Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 - One Rockin' Media App! [Archive]

Zack Mahdavi

06-30-2005, 03:45 PM

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-0.jpg" /> Product Category: Software, Media Project, CD/DVD wBurning Manufacturer: <a href="http://www.roxio.com/">Roxio</a> Where to Buy: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=jasondunn-20&creative=9325&camp=1789&link_code=ur2&path=tg/detail/-/B0007XPV22/qid=1114881952/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl65/002-4565137-4504039?v=glance&s=software&n=507846">Amazon.com [Affiliate]</a> Price: $49.95 after rebates if you have any sort of competing product (without rebate it's $79.99 USD) Pros:<li>Home interface simplifies navigating around the suite; <li>Backup program can span multiple discs; <li>All sorts of utilities are included for grabbing media. Cons:<li>DVD Templates still don't look professional; <li>Program is a resource hog; <li>Photosuite and Videowave need interface work. Summary: When it comes to consumer based media creation, Easy Media Creator has been around for years to enable people to create amazing projects. In Easy Media Creator 7.5, Roxio has added some interesting programs to the bundle. Overall, Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7.5 is definitely a program that should be installed on every PC. Read on for the full review!<!> <PAGEBREAK> The Giant just got Bigger! Easy Media Creator (formerly Easy CD Creator) has always been known for packaging several useful media creation and burning applications onto one disc. In the older versions of Easy CD Creator, programs were not unified and resulted in a horrible user experience. That was the last time I had ever played with Easy CD Creator; well, until now, that is. Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 now adds several new programs to the table. These include a disaster recovery program, Backup MyPC Deluxe 6, a full-featured DVD player, Cineplayer 2, a DVD slideshow program, MyDVD Slideshow 6, as well as other useful utilities, including a program to easily capture audio, a converter that can quickly convert DiVX films to DVD, plus more. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-0.jpg" /> Figure 1: This Roxio Home window launches on startup, and it simplifies starting up a new project. With such a full load of programs available, things can get overwhelming quickly. That's why I really enjoy the Roxio Home window that pops up on startup. It simplifies things into categories, Music, Data, Photo, Video, and DVD. For example, the music category inclues labels such as "Copy Audio CD," "Create new Audio CD," and "Convert LPs and Tapes to CD." When you click on one of these labels, the corresponding program launches. I find this very simple and efficient. Moreover, if you're an advanced user who knows which program you want to launch, all the programs and tools are also listed in the home window. Creator Classic - Burn CDs/DVDs <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-1.jpg" /> Figure 2: The Creator Classic interface. Creator Classic provides the barebones requirement of any media burning package. I really enjoy how the interface is split up so that the file tree and the disc are arranged vertically rather than next to each other. It limits the amount of side scrolling necessary, which is always a good thing. Creator Classic allows you to also burn from images, including .iso and .cue. You can also make enhanced CDs, mixed-mode CDs, and bootable discs. The burn time was normal, and the program did not produce any coasters at all. All in all, Creator Classic performed the way I expected, and did a good job at hiding the unused features from the user. <PAGEBREAK> Disc Copier - Copy unprotected DVDs <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-2.jpg" /> Figure 2: The "advanced" area of Disc Copier lets you burn DVD folders. Disc Copier is Roxio's simple disc copying utility. However, it's pretty much useless if you want to back up your DVDs. This is because federal law currently prohibits tampering with encryption on DVDs. However, if you want to back up your copy-protected DVDs, there are several programs available that can make an unencrypted DVD-Video folder of your movie. This folder can then easily be burned to disc using Disc Copier. PhotoSuite - Don't bother <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-3.jpg" /> Figure 3: A program that simplifies photo editing. Photosuite allows you to edit and enhance your photos. I personally did not find this program useful. First of all, the edit controls are very basic, and most of the time, Roxio wants to edit the photo automatically. It didn't feel like I was in the driver's seat. Think of it like driving an automatic when you're used to a manual transmission. I found the photo stitch feature useful for stitching together multiple photos of one scene. The resulting photos came out very well. Photosuite also allows you to create projects using your photos. This includes creating a calendar, an invitation, or a collage. I couldn't