How Does One Learn The Basics?

[TK_Tech]

I need help with the basics. Toast 11 didn't come with a manual and the tutorials only

covers the main highlights; however, I want to learn how to use this other topics in

detail. How to use the Menu structure in detail? What does Creating Temporary Partitions

do and why are they there? What is Dynamic Writing? Encryption is used for what?

What is Disk Images used for? What is Normalize Track, Bin/Cue? Etc...?

Where can I go to learn about every single detail of Toast 11? There must exist an owners

manual somewhere and web sites that explain some of these topics.

If anyone can help me, it will be much appreciated.

TK_Tech

[ogdens]

Here's a start, you must have missed this on the Toast main forum page http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/72245-tips-tricks/

[tsantee]

Some of your questions can be addressed by searching the Web for the key words you asked about in your post. Many of those are not specific only to Toast. There isn't a comprehensive Toast manual. Toast Help provides instructions for doing most things.

 

There are many reasons to choose Save as Disc Image. What this does is create a file on your hard drive that when "mounted" looks the same to the Mac as if the burned disc is inserted. This lets you check out the contents (such as playing a DVD-video with DVD Player) before burning to a disc. It also makes it easier to make more copies of the disc at a later time.

[TK_Tech]

Thanks - Ogdens, Tsantee for your replies and tips. However, I think it is ashamed that there isn't a

convenient location or manuel to learn about these topics in detail. I tried using Help but to no avail.

I will read the tips - tricks and search the web generally for some of these topics and also visit this

discussion group often. I guess, through osmosis one will become competent with the software.

-TK_Tech.

[theoldarchiver]

What does Creating Temporary Partitions do and why are they there?

A partition is a logical volume with disk-like features. One could create a temporary partition in preparation of burning an archive disc. It creates an empty disk image that is writable. Arrange your files in there as you see fit. Then burn from that. It allows you to set any Finder setting as for a normal disk, like default views. If you want ultimate control of the arrangement.

 

What is Dynamic Writing?

Write to an optical disc like to any drive (HD or USB flash), with any app or the Finder. Toast only supports this for BD-RE discs. Also known as (incremental) packet writing.

 

Encryption is used for what?

DVD encryption on commercial movie discs is different from optional encryption on Mac-only discs. Both are for content protection. Mac-only disc encryption writes a password protected file to disc, which can be opened after entering a password.

 

What is Normalize Track?

Audio levels can be normalized so that all tracks appear to have the same loudness. This can be handy when audio tracks come from different sources, and thus may have a different default loudness. (E.g. a compilation music CD.)

 

Bin/Cue?

Bin/Cue is a disc image format that consists of two files, foo.bin and foo.cue. Both are needed. Originates from CDRWin, afaik. The .bin file holds the content of the disc and the .cue file holds meta data and the like. Windows users may prefer it for multi-track discs, instead of .iso . With Toast, now you can use those files and even create them, if needed.

 

Where can I go to learn about every single detail of Toast 11?

These forums, the Toast help file, and Wikipedia/Google for the more general keywords.

[Derek Dean]

When I click "Help" on the Toast menu bar, it brings up a Toast 11.pdf User's guide (146 pages of very useful information). If for some reason you need the .pdf User's Guide, just send me a message with your e-mail and I'll send you a copy.

 

I'm a new Toast user, but I've been burning discs for 10 years, and let me tell you, it's as much an art as it is a science, and mainly, it requires time and patience, so plan on spending some time learning about all the options Toast 11 has to offer.

 

A "disc image" is one of the things you should learn about from the first.

 

A disc image is simply a file that you create from all the assembled material that you are going to burn, but instead of clicking the Burn button, you go to the File menu at top left of the Toast Screen and select "Save as disc image". This creates a file on your computer which behaves just like a disc.

 

This serves two purposes. First, because the disc image behaves EXACTLY like a burned DVD, it lets you preview how your disc is going to look, without having to waste a disc. So, if you have any problems, or don't like the way it looks or sounds, you can go back and change things around to get them the way you want it. Of course you have to redo the "Save as disc image" each time you make any changes, but that's better than wasting a disc each time.

