Customer Reviews

Roxio Toast 9 Titanium [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I'm a long time Toast user who skipped a version. I bought a new Mac recently and upgraded some of my software including Toast. I don't understand how anyone can burn discs on the Mac without Toast. I love Apple, but they've pretty much ignored disc burning and copying. The first thing after install is a notice to upgrade the software (pet peeve - requires registration to download - argh). But Roxio seems to have done a couple of bug fixes already. I have not had any crashes so far. The new look is a nice improvement, but not dramatic by any means. There are a ton more formats supported. It's great to convert audio and video formats and supports all the popular formats. Perhaps not for everyone, but one of my favorite features is burning high-def video from my Canon HD camcorder on to a standard DVD and watching it in HD on my HDTV (using Sony PS3 built in HD drive). Yes on a standard DVD. (TiVo supported as well.) There are some other clever features. For example, you can pause a long video project to regain control of your Mac and resume later (if you've done a long video project you know how helpful this is.) You can stack up multiple DVDs to convert one after the other. You can recover files off damaged discs. The bundled apps are pretty decent. There's a pretty good backup app that backs up compressed files that opens with zip on Mac and PC. So it's not a closed format you need the app to use - so your not stuck if the app disappears next year. There's Streamer, which is hard to believe it actually does what it does. You can stream video files from your Mac at home to any web browser - iphone or even windows PC - over the internet. One of my favorite features is capturing any song playing on your Mac, even internet radio stations, and saving the song as an MP3 file and, the magic part, you can automatically add the song info like title, band, album name so your iPod can properly sort the songs. Toast is a must have for Mac users.

If Roxio Toast offers so many features not otherwise intrinsic to the supposedly user-friendly applications of Macintosh computers, why hasn't mammoth Apple simply bought out this relative small fry (now listed on the exchange as Sonic Solutions)? Is it because Roxio is too well-positioned, cutting edge, undervalued and besieged by competing offers to be easy prey for Apple (like Yahoo evading the presumptuous Microsoft)? Or is it because Roxio's technology and software don't pass the stringent requirements of the makers of the iPod and MacAir?

If Toast 9 is sufficiently compelling in quality, improvements and price to be worth ditching Toast 8 (which I purchased in late 2007), then by all means make the upgrade and pay the freight. It's certainly the brightest and most colorful software program of its kind, more inviting and occasionally more user- friendly than Apple's comparable onboard programs. And maybe for TiVo fans and Blue Ray enthusiasts, it repays the investment. All I know is that for my needs Toast 8 makes certain tasks (copying a CD or DVD, burning an audio or video file), somewhat quicker and more convenient than the Apple counterpart. Still, I find it necessary to be quite selective about what I use it for. If you have any plans to edit wave patterns in Spin Doctor, for example, don't expect anything close to precision--in fact, they're unreadable (darn pretty, though), and there's no indication that Roxio has addressed this problem in Toast 9. I've had to purchase both Sound Studio and WireTap Studio to to be able to get precisely edited program material for Public Radio broadcast.

Finally, if you're counting on the rebate, better photocopy and authenticate each and every step in the process, and be prepared to spend additional time afterwards calling the company about the missing rebate. I must have spent over an hour taking pains to follow the instructions to the letter because I was keenly aware of the "gotcha mentality" from previous experience, But the proof from the original carton was insufficient to convince Roxio to reimburse me the twenty dollars for upgrading from Toast 6 to Toast 8. This is definitely not a company that suits the style of a Jeff Bezos let along Stephen Jobs.

I'm usually a fan of Toast, but this release is very disappointing. I was looking forward to burning Blu_rays from my High-Def video cameras. Unfortunately, so far this has not been possible due to crashes every time it tries to encode video.

Not only does it crash frequently, it is very slow. Not in terms of heavy-duty stuff like encoding video - but trivial things like the interface response time, and startup time.

I had been using Toast 7, which is fast, convenient and reliable. It is one of the better Mac applications around. And I'm actually still using Toast 7, and will until they get the bugs out of Toast 9 and get the video encoder burning working properly.

I couldn't even get Toast 9 to recognize a perfectly valid disk image. So I went back to Toast 7 and it worked perfectly. I'm seriously wondering how this one got past quality control. I feel stupid for having spent my money on this upgrade.