test this feature since my review CD did not contain the necessary content to play around with these templates. There's an "Online Photo Services" feature, but "feature" is not really the word I'd use for this. I was expecting the program to automatically upload the pictures to some web service for people to review. Instead, it saves the pictures to a certain folder on your computer, gives you the location of that folder, and asks you to launch a web browser to upload the pitures yourself! That is quite ridiculuous, considering programs such as iPhoto are tightly integrated with online services. Overall, I was not impressed with Photosuite. It is in desperate need of a complete overhaul. <PAGEBREAK> DVD Builder & VideoWave - Create Video CDs/DVDs <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-4.jpg" /> Figure 4: DVD Builder is easy to use, and the menus are decent. DVD Builder was easy to use. The basic interface allows you to easily create dvd menus and select chapter breakpoints. The default menu that is shown is kind of boring, but there are many other menus to choose from. One of my favorites is the "Feature Presentation," which has a moving video reel in the background. There were only a few dvd menus available in my review copy, but several more should be available in the real product. I burned a couple TV shows with no problem. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-5.jpg" /> Figure 5: The built-in media selector is convenient, but it was very slow on my machine. One adds media to the DVD using the "Media selector", which is a dialog box that previews your images and videos. You then select your media and drag it onto the menu. However, the media selector is very slow when loading a folder with a lot of videos. It takes quite a while for the thumbnails to generate. A feature that caught my eye was Plug & Burn. It allows you to hook up your camcorder and burn straight to DVD. This feature sounds very useful, especially if you quickly want to free up a tape to record some more footage. However, I don't own a DV camera, so I was not able to test it. DVD Builder was a pleasure to use. This will be one program that I will use a lot, especially for archiving TV shows to DVD. But how do you edit your videos before burning them to DVD? That's where VideoWave comes in. Think of it as the iMovie of the Roxio suite. Having used Apple's iMovie in the past, I was not fond of VideoWave. To do each and every thing, a separate dialog box is required. For example, to add text, you have to click on the clip you want to add text to, then click the "Text" button. Next, a dialog box pops up where you type the text required. Why can't you write your text on the main window? <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-6.jpg" /> Figure 6: VideoWave is decent, but it is definitely not my favorite video editing program. If you're doing a lot of video editing, pick a different program other than VideoWave. Otherwise, you should be fine using VideoWave for small projects. <PAGEBREAK> Backup MyPC will be your hero <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/mahdavi-may05-roxioemc-7.jpg" /> Figure 7: Backup MyPC has an easy interface to backup files. Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 now includes Backup MyPC 6.0, a program from StompSoft. It is a pretty full fledge backup program that allows you to backup your files in incremental or differential modes. This way, you don't always have to make a full backup when you only change a few files. The backup files can be written to either a file on your computer or a network drive, or it can be written to optical media. Backups written to optical media can span many discs. That is very wonderful...no more spending hours to split up the backups to fit onto a disc. This program is really easy to use, and I have not had a problem with any of the backups I created using the program. Many other utilities, Conclusion Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 comes with many other utilities, which I will not cover in this review. Some of these tools include a label creator, a sound editor, a DVD video player, and a DiVx to DVD converter. If you have any questions about these utilities, please feel free to post in the forums. Overall, I am pleased with Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5. I must admit that I have been more of a Nero person, but this new version of Roxio EMC has definitely convinced me to switch. I believe that this program is definitely worth the $99. If you're looking for a media suite that can handle anything you throw at it, turn to Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5. The suite still needs some work in certain areas (especially photos), but overall, Roxio has delivered a surprisingly big upgrade in this point release. Kudos to Roxio! Zack is a computer science and neurobiology major at The University of Texas at Austin, and he is currently a software intern at Apple Computer. When he's not working or studying, Zack enjoys all sorts of gadgets and software, especially in digital media.