Roxio Toast 9 Titanium

List Price: $99.95 Discount Price: $49.99

Features:

• Compress, copy and convert video to watch on popular mobile devices; burn to CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD
• Capture streaming audio from any source, including the Internet, to build a library of audio tracks; easily edit with CD Spin Doctor
• Burn or play your favorite TV shows--even those captured from your TiVo--on your iPhone or PSP
• Burn HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs--archive up to 12,500 music tracks, 50,000 photos, or hours of HD video
• Schedule backups to CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD, network volumes, and removable storage devices like a USB flash drive or hard disk

Customer Reviews:

Has problems that need to be addressed  [Posted on 2008-03-19]
First off if you use avchd (.mts) files then it is worth the upgrade with the hd plugin. Why ? Well it will actually convert your .mts files to mp4,psp,appletv, etc... straight from the raw .mts file which up to know was a total pain because you need imovieHD08 to read the avchd file then pull off the huge .mov file and then convert...
Tost9 will see the .mts file and work with it... Also the Toast Video Player will PLAY the .mts file ! Thats a first! However there is no editing that it can do so bummer there.

No the weird stuff... you are suppose to be able to take a avchd file and burn it on to a standard dvd-r for hi def playback on a bluray player... but my PS3 sees the disc as a data disc ... others have said there player sees it fine... so its not totally reliable yet... same goes for hd-dvd, I made a hi def disc on standard dvd-r and it played back wonderfully on my Toshiba A30 player but my xbox 360's hd drive hated the disc... so the same problem exists there too. If you really want to get your avchd onto dvd-r but play in hi def buy the Sony VRD-MC5 and save yourself a lot of grief.... But I hope Roxio will address these issues.

Other than that the Toast9 pretty much does what it always has done for cd burning....

I am excited about what Toast9 is trying to do to get avchd in motion so if you use these cameras this is the first real piece of software that can deal with these files (converting them) that I have seen for the Mac. iMovie08 just transcode the file to a different codec but Toast will read them and convert them straight from your hard drive as is... no camera hookup or card needed like imovie...

If it wasn't for the hiccups of bluray to dvd-r I would give it more stars. If your using Toast8 I really would not bother with Toast9. If your using avchd then its well worth the buy.

Worth considering for first-time users who find their Mac awkward at performing certain tasks (but don't count on the rebate) [Posted on 2008-03-30]
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.

Not Worth Buying [Posted on 2008-04-16]
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.

Horribly buggy and slow [Posted on 2008-05-07]
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.

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