By Bob Kaneko

Roxio has released Toast 9 Titanium, the latest version of its flagship authoring software for creating just about any kind of optical media you can imagine. I have been using Toast since somewhere in the neighborhood of version 4 and it is on my short list of must-have software items. If all you want to do is burn playlists from iTunes and make DVD’s of your home movies, then you can probably get by with Apple’s built-in software. However, if you do any authoring or media work beyond the basics, Toast is a highly recommended tool for your authoring arsenal.

If you are familiar with Toast 8, Toast 9 is a logical step forward. Roxio has polished the interface a bit, making it look stylistically similar to Apple’s current crop of iMacs. They have also extended the reach of the product. In addition to standard CDs and DVDs, Toast 9 can burn Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs. Of course if you create one of the latter, you won’t have very many places to play it, but the ability is there.

In writing this review, I decided to Google “Adaptec Toast 4” since that’s where I started with the product. The first result led me to a review written by Stephen F. Nathans in March of 2000. In his review, he starts by saying, “It’s a strange time to be Toast.” It was strange because Apple was in the middle of a shift away from SCSI toward USB and Firewire and device support was questionable. I would echo that sentiment today. The difference is, today it’s strange because I believe we are approaching the tail end of the use of optical media for storage and delivery.

Apple tends to be a harbinger of technology. What Apple does today, the rest of the industry will do tomorrow. With that in mind, it’s not hard to see what Apple thinks of the future of optical media. There is still no support for Blu-ray or HD-DVD from the company. In addition, if you look at the last update to the iLife suite, iDVD was pretty much swept under the carpet. Sure, it got a few tweaks and some new themes, but I’m fairly certain the writing is on the wall. They killed the floppy when they introduced the first iMac. While optical is hanging on with the MacBook Air and its external optical drive, I think it’s only a matter of time.

So, what does a good CD/DVD burning package do when its core competency is on the endangered list? It adapts. (That would have been a lot better if Toast was still published by Adaptec.)

The world of media is moving to mobile devices and online delivery. YouTube, the iPod and the iPhone are not so mute evidence of that trend. The last couple iterations of Toast have seen the application evolving to match that trend. If optical media disappeared tomorrow, Toast would still have a permanent place in my Dock. The ability of the product to convert media for use on a variety of devices is unmatched by any other application I’ve seen. It can import all of the standard QuickTime formats, plus MPEG2, DivX, VOB, -VR, iMovie projects, EyeTV and TiVoToGo. It will output to all of Apple’s current devices as well as Blackberries, Treos, PSPs, Playstation 3s and Xbox 360s. As with previous releases, it will not rip a copy protected DVD. However, if you can get a copy protected DVD ripped to your hard drive, Toast will import the VIDEO_TS folder and allow you to export the video to whatever portable formats you may choose.

On top of all the device and format tools, Toast 9 has significant support for high definition video. Unfortunately, my ability to test in this area was somewhat limited. I don’t have an HD-DVD or Blu-ray burner. I was able to create a Blu-ray disc image, but I don’t have any way to play back the content of the images to see if it worked. In addition, it took three DAYS (no, that’s not a typo) for my poor 1.5GHZ PowerBook G4 to encode the 30-minute HDV source clip and “burn” it to a disc image.

Toast is supposed to be able to import high definition footage from AVCHD camcorders. I don’t have one of those either. I do have a Sony HDR-HC1 HDV camcorder. Toast would recognize the camera if I had a standard DV tape in it, but it wouldn’t recognize an HDV tape. In fairness to Roxio, they don’t make any claims to supporting HDV import. However, if Toast can support DV and AVCHD, it seems to me that HDV should be there too.

Since version 7, Roxio keeps adding “must have” features for me that keep me opening my wallet. With version 7, it was the addition of MPEG export support. Version 8 introduced Mac support for TiVoToGo. With version 9, they have added video streaming support ala Slingbox with a new helper app called, “Streamer,” as well as streaming audio recording ala Audio Hijack in a helper app called, “CD Spin Doctor.” For me, those two features alone make the upgrade worth the price of admission. They have also added basic video editing tools. Additional support for the elgato turbo.264 makes Toast 9 a fairly capable stand-alone authoring system.

I tested the streaming audio recording by opening a YouTube page and recording the audio track. It worked great. The only problem I encountered was the fact that it didn’t disable the microphone input on my PowerBook. That resulted in CD Spin Doctor recording both the streaming audio from YouTube as well as the conversation I was having with a friend.

With TiVoToGo and Streamer, you can have the basic features of a Slingbox without buying a Slingbox. TiVoToGo will allow you to automatically schedule shows recorded on your TiVo to transfer to your computer. You can then set up Streamer to automatically take those shows and encode them for streaming to an iPhone or any computer connected to the Internet. The video is encoded as an h.264 mp4, so if you try to view the video on a device that doesn’t support that format, it won’t work. An iPod Touch worked flawlessly with the streaming video. I tried viewing it on a Nokia N95 with no luck.

Toast 9 Titanium is not a revolutionary product. It is an evolutionary one. As such, it is full of little niceties that make a mature application that much more enjoyable to use. One of my favorites is that you can now see at a glance how much empty space is left on the disc you plan to burn.

Another is that you can now pause an authoring action and resume later. This particular feature came in REALLY handy during the three days it took to create the Blu-ray disc image.

If all you want to do is burn playlists from iTunes or create the occasional data disc, Toast 9 Titanium is probably not an application you need. However, if you have a desire to create high definition discs, integrate your TiVo with your Mac or convert video for use in different environments, Toast 9 Titanium is about as good as it gets.