Is Toast 10 What I Need?

[toddwilliam]

Hi,

 

I'm a iMovie fanatic who is looking for a better option to burn my movies onto standard DVD discs and find that Apple's iDVD just isn't getting the job done to my satisfaction.

 

I shoot video on a consumer level HD camera. It looks fantastic on my computer screen after being edited in iMovie. Then, when I burn it through iDVD, and play it on my large screen HD TV, it looks like crap. It loses the brilliant colors, appears faded, blurry, almost a "film" like appearance.

 

So, I'm looking for a product that will allow me to continue to edit in iMovie, but burn onto a standard DVD, so it can be played through family and friend's normal DVD players (not Blue Ray), and onto their large screen HD TV's.

 

Can anyone tell me if I'm barking up the right tree with this product? Will I be able to see my iMovie productions looking better, burned through this product versus iDVD?

 

Thanks so much for any feedback.

 

Todd

[davidcc1]

Hi,

 

I'm a iMovie fanatic who is looking for a better option to burn my movies onto standard DVD discs and find that Apple's iDVD just isn't getting the job done to my satisfaction.

 

I shoot video on a consumer level HD camera. It looks fantastic on my computer screen after being edited in iMovie. Then, when I burn it through iDVD, and play it on my large screen HD TV, it looks like crap. It loses the brilliant colors, appears faded, blurry, almost a "film" like appearance.

 

So, I'm looking for a product that will allow me to continue to edit in iMovie, but burn onto a standard DVD, so it can be played through family and friend's normal DVD players (not Blue Ray), and onto their large screen HD TV's.

 

Can anyone tell me if I'm barking up the right tree with this product? Will I be able to see my iMovie productions looking better, burned through this product versus iDVD?

 

Thanks so much for any feedback.

 

Todd

 

Have you tried changing the encoding preferences in iDVD from Best performance to Professional Quality?

[tsantee]

Are you shooting your video in widescreen (16x9) mode? This is very important for the video to look good on a HDTV.

 

How long is your video? Toast does not need to compress video as much as iDVD for videos longer than 60 minutes because Toast has Dolby Digital audio while iDVD uses uncompressed audio. The uncompressed audio takes up a lot of space on the DVD so the video must be more greatly compressed, thereby losing quality.

 

Toast has an excellent MPEG encoder and has the option for the user to adjust encoding quality. At a consumer-price level Toast is as good as it gets. What you don't get with Toast is motion menus or audio with menus. Toast does work easily with iMovie by accessing your iMovie projects via the Toast Media Browser.

 

You can purchase Toast as a download from Roxio's site and request a refund within 30 days if it is something you want to return.