Toast 11 for Mac - Have they improved TiVo support?

8190 Views 16 Replies 12 Participants Last post by wizbang_fl, Jan 2, 2012

cautionespn

Discussion Starter · Mar 8, 2011

Has anyone grabbed the latest version of Roxio's Toast?

I currently use iTiVo to download video and then use Elgato TurboHD to encode for AppleTV and finally iFlicks to tag the video for iTunes.

Over the years, I have created quite an archive of video. I would dearly love a solution like that provided by Roxio, but in Toast 10, the encoding is severely crippled. HD video (either 720p or 1080i) is downconverted to SD quality. I'm hoping the new version supports at least 720p encoding.

Any information on the new Toast would be greatly appreciated!

1 - 17 of 17 Posts

SandDune

· #2 · Mar 8, 2011

According to this page:

http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/compare.html

The TiVo support in Toast 11 is neither New nor Improved. In other words we get the exact same feature set we had with Toast 9 (and mostly the same as Toast 8) without even any bug fixes. Sure wish that TiVo has picked a different partner other then Roxio at this point.

Andrew

Phantom Gremlin

· #3 · Mar 10, 2011

I just don't understand why anyone would want to reward a company like Roxio with their money. It's an abusive relationship. Just search here for tales of woe. Roxio takes your money and gives you very little in return!

There are plenty of free programs available. They are discussed heavily in this forum. There are also companies that sell similar programs; reward those instead of the company that has utter contempt for TiVo users.

About the only thing that Roxio does that might be useful is "authoring". I don't know if there are free alternatives, because I don't create DVDs.

qz3fwd

· #4 · Mar 10, 2011

cautionespn said:
Has anyone grabbed the latest version of Roxio's Toast?

I currently use iTiVo to download video and then use Elgato TurboHD to encode for AppleTV and finally iFlicks to tag the video for iTunes.

Over the years, I have created quite an archive of video. I would dearly love a solution like that provided by Roxio, but in Toast 10, the encoding is severely crippled. HD video (either 720p or 1080i) is downconverted to SD quality. I'm hoping the new version supports at least 720p encoding.

Any information on the new Toast would be greatly appreciated!

TivoTransfer works flawlessly for my 3 S3's.
Editing-well go use Parallels / VideoReDo.

tj722

· #5 · Mar 18, 2011

There's still the same problem I've had with the previous versions of Toast: Metadata is lost when you automatically export transferred TiVo recordings to Toast. When the video files make it to iTunes, the show names are like "The_Simpsons_Episode_Title_Extra_Info" so you have to manually go in and modify the information before syncing to portable devices. There are numerous threads over in the Roxio forums so they've known about it but refuse to do anything about it.

I've tried using other free solutions but I've had unacceptable audio sync issues. The Toast encoder may produce lower resolution but the audio sync is much better.

It's such a mess -- I can't believe TiVo accepts this as a valid solution.

javabird

· #6 · Mar 18, 2011

cautionespn said:
Has anyone grabbed the latest version of Roxio's Toast?

I currently use iTiVo to download video and then use Elgato TurboHD to encode for AppleTV and finally iFlicks to tag the video for iTunes.
!

I've used iTivo to download, edit out commercials, encode and import directly into iTunes in one step on my Mac. No extra steps.

I've also used Tivo Transfer to easily download and convert to iTunes. I'm considering upgrading to Toast11 because it includes the ability to transfer video back to the Tivo.

sac84371

· #7 · Mar 18, 2011

javabird said:
I've used iTivo to download, edit out commercials, encode and import directly into iTunes in one step on my Mac. No extra steps.

I've also used Tivo Transfer to easily download and convert to iTunes. I'm considering upgrading to Toast11 because it includes the ability to transfer video back to the Tivo.

Toast 10 has the ability to transfer video back to Mac. It is called Mac2Tivo. I use to use it but now use my Apple TV for that function.

solutionsetc

· #8 · Mar 18, 2011

Toast is a worthless product on the Mac platform, and has been for quite some time. You can author much nicer DVD's using iLife (included on every Mac), and burn data disks directly from the OS and Disk Utility. The only it brings to the table is BluRay and AVCHD support… and they charge *extra* for that.

There are free third party tools such as iTivo and KMTTG that work well, and without the resolution limits of Toast (which are ridiculous), and PyTivoX is infinitely more stable than TiVo's own "Desktop" prefPanel (which is a joke) and more versatile as well.

Roxio and TiVo are actually a pretty decent fit in the sense that both companies seem to care little about improving existing functionality, instead choosing to search elsewhere for a magic formula that might restore relevancy to a stale (and in Roxio's case, even obsolete) product.

