Product Description

New Toast 7 is the best way to save, share and enjoy a lifetime of digital music, movies and photos on CD and DVD. Burn large files across multiple discs. Compress and copy DVD movies. Add over 50 hours of music to an audio DVD – with on-screen TV menus, shuffle play, and rich Dolby Digital sound. Turn DivX files into DVDs. Create stunning multi-image HD slideshows with collages, motion effects, titles and background soundtracks. Enjoy HD playback in your living room today! Do it all with the #1 burning software for the Mac OS.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2594 in Software
• Brand: Roxio
• Model: 221000
• Released on: 2005-08-30
• Platform: Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds

Features

• Drag and drop photos from iPhoto to create slideshows more easily than ever
• Add your own menus, buttons and chapters for viewing on a home DVD player
• Use Hollywood-style effects like pan and Zoom & cross fades for stunning home films
• Spin Doctor 2 helps users digitize vinyl records and tapes, to transfer them to CD at perfect quality
• Convert DivX to DVD and create DivX discs

From the Manufacturer
New Toast 7 gives you a great way to save, share and enjoy digital music, movies and photos on CD and DVD. Burn large files across multiple discs. Compress and copy DVD movies. Add over 50 hours of music to an audio DVD – with on-screen TV menus, shuffle play, and rich Dolby Digital sound. Turn DivX files into DVDs. Create stunning multi-image HD slideshows with collages, motion effects, titles and background soundtracks. Enjoy HD playback. All this with the #1 burning software for the Mac OS.

Highlights of the new version:

• Create widescreen DVDs with new custom menu styles and video options
• Compress and copy DVDs
• Convert LPs and tapes to CD or your iPod
• Access your digital life right in Toast
• Enjoy 50+ hour music DVDs with rich Dolby sound
• Turn still photos into multi-image HD slideshows
• Backup files of any size across multiple discs
• Create DivX HD discs

Features

iLife Browser – Your Digital Hub Integrated, fast and easy access from within Toast 7 to your iTunes music, iPhoto pictures, iMovie projects, EyeTV shows and DVDs, including discs from set-top DVD recorders, DVD camcorders, iDVD discs and VIDEO_TS folders. Import individual titles or chapters to create your own personal Director’s Cut. It’s your digital life – burn it the way you want.

DivX HD – HD Turn iMovie HD and FinalCut HD projects into DivX CDs and DVDs, and experience true high-definition video in your living room on a DivX certified HD player. No need to wait and buy new HD burners and expensive media; you can have HD now with your existing burner and affordable blank media. HD is available now with Toast 7 – the only burning software on the Mac that can create HD discs to watch in your living room today.

Motion Pictures HD Turn still images into stunning, widescreen, multi-image HD slideshows with collages, motion effects, transitions, titles and background soundtracks. Preview in full-screen or export in standard or high-definition video to burn to DVD or DivX HD disc. Your high quality, multi-mega pixel photos deserve an HD slideshow. Motion Pictures HD and DivX HD deliver the first HD photo slideshow on disc – and they’re only available with Toast 7.

Desktop Recorder Dashboard Widget – Instant Capture Instantly capture live audio with the CD Spin Doctor Desktop Recorder Dashboard widget. Record voice memos or any analog source and add them to iTunes, CD Spin Doctor or Toast. Record whenever the urge hits. Go back to the future, and bring you classic audio collection into the digital age. Only Toast 7 helps you rediscover your music on CD and DVD.

Music DVDs Enjoy over 50 hours of music on a DVD, complete with on-screen TV menus for easy navigation, automatic "SmartLists", shuffle play and rich Hollywood-style Dolby sound. Make your home theater system a giant jukebox for your next party, put a multi-CD boxed set onto a single inexpensive blank DVD, archive your favorite podcasts, and make your road trips more fun with your in-car DVD player. Music DVDs are hot and only Toast 7 has them.

Data Spanning – Backup Anything Span files, folders and even applications across multiple CDs and DVDs. Now you can safely backup files of any size and easily retrieve them with the included Restore tool. Toast 7 breaks through the size limitations that the Mac OS and all other burning software has.

Copy DVDs
Compress and backup an entire 9 GB dual-layer DVD to a standard 4.7 GB DVD disc. Extract just the main movie, audio and language to maximize video quality and use of disc space. Create 9 GB disc images in iDVD and burn to affordable 4.7 GB DVDs with Toast 7.

DivX To DVD
Download DivX videos and create DVDs with drag and drop ease. Enjoy your DivX files where they deserve to be watched – on the couch – instead of in front of your computer. Only Toast 7 offers one-step DivX to DVD conversion.

