Toast Unable To Write Track Names & Hence Cant Make Cd Covers

[Kevin L]

I recently bought a Mac and spent what I consider a further fair sum on Toast because it was supposed to be th best CD burning programme. Trying to make an audio CD. Burn some some songs (WAV files), print a CD cover insert with the tracks. Simple, and on my old PC quick and fast with "Nero"

After several hours with Toast I have given up.

 

I cant see anyway to make the "artist" field appear in the main window. A google search revealed "this was not supported". What??

 

Tried various burns, all DAO (help files say this is the only way to burn with track names). Went through 6 CDs, none of which had track names (song information) on them, despite having checked the required bix. Tried creating a disc image and burning from that (result of another google search suggestion). Same results. Not even the disk is named. The tracks are recorded fine, but no data.

 

I go to use "Disc Cover 3". Very hard to work out how to insert a track listing. Inserted a CD recorded with track info and it couldnt pick it up. Just couldnt insert a track list.

 

With Nero, record the CD (make sure all the info is correct) then once its done open the CD cover-designer and hit "insert track list" and bang it comes up on the layout ready for any design tweaking and printing.

 

I feel I have spent a lot of money for something that either doesnt work or is so convoluted in the way it needs to be used I cant get a grip on it. Am I missing something? I cant believe it should be so hard. I especially cant believe that the artist field is "not supported"...and simple tracl lists from CDs cant be put onto a cover. Help??

[tsantee]

It is a bit convoluted but there is a workflow for getting this done.

 

1. After you've added your tracks to the Toast Audio window, click the More... button on the right side of the Toast window (if you don't see it click the Options tab at the top right). Here is where you enter the album and album-artist name when the "Disc" tab is selected and the track and track-artist name when the "Track" tab is selected. There is a button to automatically add the disc artist name to each track artists field.

 

2. To have Disc Cover 3 RE add the track names, first choose Save... in Toast to save the project file. In Disc Cover click the icon at the top left that looks like a camera. Just below that is a pop-up menu button. Click that and select "Toast" from the list. Now locate the .disc project file you saved. You'll then see the list of track titles in Disc Cover's left-side panel. Drag that list to the CD layout. There is no artist or album name in this list so you need to enter those manually.

 

3. After burning an audio CD with CD Text turned on in Toast, you'll only see that album/artist/track info appear on the Mac if that information has been entered in iTunes (so that it is written to the cdinfo database file in one of the Mac's libraries). The Mac does not read CD Text from a disc. What it does is search the online CDDB for info on a disc that matches the number of tracks and track lengths. If a match is found the information is downloaded to iTunes and written to the cdinfo file. (Sometimes the online match isn't the same as your disc's actual tracks). If a match isn't found you'll see the generic info which you can edit manually in iTunes. However, if you have used CD-Text there is a shortcut. Go to dougscripts.com and download and install the "CD Text to cdinfo" applescript. This will appear in the Scripts menu just to the left of the Help menu in iTunes. This applescript automatically reads the CD Text from the audio CD and writes the info into iTunes.

 

By the way, there is a free update to Disc Cover 3.0.6 RE available at the BeLight Software site. See the pinned post at the top of this forum where I announced the Toast 11.1 update for links to some updates to Toast-bundled apps.

[Kevin L]

Digital Guru, many thanks for taking the time to help with this.

1. The button to add the "artist field" is no help, it adds the same artist to all the tracks. So I have to add each Artist seperately, one by one, into the "title field". OK works, but not very user-friendly. I notice once you have done that you cant then "sort" the list so its alphabetical... wonder why? try clicking the "title" tab... nothing. wonder why?

 

2. OK got a track list, but no design features, No track numbers, have to add manually. no tabs, have to add manually. Adain in something like Nero and the old Easy CD creator, there were options for all this. Even down to the font and size the tracks would appear in when imported.

 

3. JUst for your info the disc burn has crashed the mac twice. Hangs at Filling RAM cache 98%... Anyway I am having a go but its very convoluted! Why is it all so difficult? Is the software just not very good? Struggling to get the script to install as well.

 

Is there any way I can just get a refund and abandon Toast completely? I dont understand why a programme supposed to be so good is so.... unfriendly. Its not like I am trying to do something difficult!

 

Kevin

[tsantee]

Digital Guru, many thanks for taking the time to help with this.

1. The button to add the "artist field" is no help, it adds the same artist to all the tracks. So I have to add each Artist seperately, one by one, into the "title field". OK works, but not very user-friendly. I notice once you have done that you cant then "sort" the list so its alphabetical... wonder why? try clicking the "title" tab... nothing. wonder why?

 

2. OK got a track list, but no design features, No track numbers, have to add manually. no tabs, have to add manually. Adain in something like Nero and the old Easy CD creator, there were options for all this. Even down to the font and size the tracks would appear in when imported.

 

3. JUst for your info the disc burn has crashed the mac twice. Hangs at Filling RAM cache 98%... Anyway I am having a go but its very convoluted! Why is it all so difficult? Is the software just not very good? Struggling to get the script to install as well.

 

Is there any way I can just get a refund and abandon Toast completely? I dont understand why a programme supposed to be so good is so.... unfriendly. Its not like I am trying to do something difficult!

 

Kevin

If you bought this as a download from Roxio they have a 30-day refund policy. I don't know what's causing your crash when burning the audio CD but I do know another update is coming soon that addresses an audio CD crash. If you have Toast preferences set for zero-second gaps rather than changing those gaps in the Audio window itself, then that is the cause for the crash for now.

 

Toast used to be bundled with Discus from magicmouse.com as the CD labeling application. You might check if that is more user friendly.

 

I don't know why it isn't different than it is.