When Sonic Solutions — a digital media package company that specialise in the PC market — purchased Roxio in 2004 , many users feared it would think the end of Roxio ’s democratic Toast software for the Mac . But Toast ( and the Roxio trade name ) have survived , and with Toast 7 Titanium , Roxio has produce an even better app with a sharper contrast between it and the built - in CD- and DVD - burn capabilities of OS X and Apple ’s iLife apps . Toast 7.0.1 is ideal for anyone who wants more control over glow data point phonograph recording , audio CDs , and DVD - TV discs in one commodious , full - featured package .
Data
The pump of any good burn curriculum is ripe information backup . Toast has long surpass in this area , but Toast 7 ’s new Data Spanning feature is an owing addition . Data span address the job of stress to back up files , folders , or applications that are too big to match on a single piece of ocular media ( CD or DVD ) by divvying up item among as many disc as necessary . It chops individual files that are too cock-a-hoop ( large disc images or DV files , for example ) into multiple piece , and you could apply the minuscule ( 1 MiB ) Roxio Restore diligence included on every disc of the series you burn to reassemble such files , copy self - contained files , or rejuvenate an integral disc series to your hard drive . The Restore app is very nonrational — it let you draw and drop or double - penetrate files to reinstate them — and it even includes a search lineament so you could find a single Indian file out of thousands across multiple DVDs . Note that traverse works only with Mac Only - formatted discs , not Roxio ’s cross - platform Mac & PC format .
Toast 7 also lend the power to create hybrid discs with content specific to each operating system — simple checkboxes square up what single file or folder will be seeable on each platform . Further record - customization options admit Toast ’s raw Info windowpane , which lets you choose the Disc panorama ( image , listing , or hierarchal ) for the disk ’s files as well as change the disc ’s background knowledge color or contribute a picture to make it unique — cool for software developers or parents send off out candela of pictures to category penis .
Video
goner 7 includes the functionality of Roxio ’s $ 50 Popcorn 1.0 (; June 2005 ) , software that can compress a dear duple - level DVD pic for backup on a standard vacuous DVD ( for legal reasons , you have to decrypt the DVD yourself before Toast can compact it ) . On a dual-2.3GHz Power Mac G5 , it took 16 minutes and 20 second gear for Toast 7 to pack together a 6.75 GB movie . The 28 percentage reduction in filing cabinet size produced an excellent - looking DVD with no visible compressing artifact . Toast underrate the sentence it would take to incinerate the videodisk by more than a bit and a half , though , mostly because fast burners write information at unlike speeds on dissimilar parts of the phonograph recording — not a major flaw , but it can be confusing at clock time .
For creating DVD from scratch , Toast 7 sum up 10 unlike fare styles , a Modern MPEG-2 encoder , and more control over telecasting compression options and Dolby Digital data rates . And with the inclusion of the DivX Pro 6 codec , you could now encode motion-picture show to DivX format ( Standard or High Definition ) to watch on a computer or compatible set - top DVD histrion . encryption is slow — it took 36 bit to encode a 22 - minute DV file to DivX formatting on the dual-2.3GHz Power Mac G5 — but the quality was quite good considering that the file size of it was reduce by 95 percent . ( Toast did , however , leave plaguey log files at the root of my hard parkway . )
Toast 7 also boast a media web internet browser that give way you access code to movies , EyeTV programs , iPhoto pictures and album , and iTunes songs and play list ( note that you ca n’t use euphony purchase from the iTunes Music Store anywhere in Toast 7 as the programme will not spell protect AAC data file ) .
Audio
Toast 7 ’s aboriginal support for receptive - reference Ogg Vorbis and lossless FLAC ( Free Lossless Audio Codec ) files means you no longer need to convert such files to another format before burning . In my test , burn a springy concert in FLAC format worked perfectly , and the result discs contained music that flowed flawlessly from birdsong to song . Roxio also has ameliorate the Music videodisc feature , which now let you create a videodisc disc with up to 50 hours of euphony that will play on most recently manufactured DVD musician . This raw variation provide you to burn more music on one videodisk , and gives you the same menus as videodisc video recording discs , shuffle period of play , and more .
Extras and upgrades
As with previous variant of Toast (; October 2004 ) , Toast 7 admit several additional applications : CD Spin Doctor , for digitalise analogue tapes and LPs ; Discus RE , for making covers and insert for CD and videodisk ; and Motion Pictures HD , for create advanced slideshows — all useful bonuses .
Roxio offers a $ 20 rebate to almost anyone ( OS go user , iLife user , Roxio or Sonic customers ) , but current Toast customers who are interested in upgrading may be frustrate that Roxio still require a ring armor - in discount . It ’s sentence for Roxio to switch to an clamant discount for registered substance abuser .
Macworld’s buying advice
If OS X ’s build - in cut abilities are n’t enough for you , you wo n’t find a upright burning software than Toast 7.0.1 . For owners of late versions , I recommend the acclivity for its data - spanning , inclusion body of Popcorn , and its DVD and DivX - burning capabilities — as long as you do n’t heed the archaic mail - in rabbet mental process and price .