Technical Specifications
Toast supports these input formats:

• Audio – any non-protected QuickTime audio file, including AIFF, MP3, WAV, M4A, and MOV, as well as non-native formats, such as OGG, FLAC, and Dolby AC3 (2.0 and 5.1).
• Video – any QuickTime video file, including AVI, DV, MOV, MPEG1, and MPEG4, as well as non-native formats such as MPEG2, DivX, XVID, VOB, and iMovie projects.
• Image – any QuickTime image file, including BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, PSD, PNG, and TIFF.

Toast supports these output formats:

• Data – Mac only, Mac/PC easy hybrid, ISO9660, UDF, Custom Hybrid, Mac Volume
• Audio – Audio CD, Music DVD, MP3 Disc, Enhanced Audio CD, Mixed Mode CD
• Video – Video CD, Super Video CD, DVD-Video, miniDVD, DivX Disc
• Copy – CD/DVD copy, Toast/3rd party image copy, Bin/Cue copy, CD-ROM XA, CD-I
• Disc Types – CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW double-layer, DVD-R/RW dual-layer, DVD-RAM
• Recorders – Most internal and external CD and DVD recorders, including SuperDrives

DVDs created with Toast adhere 100% to the official DVD specifications, and are tested with Hollywood standard certification tools to verify DVD player compatibility.

What's in the box
The Toast 7 Titanium installation CD, including:

• Toast 7 CD & DVD burning software
• CD Spin Doctor audio recording software
• Motion Pictures HD slideshow software
• Deja Vu backup software
• Discus RE labeling software
• Getting Started Guide

Customer Reviews

Best Toast Upgrade Yet!
I've used Toast since the early 90's, and this is by far the best version yet. I've always upgraded before to get nice little interface and usability upgrades, but this upgrade really is revolutionary for Toast. It takes a fantastic CD/DVD burner and adds some great totally new features:

1) Really good backup. Finally, I can backup chunks of data larger than 4.7 GB. The capacity of a standard DVD is about 4.7 GB, and I've always had to pick and choose which data to backup to fit it within that limit. But with the new Toast, they've added the ability to span a single backup across multiple DVDs. So, I can backup 10 GB, 20 GB, whatever. That's a great upgrade.

2) Easy movie DVD backup. They've added an easy, slick way to backup my movie DVDs to 4.7 GB DVD-+R. I've used the other conversion programs and they are very cumbersome. Toast makes it easy to do the conversion, and the quality is great. They worked with DivX to get the newest version of DivX that isn't even released yet for Mac.

CONCLUSION: There are many, many new reasons to upgrade to Toast 7. Overall, it's one of the best upgrades yet. I only wish they offered a better deal to upgraders. Other software let's upgraders pay about 30-40% of the full price, but Toast has recently done away with upgrades, and instead does a small mail-in rebate. Oh, well, they still get my money. :-)

The Ultimate Disk Burning Suite
Mac OS X has some satisfactory burning tools built into the operating system, so why spend $75 on Toast 7? Well, Toast 7 does everything you wish your Mac could.

First, DVD burning. Toast allows you to import all sorts of video files, and burn them onto a video DVD, for viewing in your set-top DVD player. This is a great feature, if you have some Divx video files, on your hard drive. Drag them into the video folder in toast, and burn a video DVD.

Furthermore, do you have some un-encrypted DVDs, perhaps ones made in your set-top DVD recorder with video camera footage of your family? With toast, you can import titles from those unencrypted DVDs, and put them onto a DVD, with fun and easy to navigate menus.

New to Toast 7 is a great new feature that allows you to compress an unencrypted video DVD image into a size that will fit onto a single-layer disk. This basically gives you the functionality of popcorn built right into Toast 7.

Data Backup - Toast works fantastic as a backup utility. There is even an application included to schedule backups on a regular basis. Toast 7 allows for disk-spanning backups, which allows you to backup many gigabytes of data over multiple DVDs or CDs.

Audio - Toast 7 will obviously allow you to burn music CDs, but you can also burn a DVD. The DVD will load on a set-top DVD player, with menus, to select music, and a shuffle feature. You can get gigabytes of music onto these disks, and then play them in your DVD player.

Pictures - Toast 7 includes an application called Motion Pictures HD, which allows the importing of photos to make great slideshows. They can be in beautiful widescreen, or even high-definition, if you make a Divx DVD (note that Divx DVDs can only be played in special DVD players).

Import Analog Audio - CD Spin Doctor is included with Toast 7, so you can easily import analog audio via your computer's audio input. You might input audio, from a VHS tape, cassette tape, or record.

Discus RE - Discus RE is a simple, but convenient way to create labels, for your DVDs. It includes the templates, for dozens of the most popular DVD labels, so then all you have to do is design your label and print it. Easy.

[...]

Overall, I have only had Toast 7, for a few days now. However, it might be the most useful application I have ever purchased, for my Macintosh. Toast 7 allows you to do just about anything you would want to do, when it comes to burning DVDs and CDs. Furthermore, it is easy to use. I was taking advantage of Toast 7's many features within just minutes of installing the software. Give Toast 7 a try, for it will quickly become one of the most used applications on your Mac.