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Welshdog

· #9 · Mar 19, 2011

I just tried iTivo and mencoder maxed out the CPU in my & Macbook Pro. I noticed that the date on mencoder is really old. I checked and there is not a newer version. I wonder if it doesn't play nice with Snow Leopard?

I have Toast 9 and it works fine, but it doesn't let you create a Quciktime from a Tivo show. Any other apps I could use for that?

tj722

· #10 · Mar 20, 2011

solutionsetc said:
Toast is a worthless product on the Mac platform, and has been for quite some time. You can author much nicer DVD's using iLife (included on every Mac), and burn data disks directly from the OS and Disk Utility. The only it brings to the table is BluRay and AVCHD support and they charge *extra* for that.

There are free third party tools such as iTivo and KMTTG that work well, and without the resolution limits of Toast (which are ridiculous), and PyTivoX is infinitely more stable than TiVo's own "Desktop" prefPanel (which is a joke) and more versatile as well.

In my experience, both iTiVo and KMTTG have produced files that have major audio sync issues. I've yet to find a Mac solution. PC users have tools to correct the audio sync issues (such as QSFIX) but so far, Toast has been the only encoder that has worked for me. And if it weren't for the meta data issues, Toast would be acceptable - yes, the resolution is inferior, but on the iPad it's not a big deal.

mgudites

· #11 · Dec 23, 2011

tj722 said:
In my experience, both iTiVo and KMTTG have produced files that have major audio sync issues. I've yet to find a Mac solution. PC users have tools to correct the audio sync issues (such as QSFIX) but so far, Toast has been the only encoder that has worked for me. And if it weren't for the meta data issues, Toast would be acceptable - yes, the resolution is inferior, but on the iPad it's not a big deal.

Sorry for reopening an old thread, but wanted to hear if anyone has had any further luck with a Mac solution?

Same issues for me...kmttg is completely useless (audio sync issues), and iTivo plain didn't work for me.

I really don't understand how at this point in the game, TiVo still doesn't have some sort of real solution for iOS. Being able to watch your recorded TV shows on iOS devices should be a no brainer.

qz3fwd

· #12 · Dec 24, 2011

mgudites said:
Sorry for reopening an old thread, but wanted to hear if anyone has had any further luck with a Mac solution?

Same issues for me...kmttg is completely useless (audio sync issues), and iTivo plain didn't work for me.

I really don't understand how at this point in the game, TiVo still doesn't have some sort of real solution for iOS. Being able to watch your recorded TV shows on iOS devices should be a no brainer.

iOS devices dont have hardware decoding of files Tivo records and their processors cant handle it ir would suck down the battery, plus youre gonna stream 18 mbps through wireless?

mgudites

· #13 · Dec 24, 2011

No...there should be a good way of downloading recordings to the computer, the computer encodes them, and drops them into iTunes for syncing to iOS devices.

javabird

· #14 · Dec 24, 2011

mgudites said:
Sorry for reopening an old thread, but wanted to hear if anyone has had any further luck with a Mac solution?

Same issues for me...kmttg is completely useless (audio sync issues), and iTivo plain didn't work for me.

I really don't understand how at this point in the game, TiVo still doesn't have some sort of real solution for iOS. Being able to watch your recorded TV shows on iOS devices should be a no brainer.

The nice thing about Roxio Tivo Transfer tool was that it was a no-brainer to use on the Mac--the UI was intuitive and you could transfer and encode and drop into iTunes, drop-dead simple. iTivo no longer works successfully for me since upgrading to Lion, and kmttg has been taking me a LOT of fiddling to get successful results. I also agree about the audio sync issues with the free solutions. I've been considering upgrading to Toast 11 but have been putting it off because it's so pricey.

javabird

· #15 · Dec 24, 2011

... and I don't think I should have to run Windows on Parallels on my Mac just to find something that works...

moyekj

· #16 · Dec 24, 2011

With the inclusion of ProjectX in recent releases of kmttg the "QS Fix" task now can run on a Mac and should fix any A/V sync issues that previously required VideoRedo to fix.

wizbang_fl

· #17 · Jan 2, 2012

I had the same problem when I used the integrated transfer to itunes. When I transfer the files manually the metadata isn't lost. But I agree with the group, Roxio seems to time their updates with the new OS release from Apple. Mac2Tivo is a poor solution pyTivo is much better and allows you to stream instead of having to wait for the entire program to transfer to the Tivo.

1 - 17 of 17 Posts

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