Am I correct that I need Roxio's Toast ($80.00) if I want to burn the resulting MP4 to a CD or DVD and play it on a device that is not a computer?
Not necessarily. If you have iDVD, you can 'author'
* video DVDs from mp4 files and then burn the result to disc using the Mac's built-in burning capability
**. Obviously, you'll also need a working disc burner, which might limit the kind of discs you can burn. Details about that can be found in the burner's System Profiler entry (Hardware> Disc Burning), but most current burners will qualify.
*) In addition to managing the actual burning process, software is also needed to prepare the data by encoding or transcoding it to the proper format for playing on third party players. Where utilities like Toast stand out is in transparently offering (almost) all in a single package, as opposed to having to use different utilities in sequence.
**) As disc drives are being phased out of Macs, this built-in disc burning capability may change or disappear, but we ain't there yet.