I just recently upgraded from Toast8 to Toast9. This new version is full of bugs. My Tivo Transfer function for instance won't work anymore. It ran 16 hours encoding a 21min clip I had from my Canon HV30 on a Mac G5 dual processor machine before it finally burned the DVD. Crashes repeatedly where my Toast8 worked fine. I would not upgrade to this version until they have more fixes.

roxio has one of the least user-friendly websites on the planet, and offer customer service ONLY IF YOU PAY THEM by the minute!!! the product didn't work, and dealing with their refund process was frustrating. one of the worst consumer experiences i have had online.

How disappointing! I've used Toast for several generations now, but Toast 9.02 is not ready for prime time.
There are so many bugs I've run across encompassing both new features (the built-in video editor won't edit) and old features (Tivo movies won't burn to disk. The program hands instead!)
So, until there is a Toast 9.1 that fixes these major bugs, I'm heading back to Toast 8 where it is safe.
OK, Roxio, here's the challenge: win us back.

I've been a die hard pc user but now that Apple has caught up in the processor speed department I bought a laptop. I'm still getting used to the unique Mac functions and Toast has helped me with some hurdles. I've used Roxio 9 on the pc so I bought the Mac equivalent. There are a lot of similarities so it was an easy transition. There is the auto data id system for songs which I found wasn't in previous Toast versions. I like that I can compress a dual layer disk into a regular dvd since the former is expensive. I've also gotten into tivo since it supports computer viewing. I can even edit the tivo files and discard unnecessary footage. This makes it even easier to back them up on disks and my iPod. Blu-ray is now the next generation format and Toast burns this format. It is a great program for dealing with video and music.

I've always relied on Apple for innovative computers and devices but frankly I don't think they've done a lot in the software area. Sure they may have created certain video and audio formats, but they've left it up to other software makers to pick up the slack. I mention this because I think that Toast shows how much can be squeezed out of Apple hardware and its done much better than Apple itself.

I immediately noticed that every aspect of disk authoring is more efficient and faster. Is anyone else surprised that the program burns blu-ray disks on a regular dvd burner? That's what I mean about software utilizing hardware capability. It may not be a true blu-ray disk in the sense that it doesn't have as much data, but the quality is there. There are 2 ways to fit large files to as few disks as possible. There is a fit to DVD feature. If the file is still too big the program will span the files over as many disks as it needs. With better video quality taking up more space I use this feature more than ever.

Like many software companies you can get a rebate for upgrading. I take advantage of these offers for my security and tax programs and this is no different. It's worth sending in the paperwork and getting a discount. For those who haven't used Toast before I would say that it is an essential program, much like a wordprocessing one.

Before buying Toast 9 I had no link to my Playstation and Mac/iPod. Macs don't have blu-ray drives yet but why invest in one when I have the Playstation. TOast 9 burns blu-ray disks on a regular dvd burner. I know it doesn't have the full blu-ray storage capacity, but using compression wisely and editing some fluff I can get a movie one disk.
There is new streaming which exceeds home networks. Ok it's convenient to have streaming from the Mac to devices at home. Even better is streaming to devices when I'm not at home. Of course I still need an internet connection to view. If I want videos and music w/o the internet, Toast has tools for that. It compresses and reformats for ipods and other devices. I may get a 3g phone now that I can see more digital viewing possibilities.

I bought this mostly for some of the peripheral features--the TiVo Transfer and the ability to record streaming audio from the internet. I find that the DVD burning capability of OSX works for most of my needs, though it's nice to occasionally span disks.

After two days of trying, I managed to finally get the update to load and give me Toast 9.02 (I'm using OSX10.5.) And so I was (finally) ready to go.

TiVo Transfer will load programming to your HD and I successfully burned a half hour show to DVD, but when trying to anything longer, I get an OS error. So basically it doesn't work.

The streaming audio feature also doesn't work--it doesn't recognize that there's any sound. This isn't rocket science, both WireTap Studio and Audio Hijack do a great job of this.

Forget support--there basically is none. Also, be aware that if you buy software from a marketplace seller, you can't return it. Not sure of the policy if you buy directly from Amazon.

Beware any software company that doesn't offer a free trial on its website. There's a reason for it.

So, I'm out fifty bucks, but I suppose I'm a bit wiser for it. And I assume (though I am by no means certain) that it will span disks on a burn. So that's something.