Roxio Toast Video Player

[Merchon]

THe Video player does not work well for TiVo HD files. If you attempt to fast forward or rewind you will get the spinning beach ball and the app will eventually stop responding. Also an anoying feature is that when you set the video to full screen and then go to another monitor the black video controller hud flashes on and off very quickly.

[tsantee]

What Mac do you have? My 3.33 Ghz iMac isn't having any trouble with a 1920X1080 Tivo transfer. I can scroll quickly. (I'm viewing actual size, not full screen). If I drag the playhead to a future spot there is about a 3-second delay during which the spinning ball appears. My guess is it wouldn't perform nearly as well on my older MacBook Pro. In that case I'd choose a smaller window size to improve its performance.

[mathwhiz]

I agree with Merchon on the inability to fast forward or scrub Tivo HD video. I'm on a plenty powerful iMac 2010 i7 16GB and operating from high performance RAID storage via eSATA. There is no issue with power or capability of this platform, but there is a serious issue for me with Roxio Video Player.

[tsantee]

I agree with Merchon on the inability to fast forward or scrub Tivo HD video. I'm on a plenty powerful iMac 2010 i7 16GB and operating from high performance RAID storage via eSATA. There is no issue with power or capability of this platform, but there is a serious issue for me with Roxio Video Player.

Curious that your experience if different from mine. Are you viewing actual size or full screen?

[Merchon]

I am using a 3.4ghz iMac. I am watching the video in full screen on a second display.

 

I have tried this on 3 macs (mini, macpro, iMac), all do the same thing.

[tsantee]

I am using a 3.4ghz iMac. I am watching the video in full screen on a second display.

 

I have tried this on 3 macs (mini, macpro, iMac), all do the same thing.

Makes sense that you're having this trouble, then. It does work fine at actual size on the built-in display for me but that's different than what you're doing.

[mathwhiz]

Curious that your experience if different from mine. Are you viewing actual size or full screen?

 

Primary display at actual size. And I should point out that this problem didn't exist on the previous version (Toast Titanium 10 Pro). With version 10 I could scrub HD Tivo video to my heart's content with no hint of a problem...

 

It would be helpful if everyone would pony up their specific processor and graphics identifiers, since we're all on fairly current iMac hardware. Mine's a Mid-2010 (iMac11,3) 2.93GHz i7 16GB with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024MB VRAM.

 

Not sure what's causing this, but I do have another iMac on the way (2011 i7 16GB) and plan to see if the problem persists.

 

P.S. - You told Merchon that it “makes sense you're having this trouble...”? Well, I'd say that's quite a jump in troubleshooting logic. It solves nothing, but it's just a difference between working config and not working... As I said, I could scrub to my heart's content at version 10, and this was in either actual or full screen sizes. Yes I wasn't up on a second display, but I've seen no tech note calling this illegal or unsupported. If you have, I'd certainly like to know...

Edited May 24, 2011 by mathwhiz

[tsantee]

Primary display at actual size. And I should point out that this problem didn't exist on the previous version (Toast Titanium 10 Pro). With version 10 I could scrub HD Tivo video to my heart's content with no hint of a problem...

 

It would be helpful if everyone would pony up their specific processor and graphics identifiers, since we're all on fairly current iMac hardware. Mine's a Mid-2010 (iMac11,3) 2.93GHz i7 16GB with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024MB VRAM.

 

Not sure what's causing this, but I do have another iMac on the way (2011 i7 16GB) and plan to see if the problem persists.

 

P.S. - You told Merchon that it “makes sense you're having this trouble...”? Well, I'd say that's quite a jump in troubleshooting logic. It solves nothing, but it's just a difference between working config and not working... As I said, I could scrub to my heart's content at version 10, and this was in either actual or full screen sizes. Yes I wasn't up on a second display, but I've seen no tech note calling this illegal or unsupported. If you have, I'd certainly like to know...

As you know Roxio completely rewrote the video player. The previous one was from ElGato and this one is their own. Being new it could still need more refinement. In your case I'd find a way to continue to play the HD TiVo transfers with the earlier player. For instance, move the Toast Video Player application from inside of the Toast 10 application package so it is a standalone application on your Mac. Launch Toast Video Player and use Open to access your videos in the TiVo Transfer folder or control click on those videos in the Finder and choose Open with....

 

What I should have written is that it makes sense that we can be experiencing different results given that we were doing different things. You are correct that it doesn't make sense for the new version to fail to perform as well as the earlier version. My iMac has the ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card with 256 MB of vRam. It is the 21" screen. I have a 20" second display I use for Photoshop work so I'll take a look at it there to see if I have the same problem you're experiencing. Maybe your new iMac will have the ability to use "VideoBoost".

 

Addendum: I've now had a chance to view the 1920x1080 TiVo video on my second monitor using both Toast Video Player and Roxio Video Player. You are correct that the scrolling is flawless with the Toast Video Player and not very responsive with the Roxio Player. I was able to launch the video from the Finder in the Toast Video Player by control clicking and choosing Open With.... I still have Toast 10 on the Mac so that option appeared among the choices. So that seems to be the way to go for you until this is hopefully fixed in a Toast 11 update.

 

I didn't notice much difference in the responsiveness when using the second monitor compared with the iMac screen. Everything worked the same except dragging the playhead was even less responsive on the second monitor. The longest I had to wait for play to restart was probably three or four seconds. It would be impossible to use the playhead to find a specific scene with the Roxio Video Player as it is now.

Edited May 24, 2011 by tsantee

[mathwhiz]

Actually I was unaware that Roxio deep-sixed the ElGato player in favor of their own...

 

Thanks for the great suggestion. If it works (...can't think of why it wouldn't), I'll have a working product again.

[Merchon]

So is roxio ever going to fix this problem? It still exists and I am using the old version of the video player. Great support for an other wise crappy product. This is definatly my last version that I will be buying.

 

Merchon