aduffbrew Posted August 19, 2007 Share Posted August 19, 2007 I've used Nero CD/DVD burning software for Microsoft Windows since version 5. I've always gotten very satisfactory results. I probably don't use its features to the fullest extent. Basically, I only use it to make the occasional music CD, create photo slide shows, edit out commercials from Tivo recordings, and burn various video projects to DVD. A while back, I was enticed by the Mac Mini. It became the immediate darling in our household. iMacs and Macbooks were soon replacing our aging PCs. It wasn't long before there was just one PC holdout. I continued to use Nero on it as it was very familiar to me but I could see the writing on the wall. It was time to find a OS X replacement. Although I had upgraded to Nero 7, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase Toast 8. I found the interface strange and unfamiliar. I kept sneeking back to the PC. I realized I would never learn Toast if I could bail so easily so I boxed up the PC and retired it to the downstairs closet. For two months I struggled with Toast. I am sure it's much more powerful than I give it credit but heck if I can make my menus as slick and my Divx encoded videos as beautiful using Toast. I broke down and fished the PC out of the closet only to discover that after all that time, the power supply finally gave up the ghost. For the first time since heading off to college in... gasp... 1987, I don't own a functioning PC. In an act of desperation that would make any Apple purist cringe, I decided to try out VMware's Fusion with Windows XP and Nero. Can I just say they run better on my iMac than they ever did on my PC? And Unity really is slick! I am about ready to plunk down the cash for Fusion before the trial expires. Before I do that, could any of you make some recomendations? I'd rather not have to mess with two OSs. Am I just a Toast retard? Do the two really compare and I just don't know how to use it? Is there something else out there better suited for us Nero indoctrinated? Thanks for your input. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Ingus Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 I've used both. Always found nero harder to use so I'm just the opposite from you Have you googled Toast 8? There's tutorials on the net that could help you until you learn your way around. It took me while to learn it, but now it's very easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EFI Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 IMO Toast 8 is {censored} compared to Nero. Don't worry, your not dumb...its Toast...its {censored}. It has basic features, and could be more "straightforward" than Nero...but feature wise, Nero takes the crown blindfolded. Personally I prefer Nero to Toast, but that's just my opinon. Sadly, this is one of the software (Nero) that has no equal alternative on OS X. Your just going to have to stick with Nero on VMWare, or use Toast 8. Don't get me wrong...if a person never saw Nero, or Toast, and went for Toast...it would be a great product, no doubt, and all the basic features, such as writing/re-writing/hybrid discs/ISO mounting/burning are there....but some advanced features that are present in Nero, like WAVE editor, Cover Maker, 7.1 recording, HQ mastering, high end compression technology, etc are not present in Toast 8. Comparing Nero to Toast...is like comparing WinRAR to the default ZIP archiver in Windows XP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R2k. Posted August 23, 2007 Share Posted August 23, 2007 Toast is Nero for os x,and Nero is Nero. so... we can only hope that some day we can see Nero on os x ... every time when i must to burn something i go to windows and burn. i think i was clear .... ~R Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damesj Posted August 23, 2007 Share Posted August 23, 2007 Nero is one of my favorite burning programs. Unfortunetly Toast 8 cannot do what I want most of the time. It works great if you want to burn something quick and simple but other than that it doesnt really cut it for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
my1stmacisaHACK Posted August 23, 2007 Share Posted August 23, 2007 i want sateira on osx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Evil Posted August 23, 2007 Share Posted August 23, 2007 i believe you can run KDE under Mac natively, so perhaps you could try some burning programs under KDE like k3b, and there is even a linux release of Nero (although i never liked it as much as Windows version). Save the cost of VMWare and the resource hogs that are virtual machines! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aduffbrew Posted August 26, 2007 Author Share Posted August 26, 2007 Don't worry, you're not dumb...it's Toast...it's {censored}. It has basic features, and could be more "straightforward" than Nero...but feature wise, Nero takes the crown blindfolded. Personally I prefer Nero to Toast, but that's just my opinon. Sadly, this is one of the software (Nero) that has no equal alternative on OS X. You're just going to have to stick with Nero on VMWare, or use Toast 8. Thanks for all your replies. I think I will take some of the advice given here and stick with Nero for a little while longer. It certainly does a better job with its handling of higher resolution codex and that really was my biggest complaint. Good thing software is always improving. Who knows what will fit the bill in the future... the next Toast incarnation or, if the planets allign, maybe mac:Nero? