cd burning
Latest
Roxio's Toast 11 offers improved import, iLife browsing, more
Everyone's favorite media toolkit, CD- DVD- and (heretical) Blu-Ray burner and breakfast food (apart from porridge) has turned the volume knob up to 11 with the latest version of Roxio's Toast. The update aims to allow you to take more or less any piece of media in any format and transform it to use on almost any device anywhere you like. Toast 11 has been re-designed from the ground up with a new interface which, say Roxio, "we believe users will find modern and intuitive." There's a new tutorials section with videos and step-by-step PDFs to guide you through Toast's sometimes impenetrable interface, new presets for producing video in a suitable format to watch on your iPhone, among other devices, and 'Videoboost' to speed up H.264 video conversion. "Toast 11 adds many requested features such as recording to multiple drives simultaneously, a streamlined product update mechanism, and the ability to save custom video profiles, which is very useful for those that are often converting video for a particular device," says Roxio. "The latest version now also offers built-in features for directly uploading media to social networking sites such as YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook." Other new features include the ability to capture, save, and convert Web-based video content, disc spanning, one-click backup of HD camcorder footage and TiVo-to-Go support. [via MacUpdate]
Roxio announces Toast 10 at MacWorld
Toast is the granddaddy of CD burning apps nowadays, an act that itself has become relatively obsolete (between iPods, internet radios, FM tuners, and streaming services, do we even really need to put media on a physical format anymore?). Roxio isn't sitting back with their software, though: they've released Toast 10 at MacWorld this week, and they are doing their best to stay on your Mac, whether you use your CD burner or not. They added streaming back in Toast 9, but 10 brings with it the ability to extract and control almost any sound or video that comes through your computer, from DVD footage to web video, exported out to TiVo, your Mac, your iPod, or anywhere else that plays it. The app is available right now on the website for $79.99 (after a $20 mail-in rebate), or they're offering a "Pro" version that comes with SonicFire Pro (that you can use to piece soundtracks together), Bias SoundSoap SE (which will wipe hums and static from recordings), FotoMagico (slideshows from pictures), and LightZone (photo editor and enhancer), as well as a plug-in for Toast that will let you author Blu Ray and HD DVD discs. All that comes together for $130 (after a $20 mail-in rebate). Whew. Despite the fact that almost no one is routinely burning CDs or DVDs these days, Roxio seems to be going all out to make sure there's still a need for Toast. [via Ars]
TUAW Tip: Disconnect Parallels CD-ROM
Yesterday I wanted to do something simple with my MacBook Pro: burn a CD. Nothing fancy, I just had a 200 meg file that I needed to give someone and there wasn't a USB drive to be found, so a CD it was. I inserted my blank CD into my MacBook Pro and nothing happened.I thought, perhaps, I had a bum CD so I tried a few more (5 to be exact). Each time I got the same result: nothing. I double checked my prefs to make sure I had 'Ask me what to do,' when inserting a blank CD, and I did.What the heck was going on?I was running Parallels, and it was being helpful by taking over the CD burner of my Mac, just in case I wanted to burn a CD from Windows. That's why it wasn't showing up in OS X! Luckily, this is a simple thing to fix. If you go to the lower right hand corner of your Parallels window you'll see a little CD icon. Click on it and the menu pictured at the top of this post comes up. Click 'Disconnect.' Boom, OS X sees your blank CD and asks for instructions.
