I remember the days when Mac OS X Burn folders were new. The general conviction back then was that Toast would die. That seemed like logical; after all, who needed a DVD-burning application when it was built-in, right in the OS? Some people still think that way, but a large number of creative Mac users prefer a burning program because such programs usually give you more control over the end-result.

Toast has been the burning application of choice for many people for some time. With each upgrade, Toast gained features, although to some (grumpy?) users, it was always too little, or Toast was too slow compared by brand x, y or z. Toast 8 Titanium was a bit faster, and incorporated a “speedometer”. That took care of most complaints, because now you could actually see Toast throttle between slow and fast performance when writing chunks of data.

Toast 9 Titanium keeps the speedometer, but it has shifted from a simple burning software towards something that can be best described as a multimedia archiving / editing / publishing solution. You can burn DVD and CD discs with Toast 9, that’s true, but you can do a lot more, ranging from burning DVDs over streaming video content directly from a connected HD camera to Toast for subsequent burning to streaming video from a Toast project to other workstations over a local network.

Relatively Fast, Very Reliable

I’ve been reviewing Toast from the days before it was called “Titanium”, and have always found it to be a good performer, although in the past not exceptional. Version 9 further progresses towards Toast being a central hub for all your CD/DVD burning needs. It now comes with a much enhanced CD Spin Doctor, the “Streamer” application which lets you stream video to your iPod, remote Mac, etc, and Blu-Ray and HD-DVD capabilities. The latter unfortunately are useless to people who want to burn Blu-Ray video projects, unless they’re on an Intel Mac using Adobe Encore to produce Blu-Ray video folders.

Toast 9 Titanium is not faster than its predecessor, so users who complain that Toast is too slow, will not find a reason to stop doing so. Toast 9, however, and as far as I can tell, is one of the guaranteed ways to get a working disc, as it focuses more on reliability than on speed. Even then, Toast 9 Titanium is no slouch when it comes to filling up your discs, but the focus is definitely on reliability; for example, there’s a feature that will try to recover data from a bad disc --with mixed results, to be honest; if you want guarantees, use Data Rescue II from Prosoft Engineering.

Toast 9 Titanium is not really a program; it’s a suite of programs. Starting with CD Spin Doctor, over Disc Cover RE, DiscCatalogMaker RE and Get Backup RE, to Streamer, the suite is aimed at providing the most complete support for disc burning. Toast 9 itself has improved looks, with a more streamlined and Leopard-like interface.

The most obvious improvement in Toast 9 is its full support for High-Definition video, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video recordings. If you have Adobe Encore on your system, you can produce the necessary Blu-Ray folders for High-Definition video production. If you don’t, you can still use the natively captured HD files --captured by, Toast itself-- and add them to Toast 9 Titanium’s Blu-Ray video project window. If you want to use Toast 9 as a quick way of creating HD content, you can’t go wrong. 

Multimedia Burning Program

You’ll get a Blu-Ray project with some basic formatting. The true power of Toast 9 in this area lies in the ability to have a program like Encore (or DVD Studio Pro, when it’s ready) create the BDMV folder and then burn the Blu-Ray disc in Toast 9. The Blu-Ray plug-in --sold separately-- does the rest.

Toast 9 clearly wants to be a central hub for multimedia projects that need to be “solidified” to some medium. For example, you can access discs from set-top DVD recorders or DVD camcorders. Toast supports these devices, offering access to the files from within its Media Browser, and you need Toast to see those files on a Mac at all. 

The Get Backup RE application appeals more to the traditional role of Toast 9 Titanium as a quick-and-dirty backup solution. Unfortunately, Get Backup RE wasn’t really ready for release. On my system it crashed too often to be useful. I personally don’t think you really need Get Backup either. Just running Toast and dragging your data to a disc for burning is in my opinion just as good as having an intermediate backup program intervene. Of course, if you want proper scheduling..., but then I think you should run a proper backup program on a regular basis, and backup to disk drives or even network attached storage.

Disc Cover 2 is Toast 9’s disc labelling program. I’m really fond of that program as it offers a lot of well-thought out features without overloading the user with unnecessary fluff. Expect a review of the full version of Disc Cover 2 in a couple of days or weeks.