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Ingus Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 Great news! Roxio released Popcorn 3 today! Popcorn 3 has many great new features, some of which aren't even in Toast 8. Roxio has also made the user panel MUCH easier to use. About all that Popcorn 3 doesn't do is have support for Blu-Ray discs, which the majority of people won't use or need anyway. Read more about the new Popcorn 3 in this thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrSupachicken Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 Personally I love Toast!!! And I can't stand Nero. It's pretty cool to see a difference of opinion though, I guess it means there is still a time and place with a big client base for both! Ciao. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Ingus Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 As far as Nero goes, it all depends on which version you're using. For example; last year they had a version that was very easy to use. A few weeks ago I bought a new burner and it came with the new Nero 7.0. Boy was I ever sorry that I installed it, it was very confusing to find the correct menus and was a real pain to use. Unfortunately I can't find the disc for the other (older) version. The point is that each version is set up differently, and that may be why some people like it, and others don't. When it was straight forward to use I liked it, but the version of nero I have now is the pits. Thankfully I won't have to worry about it any more because I'll be using Popcorn 3 from now on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aduffbrew Posted August 31, 2007 Author Share Posted August 31, 2007 Great news! Roxio released Popcorn 3 today! Popcorn 3 has many great new features, some of which aren't even in Toast 8. Roxio has also made the user panel MUCH easier to use. About all that Popcorn 3 doesn't do is have support for Blu-Ray discs, which the majority of people won't use or need anyway. Read more about the new Popcorn 3 in this thread I look forward to your review of Popcorn 3. VMware's Fusion works absolutely beautifully... period. While it's not quite as fast as booting Windows using Boot Camp, it's shockingly close... and a whole lot more convenient. It's so much faster than Parallels it's embarrassing. All that said, the idea of maintaining a Windows installation just for Nero is rediculous in the long term. I want a native OS X solution. My three biggest complaints with Toast are: 1. Video Quality - When compiling a DVD comprising of multiple Divx files, regardless of all the fiddling I do, the resulting video resolution is poor. Nero doesn't take my beautiful recordings and make them look like I'm playing them on an Extended Play VHS tape! I can make a DVD in Nero with 4 videos that have a much higher video quality that a DVD created in Toast with only 2 of the very same videos. "Good" is obviously a relative term when discussing video output. 2. Creative Flexibility - I don't want to be locked into predescribed templates. I couldn't figure out how to add background music to my menus or change the location of the menu selections on the screen. I do have to admit, I was concentrating more on figuring out the video quality issue and didn't mess around as much with customizing my menus and such... but with Toast's more elegant interface, I shouldn't have had any trouble figuring this stuff out, right? 3. Project Size Management - Toast offered little help in the way of usable information about the current size of projects I was working on. Sure it has that green to red swoosh and dot but I soon realized with all my fiddling, Toast was making encoding choices for me without letting me in on it. Nero tells me how much space I am using, shows me how that relates to available space on the disc, and lets me opt for shrink to fit if I don't just pair it down myself. If Popcorn can address these issues, even modestly, I am there!!! Hmm.. now that I think about it, if any of you Toast experts have ideas where I might be going wrong in my use of Toast, please set me straight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skyhighmac Posted August 31, 2007 Share Posted August 31, 2007 I read a review of the last popcorn and heard it was good. If you really want to stay with nero, vmware fusion is a good idea. You'd need to make a ~10GB partition for windows xp and empty space for any cache. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capybara Posted September 3, 2007 Share Posted September 3, 2007 BURN is free as in beer, free as in speech and it just works! [perfectly] its on sourceforge of course http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/ try it - its as good as nero imho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Ingus Posted September 3, 2007 Share Posted September 3, 2007 I look forward to your review of Popcorn 3. I ordered it last week but for some odd reason it says it won't be here till next month Will review as soon as we get it 1. Video Quality One of the new features in Popcorn 3 is that it lets you play a sample of the video, so you can see exactly what it will look like. If you need to change it you simply adjust the compression accordingly. Great feature. Even Toast 8 doesn't have it. 2. Creative Flexibility - I don't want to be locked into predescribed templates. From the screenshots that I've seen it's very flexible. You can create custom DVD menus and even use your own picture as the background. I wish they had more screenshots on their site, but I'll be posting screenshots of any screen that you need to see Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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