Toast 10 Titanium Pro

Reviewed by Wayne LeFevre

$149 USD, ($185 CND, £103 GBP, 115€ Euro based on current exchange rates.)

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.x or later; Universal binary; 1 GB RAM; 15 GB Hard Drive Space; CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/Blu-ray; QuickTime v7; Internet connection.

Strengths: Some really great applications in the Pro package.

Weaknesses: A very expensive upgrade coming not a year from Toast 9.

Previous Reviews: Toast Titanium

Introduction

I’d like to preface this review by saying that the new Toast 10 Titanium Pro has some fantastic added applications that really does warrant the purchasing of the Pro package. That being said, I believe that putting out three versions of the same basic product within a two year period is very…frustrating. The Extras have some nice polishing to their applications, and even something new, but add in the Pro apps – now we have something to talk about.

The Pro package differs from the standard package with the added applications that are included, along with the Blu-ray plug-ins. Those additional applications are Sonicfire® Pro 5, SoundSoap™, FotoMagico™ and LightZone™. Otherwise, the rest of the applications, sans the plug-ins, are the same as the Toast 10 Titanium package listed at $99.00. It should be said that both packages are currently being offered with a $20 mail-in rebate for previous owners of Toast, or a number of other packages that Roxio makes including Popcorn. Toast 9 Titanium users can get an upgrade to 10 for $40 off without dealing with rebates at Roxio.com.

Getting Started

Installation was the standard fare of the drag and drop variety. The boxed version had the pleasant surprise of actually including a printed manual, somewhat of a rarity these days, but standard for Toast.

The manual only deals with the core of the Toast program, however. Basically just the actual CD/DVD application, dipping a little bit into describing Toast Extras. It doesn’t go over any of the Pro products.

Just Plain Toast with a Side Order of Everything

To be honest, (not that I’m anything but), I can’t really see a whole lot of difference between the last version and this one where the actual burning is concerned. I don’t see what has changed between version 9 and 10 with the actual core of the program. There are many improvements with the Extras, however. That’s not including my favorite portion, the Pro applications.

One of the new Extras is Mac2TiVo. It’s not quite an Apple TV killer, but if you don’t have an Apple TV, and do happen to have a series II or later TiVo, then this just might be your ticket. Similar to the Streamer application, (which now has it’s own iPhone app), this will convert your media from whatever format it happens to be in, then sync it with to your TiVo. I can’t tell you how cool this feature is, and if you do have a Tivo, it’s a great addition for version 10. Oh, don’t forget going the other way too, with TiVoToGo™.

Other features that have been improved is the CD Spin Doctor®. It’s now able to not only capture your analog and digital streams, and enhance that audio, but to also split it out into individual songs and correctly label them with the correct metadata. This, along with the Mac2TiVo, is another one of those wow features of Toast 10 that I don’t see talked about a lot in the press, but I find incredibly useful and fascinating.

There are a few more enhancements to the Extras applications, of course. There’s a new Audiobook creation tool that will take your CDs and the many tracks that are on them and turn them into one easily managed file. As good as Audiobook Builder? I don’t think so. Better than trying to manage hundreds of tiny files on your own though, and usually a lot easier than doing something like a Doug’s Script. Other new tools are Web Video, DVD clip extraction and AVCHD archive. The Web Video is pretty neat, similar to something like TubeSock or iTubeX. Using the Web Video you can easily grab video clips from sites such as YouTube and convert them to other formats, including the ability to burn them or save them for playback on other devices. The DVD clip extraction tool lets you quickly save a clip from a DVD for editing or saving elsewhere. AVCHD Archiving enables you to easily archive your AVCHD content right from your camera straight to standard DVDs or Blu-Ray Discs.

Rounding it all off there’s always the fantastic Disc Cover RE Disc Labeling software. Really though, what else is there that you can you say about this great application? If you aren’t going to get Toast, at least go to BeLight Software and download this gem of program as a stand alone. I believe it’s probably the best labeling software out there, and it handles my DYMO DiscPainter fabulously. Last, but not least, the GetBackup 2 RE and the DiscCatalogMaker RE. Another confession, I really haven’t had the time to know GetBackup, but the DiscCatalogMaker is another good program for cataloging all the files that you create with Toast. It’s a fine program that I think is out-shined only by my personal favorite, CDFinder.

The Blu-Ray Divide

What I do find everyone talking about is the ability for Toast to author Blu-Ray discs. This is where Toast and I part ways and I have a little difficulty with. Roxio touts this as one of the greatest features in the last couple of upgrades. First off, though, if you try to author your own Blu-Ray discs without Toast you are going to find a few surprises. The biggest surprise is probably the amount of money that you can spend authoring those DVDs. I’m not talking just burning them, but actually the full DVD treatment.

If you use Sony’s software, you can spend well into 5 figures, so for the average user to be able to do this is really incredible.

My biggest problem is with the entire hardware side of things. Even though all this time has passed since Blu-Ray has “won the war,” it’s still been a very slow adoption process. Not only that, but bringing Blu-Ray to Apple itself has been an exercise in futility. It seems not even Steve Jobs is willing to put in the effort, even with his ties to Blu-Ray. So yes, you can buy an additional external Blu-Ray DVD drive. You pay incredibly high prices for blank discs, and yet you still can’t watch commercial DVD movies with your Mac. So the only reason for getting a pretty expensive external DVD player, and paying another pretty penny for the discs is to only do one of two things. A large data disc, which there are more cost effective methods of doing things of this nature. Or, to use Toast and create your own HD media, to more than likely, use on your own system.

