Review by Jojoleb

PROSnAllows you author DVDs/Blu-ray discs on MacnMedia browser is quicknLoading audio and video files is quicknGenerally easy to usenEasy export for video to social medianEasy disc copynWorks with Video_TS files and BDMV folder filesnnCONSnCostnOld-style interfacenLimited editing medianEmphasis on optical media, which is less useful these daysnWill not rip protected medianTrim Track window for audio is cumbersome and impracticalnExtremely bland DVD and Blu-ray menusnScreen capture crashed with greater than 5 min use (could be a OS X Yosemite quirk)nnOVERVIEWnYou can still save files to DVD on a Mac, but in an effort to be ever ahead of the curve, Apple is no longer supplying iDVD with new Macs. So if you want to burn DVD as presentation media, you will need a program like this.

Nevertheless, in a world of thumbdrives, memory cards, cloud connections and networked drives, making a program primarily designed to burn your video or data to an optical disc is something of a hard sell. To combat this reality, Toast Titanium 12 for Mac offers more than just burn-to-media capabilities: the software engineers have added file converters for playback on a variety of devices, video sharing capabilities with social media, advanced screen capture, and ripping of audiobooks. Additionally, this program will allow you to burn to Blu-ray discs (something that Apple seems to be avoiding for some reason), if you have an external Blu-ray drive attached to your computer.

Toast is an easy to use and mostly successful program, but you will have to assess the features carefully and decide if this is something that you truly need. It is not absolutely necessary for everyone but a small subset of users out there will want a suite of programs like this, designed to burn optical discs and manipulate media.

INSTALLATIONnThe program was easily and quickly installed from the supplied DVD. (As if to prove the point, though, Amazon either will sell you the media or a direct download.) Once you input your code and register (optional), you are ready to go. The openingnnDVD/BLUERAY AUTHORINGnIf all you want to do is author media DVDs, this program will definitely do it, but it works no more smoothly than some free and shareware options (e.g. DVD Styler, DVD Flick; note that free options generally don’t author Blu-ray discs.). Neither Toast nor the other DVD authoring options have the elegance of Apple’s late iDVD and what you end up with is a more pedestrian, less professional, circa-early-2000s DVD look without much in the way of eye candy or manipulation available.

The interface is the simple, old-style drop and drag interface. One nice feature, is that the program doesn’t try to convert video files right away. The media browser is light and quick on its feet. Instead of dragging you down with on-the-fly conversion, it just quickly shows the video clips on your screen and does the conversion later, when it prepares to burn. Toast’s editing features are limited, but it does allow you some advanced manipulations. For each clip, you can change the text of the title, add chapters, and set audio filters. You can burn to DVD, Blu-raynnI was disappointed that there was no preview before encoding. The DVDs produced were functional but bland. Note, as well, you can burn DVDs, HD-DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, but you need to upgrade to Toast Pro to author HD Blu-ray discs.

AVCHD CAMERA IMPORTnToast can easily import files from an AVCHD camera. This is done exactly the same way as authoring a standard DVD, as noted above.

CD/DVD/Blu-ray COPYINGnThis is easy and straightforward. As a nice bonus, DVD compression can be activated so that you can fit media on one DVD or Blu-ray. If you have one drive, the program will cache the data before copying. If you have two drives it will copy one to the other.

This section can be used to rip data or media off a non-protected disc only. Whether or not it is legal to make a for-personal-use only back up of a commercial DVD is controversial, but if you want this feature, you will have to buy another program to do this (e.g. a program like RipIt or MDRP).

DATAnYou can copy data to optical media with a simple drag and drop. There is little advantage of this over Apple’s native functionality (where you just drop files onto a disc), other than Roxio’s burning options: Mac only compatibility, Mac and PC, DVD-ROM (UDF), ISO 9660, and Photo Disc formats. Additionally, Toast allows you to avoid splitting files if spanning two or more discs, add an auto run feature (Windows only), compress the data, or encrypt the data.

Sadly, there is not description or ability to manipulate the compression or encryption algorithms.

VIDEO CONVERSION/AUDIO CONVERSIONnAnother drag and drop interface.

Basically, you plop the file you want to convert into the drag area. Once there, you can specify which part of the clip you want and add filters to the sound. You can then select from any number of formats compatible with file formats, iPods, iPads, iPhones, android phones, and social media (YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook). The file is converted to the proper format. If you want to upload to social media, you can do this directly by logging into your account. Toast will even post a link on Twitter for you. (Note: if you just want video conversion, the free program Handbrake works just fine. Toast, however, is still a little easier to use.)nnFor audio conversion, you can trim the track, add fades, and add sound filters. You can convert to AIFF, Wav, AAC, Apple Lossless, FLAC, or Ogg Vorbis. The filters are standard Apple filters, but you can manipulate them easily through toast. Note that the filter will affect the whole track–you can’t do fine manipulations of track sections with this program.

The Track Trim interface is quirky. You can start or end at at any point within a given track, but trimming is done by time and unlike video there is no playback in the Trim Track window. Basically, you have to play the track and note the time you want it to start or end and then pop up the Trim Track window and input the times manually. Strange choice. You can convert any number of files in a row, but there was no way to merge them into one.

VIDEO CAPTUREnThis is an easy to use video capture program. You can specify whole screen capture or capture just a section of the screen. You can select ‘mic’ to record your voice. If you don’t it will simply record audio from your computer. To start, hit record. To end, hit shift/command/1 (or press the stop/pause button). The file is saved as a .mov file that can be further converted using Toast.

In a short test, it performed admirably. I did try to record streaming video from the web. This worked reasonably well for short periods of time, but for a >5 minute video the program crashed. I’ll experiment with this some more, but after two crashes, I was a little disappointed. This could be an OS X Yosemite quirk, however, so I’ll try again a little later, as there’s bound to be an update.

Note that QuickTime now performs video capture, but for whatever reason Toast is just easier to use. There are, of course, more advanced screen capture programs, but this one is just fine andnnCONCLUSIONSnOnce upon a time, a program like this was essential, but a program that heavily focuses on optical media is now more peripheral. If you really do need to author DVDs and Blu-ray discs this isn’t a bad way to go. If you just want to manipulate certain kinds of media, you can do a lot with native Apple apps and a number of free or shareware programs out there that might cost you a lot less. For the right user, this program will definitely work.