discs altogether through the export menu option. The ability to add custom icons and backgrounds, as well as the copying process of unprotected CDs and DVDs being simplified are also welcome changes.

All in all, Toast still remains a simple end effective program to use. They've kept up with the game with regards DivX and data technologies. My only wish is that perhaps they would include a bit more polish and finesse when developing inbuilt multimedia discs.

Pros

• Still a reliable, powerful but simple to use program
• Data spanning is good enhancement (although work when using encryption/compression)
• iLife integration and dashboard widget is neat

Cons

• Menus styles for DVDs are limited in design
• DivX conversion is very slow
• Multimedia functions great by need more finesse

Published by kind permission NZ Macguide - © Parkside Media

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