Review by David Bradshaw

I will say that I love my Mac, and out of the box it does nearly everything. However, recently burning disks has become difficult… I luckily still have a copy of iDVD that I hang onto like a precious relic (iDVD is awesome). However, it does only burn movies for DVD playback (which is fine since I only have a DVD burner in my MacBook Pro), Finder does a good job of burning data, but it lacks options and Disk Utility is useful for certain burning tasks but still falls short on customization.

Before I moved to the Mac world, I used Roxio Ultimate on Windows. It was great and worked as expected with some great DVD video menus to choose and some really awesome features. So I was excited to give Toast Titanium a try.

Most users are mainly using this for burning video to DVD to playback on a DVD player. This is (in my opinion) the main use of this product (as that is the one thing that is lost on a Mac, since iDVD was discontinued). I was expecting a lot of the amazing menu styles and options that I saw in Roxio Ultimate in Windows, however, this product has a very limited selection of DVD menu templates and they are really not that great. I found them to be about as basic as can be with most not being something I would use. If possible I would recommend iDVD over this (for burning video to DVD). iDVD has some amazing menu styles that are super easy to use and work great (maybe you can find a retail copy of iLife somewhere that has iDVD on it; or in case you do not know, iDVD was an optional feature of iLife on the disk that came with older Macs or purchased from a store). I think Toast would be much better if it had more menu styles to fit more needs (like Roxio Ultimate). The burning and ease of use is simple enough and has that easy to use Mac feel you are used to. I do wish it had more advanced options, it is like a basic burner, you really have no control over anything and the menu styles are nearly all the same with small differences. You cannot preview (at least I could not figure it out) your disk before burning, but with the basic setup and no control over anything you really do not need to. Do not expect to create an amazing experience for your audience. Video burning to DVD is lacking and I would not recommend this product for this purpose. Windows DVD maker would even be better… Although iDVD is way better than both…

Now, burning movies to disk is not great, but this software does some other great things.

It is useful for creating more advanced data disks. It gives you super useful settings for creating disks aimed at Mac, PC or both and gives you the advanced control options like making useful mac disks (like for install disks; backgrounds, auto run, custom icons…), you can also encrypt and compress depending on platform and can create auto run files for Windows and stack them appropriately for the hierarchy to ensure proper function on whatever you are targeting. When it comes to burning data disks, this software is great! However, I will note this is something only advanced users will really care about, which makes this software great for advanced users who might need to package software or create auto run scripts for disks. You can also create Mac/PC disks with certain data showing for certain users!!nnAudio burning works as expected and is easy to use. Truthfully, you might just find it easier to use Finder for Mp3 disks and iTunes for audio CDs, but this supports it and it is easy to use. Burning audio disks is not that hard, so it is usually not a problem.

The copy tool is useful and has some advanced features that make it a little better than Disk Utility (like image merge). Disk copy is useful for creating copies of data disks and other disks. You can do a lot in Disk Utility, but this is a little more user friendly.

Convert is useful and can convert between many formats. Drag and drop interface makes it easy to use and Audiobooks, audio and video conversion is useful. It offers conversion of WMV files which is nice, since that format is often hard to work with on Mac. I usually always use MP4, but sometimes for certain projects I have needed WMV (when working with Silverlight applications). Audio converter works as expected and quality is great for all video conversions. There are free applications on the App Store that convert, but this does make a one stop shop for converting.

One downer is that it does not copy DVD videos (like actual movies (Hollywood movies) you want to copy and watch on your computer on the go). It does not decrypt them, so it cannot copy them (rip them).

Screen capture is nice, but does not have as many advanced features I was hoping for (I was hoping for a Camtasia alternative), but it does do the job and the mouse animation is nice. I do like the command for ending and the interface. However, I usually use QuickTime to record my screen, so the lack of advanced features here makes QuickTime just as useful.

In the end this software has an easy to use interface and the Data burning and converting options are great and offer advanced control to give you fine tuning ability. This software lacks in the DVD video burning and in the screen capturing. These features are the main (mainly Video DVDs) that people care about and it is just not the best option for that. If you are an advanced user and want some control over data disks and like to quickly convert video and music files this is a good choice (maybe not at the price point), but for creating video DVDs, you would be better off with iDVD or just using Windows DVD (I do it in Bootcamp). I expected better when comparing to Roxio Ultimate on Windows…