Tim Robertson MyMac.com Review
Roxio Toast 7
Company: Roxio
Price: $99
http://www.Roxio.com

We here at MyMac.com have been reviewing Roxio Toast for years. The problem, then, is how do you review a new version that, for all intents and purposes, does not add many new real features to the software, looks the same as it did a full version ago, and is just as easy to use as it ever was? Well, perhaps it's a bit easier for me, as I did not write either of the reviews for version 5 or 6. (That would be Owen Rubin and David Weeks.) Nonetheless, let's give a look a Toast 7 for the uninitiated among you.

For Mac users wondering why they would need to purchase a $99 program to burn CD's and DVD's when they get those functions with a free program (iTunes for CD's, as well as data burning within the finder) or as part of a larger software package (iLife, more specifically iDVD for DVD creation) the answer is simple: where iTunes and iDVD falls short in their simplicity, Toast gives users much more control and options. This is not always a good thing; most Mac users enjoy the simplicity in the OS and iLife. But more serious or hardcore users will find, many times, that they need more options.

Toast can be used to create data back-ups, create and burn audio CD's and video DVD's, create other media discs (DivX, Super Video CDs, Video CD's, DVD's from Video-TS files) and much more. Toast plays nicely with the Mac OS, including giving the user access to iTunes libraries and playlists, the user movie library, and iPhoto, including all the photo albums therein. We will get more into the media features of Toast later in the review.

The newest feature I was most looking forward to is Data Spanning. This alone, in my opinion, is the sole reason to purchase Roxio Toast 7. Archiving large files, such as the video projects I work on, is now very simple with Data Spanning. For instance, I recently worked on remastering an old wedding video for a client, converting a VHS tape to DVD, as well as creating a "highlight" DVD in the process. The finished iMovie file was 25.98GB in size. While I could simply create a copy of the finished DVD's, I also wanted to keep on hand the iMovie archive of the project, in case the client came back later wanting to do something different with the footage. But how to archive almost 26GB of data? Sure, external FireWire drives would work, but I don't want to take up valuable hard disk space for a file I may never need again. Much more convenient to simply archive it to data CDs or DVDs. But the file is too large to fit onto either of those media.

Data Spanning solves this easily. I simply drag the file in question to the open Toast window, and the program will tell me how many discs I need, depending upon what media I will be using. In this instance, Toast informs me that I will need 6 blank DVDs, or 38 blank CD's, to archive the project. A ten pack of blank DVD's will only set me back five bucks, which is much cheaper than taking up storage space on an external hard drive. Data Spanning, however, only works with Mac discs, not Mac and PC, so keep that in mind.




Toast has the ability to copy home brewed DVD's with ease. While the program will not allow you to copy copy-protected discs, such as movies you rent, you can copy those you made in iDVD. This came in handy for me a short time ago, as I had lost all my iAtariMac MacMOD files. Just gone. My only option was to grab the low quality files from the Internet. But thanks to Chad Perry, who had MacMOD on DVD, I simply copied his DVD.

As I said, Toast is unable to make copies of any DVD with Macrovision encryption, meaning commercial movie DVDs. So what's a person to do if they want to copy their own DVDs? For me, I used MacTheRipper, a free program, to copy an entire DVD to my hard drive, stripping out the encryption at the same time. Then I used Toast to burn a regular DVD from that file, and viola! - an instant copy of my movie. While you could also do the same thing with rented DVDs, that would be stealing, and we don't condone that here at MyMac.com, of course.

The interface of Toast 7 is the same as the previous version, which is a good thing. If something is not broken, there's no need to fix it. Toast uses a tabbed interface, which includes Data (data backups, copying data, etc.), Audio (to create music CD's, with many more options than you get from iTunes), Video (see above), and Copy (self explanatory). Each tab will bring up different options with a slide-out left preference pane, so that you can adjust or tweak different options as needed. For instance, the Data pane will show different types of disc you can burn, such as a Mac-only disc or a Mac and PC disc. The preference pane also links to the iLife media on your Mac, giving you quick and easy drag and drop access to your files.

You can author your own DVD menus using Toast 7, although I haven't spent much time doing so. It seems fairly straightforward, but after a cursory playing with this feature, I simply found iDVD much easier and intuitive to use.

With Toast 7, you can download DivX video files, drag them into Toast, and create DVDs playable on your home entertainments DVD player. As Roxio touts on their website, this lets you watch videos where you really want to; on your coach, watching the television, not on your computer monitor.

All in all, I am very impressed with this new version of Roxio Toast. It has become my disc burning solution of choice. Well worth the money for those needing to create easy backups, archiving, and much more.

MyMac.com Rating: 5 out of 5