I just can’t see it being a big thing right now that everyone is rushing out to do. That’s a shame, because I sure would. I don’t, though, because I don’t even have an HDTV, (strange perhaps nowadays, but maybe not). I don’t think that the Blu-Ray market will ever explode until they come out with a sub-$100 commercial player, without it being stuck in a game console. So if the family doesn’t have a Blu-Ray player to play your fancy Blu-Ray disc of little Stephanie’s Birthday Party, well, might as well stick with SD. Really, it’s not just me thinking this. Roxio started Blu-Ray burning with Toast 8. And…? I do have to remind you, though. You can create HD video and burn it standard DVDs. They still need to play on a Blu-Ray player, though, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

If you do happen to want to go HD, I wouldn’t hesitate to use Toast as an authoring tool, especially with the added applications in the Pro set.

Toast 10 Titanium Pro

Now, it’s taken an entire normal review to get to my favorite portion of tonight's programming. The Pro portion of the name. This, is where it gets cool. This is also the part where you don’t get a fancy book on the inside of the box. No, you’d probably need a few of Pogue’s Missing Manual type of books because every one of these applications is a full featured program that can stand on it’s own. There are five of these extra programs, and it really does make all the difference in the world between the regular Toast Titanium 10 and Toast Titanium 10 Pro, and well worth the extra $50. Roxio puts the worth of these applications at over $300. The applications are the HD/BD Plug-In, SoundSoap, Sonicfire Pro 5, FotoMagico, and LightZone.

The HD/BD Plug-in is the same that you would normally pay $20 in the non-pro version of Toast. This is the one that will let you take the HD video from your camera and create a finished Blu-Ray DVD, including menu themes. One of the neat things you can do with this use a normal DVD burner and burn a Blu-Ray disk. That disk will not play in a normal DVD player, and when you play it through a Blu-Ray player it will only play as much as the DVD will hold. You will probably be able to fit approximately 20 to 30 minutes of HD video on a DVD. It doesn’t need to only come from your camera, though. It can come from your HD TiVo, video from your EyeTV recordings, and any other HD video that has been created or downloaded.

SoundSoap uses advanced filter algorithms to “learn noise” from a short section of audio and then removes that noise from the entire recording. You can use SoundSoap with both music and video, which I have started to use. I produce more than a few videos for our local Access channel. Many those videos take place in less-than-ideal conditions. Recording a meeting taking place in a large auditorium with fans or air conditioners running with only a shotgun mic can really be a challenge. SoundSoap does a surprisingly good job with taking out that extra noise.

The next application in the Pro lineup is FotoMagico. This is the same FotoMagico that everyone knows and loves from the great Boinx Software. It’s such a known and great application that I don’t think that I need to spend much time with it. It makes doing slideshows of photos child's play. To do the same thing with Final Cut Pro would take ages, and not nearly the precision and options that iPhoto gives you. You cannot only do a Ken Burns effect, but actually direct where the camera starts, stops, the amount and type of zoom, and what kind of transitions between the photos. It’s a fantastic application that everyone that wants to present photos should have, even if you don’t buy Toast Titanium Pro 10.

Next on the list is LightZone. LightZone is something that I have not tried before now, but I have heard a lot about. LightZone lets you enhance the lighting in your photos with greater detail and control than Aperture or iPhoto. If you were to do the same thing with Photoshop, it would take many layers and a great degree of skill. To put it simply, you can select different areas in your photos and adjust them accordingly. If you want to bring out the detail and lighten up your landscape, but don’t want to touch the incredible sky or totally blow out the sunset, then this is the application your going to want to have in your toolkit.

Last, but certainly not least, is an app that is quickly becoming one of my favorites. It is Sonicfire Pro 5. Sonicfire Pro, (including both the SmartSound Express Track and the Scoring Edition,) is an application that can create a soundtrack for videos and slideshows. It’s not simply putting music to a video, though. It’s a way to mix in different moods with the same piece of music. The music that is available is an incredibly large library, ranging from instrumental pieces that is found in every corporate training video ever produced, to full cinematic orchestrated productions worthy of a motion picture from Hollywood. Within those individual music pieces is the ability to create different moods on the fly within your own production.

You want to be able to do a voice-over? Simply select the in and out point, select the Mood “Background” or even “Dialog,” and that will automatically adjust the music and the gain to match what would best go with a voice-over.

Need to have the music be exactly 2:10;14? I will remix the piece so it will have a beginning, middle and ending, and exactly 2 minutes, 10 seconds and 14 frames long.

I can’t believe I haven’t played with this application before, and I consider it being included in Toast 10 Titanium Pro to be an astounding bargain, and worth the cost of admission by itself.

Recommendation

The big question is why Roxio is creating a Pro addition to it’s already rock steady CD/DVD burning software. That, I can’t tell you, but what it does is give you the ability to take your raw media, your photos and video straight from the camera, and turn it into a professional looking, (and sounding,) polished DVD. So why would you want to upgrade? Well, the Toast that we have all learned to love that does a terrific job in burning our discs has fully matured. If you already have version 9, or even 8, and all you want to do is burn DVDs and CDs. Well, you might want to pass. Stay with 9 if you don’t have a TiVo, or need any of the Extras applications.

If you do want to do any extra massaging to your media before you burn it. If you really want to impress your friends and family, take a look at the Pro package. If you’re a Pro, well this could be a welcome addition to your toolkit. It really does include a surprising amount of very good software. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending just skipping the regular Toast 10 Titanium package and jump up to the Pro. For the money, it’s an incredible value.