Fun with Toast 6 with Jam 6

[Frobozz]

I received the new Toast 6 with Jam 6 (T6wJ6) late yesterday and here are some of the things I've learned about it.

It comes with a version 6.0.4 of Toast. This version has a couple new features.

In the Audio tab there is a new DVD Music Album option. When you select it you are given the choice of PCM or Dolby Digital audio. There also is a new autoplay check box. I made a test DVD Music Album and this is a winner. Read the FAQ at Roxio's site to learn more about this.

In the Video tab there is also the choice of PCM or Dolby Digital audio and autoplay when you select DVD. I did a test with a muxed MPEG 2 file that had PCM audio and Toast encoded the audio to Dolby Digital AC-3. The same happened when I used separate m2v and AIFF streams. Toast does not convert mpeg audio to either PCM or Dolby Digital, however.

Jam 6 now can burn audio CDs directly without having to use Toast. It has marvelous cross fade features and can read AC-3 audio (along with many other formats). It is bundled with Bias Peak Express 4 for audio editing and includes a couple special VST plug ins for Peak. Jam 6 can also easily be used with other audio editing applications (I have Sound Studio). There is a preference setting where you select what audio editing application you want a track to open in from Jam 6.

The other change is that the Motion Pictures application is now version 1.0.4 rather than 1.0.3. I don't know what the change is but it may be that large number of custom export settings for both video and audio formats.

All in all, if you don't plan to use the new features of T6wJ6 don't bother with this upgrade. If you do want those features you won't be disappointed.

[Frobozz]

I've learned some more about the new autoplay feature on Toast 6.0.4 that accompanies Jam 6.

The autoplay works only with DVD recording, not SVCD or VCD. Naturally, it means that a DVD starts playing the first feature when inserted into a DVD player or when DVD Player is launched. When the first feature is done the image freezes briefly before the second feature begins playing automatically. It's about the same as when a commercial movie changes disc layers.

This means a person could make a continuous playing DVD using Toast 6.0.4 made up of multiple video files. The individual files also are accessible in the title menu.