 

It's important to note that in order to view the disc image, you have to treat it just like any external hard drive, that is, it needs to be "mounted", and you do that by going to the Toast menu bar and under the Utilities menu select "Mount disc image", then you can view it with your Mac DVD player, or the Roxio player. When you are finished, be sure to "unmount" the disc image. You can do this several different ways. Most players have an "eject" button, or you can drag the disc icon over towards the trash (which will turn into an Eject button), or use the actual Eject button located on the top right menu bar of the Apple screen, or eject the disc image from the finder.

 

Second, once you've created a disc image you like, you can then burn multiple copies from that disc image without having to go back and start from scratch each time. Neat.

 

The other thing I found helpful was to go ahead and invest in a couple of high quality Verbatim re-writable discs, one BD-RE DL (dual layer, 50 GB) Blu-ray disc, and one DVD-RW disc. Then, when I've got my disc image the way I want it, I do a test burn onto the re-writable disc, and if that plays ok on my external player then I'll go ahead and start making copies on regular Blu-rays or DVDs.

 

Yes, it's a bit of work, but I've gotten very reliable and repeatable results. Good luck, and have fun .

[TK_Tech]

Thanks Theoldarchiver and Derek Dean for your input. Derek, I went to the help menu in Toast and indeed found the manual for

Toast. I appreciate your plain "down-to-earth" discussion about the use of Disk Images and the reasoning for Mounting and

Unmounting. The tip about the burning of BD-RE DL and DVD-RW discs first makes a lot of sense. Thanks Again!

 

Oldarchiver, your discussion was a bit more advance; however, I understand your explanation of Encryption and Normalize

Track, but of Logical Volume, Bin/Cue, and Dynamic Writing, I am going to have to read the manual and get back to you

with short dialogue of my understanding of these topics. You can then give me a grading on it. Thanks Again for your time!

[tsantee]

I can help with explaining Dynamic Writing. When using a rewritable Blu-ray disc you can treat the disc as if it is a flash drive or hard drive via this feature in Toast. This means you can keep writing and deleting items incrementally. Personally I don't know why anyone would want to do this because I find it is faster and more convenient to use a flash drive and the Finder to write and delete files.

 

Dynamic writing isn't available for DVD or CD media on a Mac except, possibly, with specialty backup software such as Retrospect.

 

As for Logical Volume, your Mac's hard drive is a logical volume. You can use Toast to create virtual small volumes on your hard drive. Toast calls this a temporary partition. This can be useful when making certain kinds of multi-platform data discs. When you add files to the temporary partition they are copied the same as if you added them to a blank flash drive.

 

I've never bothered to learn about Bin/Cue. If you are into mastering audio CDs it might be useful to know.

[TK_Tech]

Thanks again Tsantee, your explaination of Dynamic writing is excellent! Now for Logical Volume, suppose that I want to

put together a Blu-ray disc that will be composed of data from multiple sources (eg. Video camera, flash drive, VHS player, etc.),

I would gather the data in a Logical Volume (a temporary partition that Toast creates on the hard drive) and then organize the

Logical Volume to my liking and then once satified burn that Logical Volume to a Blu-ray disk. Is this a basic understanding

of the function of Logical Volumes? I will be looking forward to your reply. Thanks - TK_Tech.

[tsantee]

Thanks again Tsantee, your explaination of Dynamic writing is excellent! Now for Logical Volume, suppose that I want to

put together a Blu-ray disc that will be composed of data from multiple sources (eg. Video camera, flash drive, VHS player, etc.),

I would gather the data in a Logical Volume (a temporary partition that Toast creates on the hard drive) and then organize the

Logical Volume to my liking and then once satified burn that Logical Volume to a Blu-ray disk. Is this a basic understanding

of the function of Logical Volumes? I will be looking forward to your reply. Thanks - TK_Tech.

That's pretty much how to do it. If you want the layout to appear in a certain way on the disc you need to unmount the temporary partition before mounting it again to burn it to disc. When I create a temporary partition on my Mac Toast writes a .toast file in my Documents folder. When that is mounted I have the disc icon in the Finder into which I can drag anything I want up to the space available. To burn the disc select the .toast file using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.

 

This is appropriate when burning data discs to be read on computers.