Review by John H.

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…nTost9 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.