Roxio has stuffed its Easy Media Creator Suite with enough media-creating power to satisfy even the most technologically saavy users. With 11 (yep, I said 11) Roxio proprietary applications and a multitude of third-party utilities and applications, Easy Media Creator Suite 9 is party central for all of your media needs. A person could spend ten, 100, or 1,000 times more money to get the same buffet of tools found here. Roxio uses a simple interface to break this suite down into easy-to-use applications. The simple home screen will launch you into whatever application you need for whatever mood you're in.
All-you-can-eat apps for audio creation, organization, and editing, and CD creating
Start from the beginning: use Sound Editor to import tracks that you already have on your computer and edit them to your liking. If you are rock star wanna-be, you can record through your sound card directly into this application with good quality (44,000 kHz, 16 bits, stereo, 192 kbps). No matter how you get the tracks into Sound Editor, you can split clips, join clips, add effects, and clean up your audio. Then you can export your music to disc or to hard drive, or even your portable player (such as an MP3, WAV, or WMA player). If you want to create an MP3- or WAV-file CD, you can do that through Roxio's CD Creator which is included in this suite. If that wasn't enough, you can create a music DVD that will hold 4.7 gigs of music that can play on your DVD player.
You can transfer your groovy vinyl LPs or your awesome 80s glam band cassette tape collection into MP3s or WAV files with Media Creator. There are easy setup instructions to guide you through this process.
This suite even has an application that can capture audio from your audio card. There is very little loss in the sound quality. If you're playing music from the Internet, you are one click away from capturing it to your hard drive.
There is a third-party application that can create ring tones for your cell phone. You just import a music file, put in your cell phone carrier and phone information, click Send, and listen to your favorite songs when your phone rings.
Video capturing, editing, publishing, and authoring
Do you want to save some of those old video memories and publish them to the Web or create a DVD? Not a problem with Easy Media Creator Suite. You can capture video from your camera or video recording device or import videos that you already have on your hard drive. Again, Roxio hits it out of the park by giving you all sorts of options to work with video. This suite is Blu-ray compatible and you can output your work in HD as well.
One of the Suite's strengths is that you don't have to be in your fourth semester of computer science in order to figure out how to quickly make creative projects. You can make a quick Blu-ray disk, a quick DVD of your photos and multimedia files to play on your television, a quick DVD of your videos, and even a quick music video with Cinemagic. If you are an intermediate video editor, you'll find that you can do basic solid video editing with VideoWave.
VideoWave is for entry-level video editing. It is a non-destructive video capturing and editing program on the level with other applications that cost much more. VideoWave has a bundle of effects and transitions for you to make professional-looking videos. You can input your favorite TiVo moments and burn them to a DVD. You can also capture from HD camcorders. Your output selection can be widescreen or full-screen. You can add or extract audio from your projects. VideoWave gives you a lot of great options to make professional-quality videos.
A full photo organizer and editor
Do you get the idea that Roxio wants you to click their icon first before any other one on your computer? Easy Media Creator also has a photo organizer and editor built right in. It is called PhotoSuite. You can import photos from your digital camera or your hard drive. Once these photos are imported, you can edit them with a host of editing capabilities.
If your photo just looks bad and you are not sure what to do, just hit AutoCorrect. The program will decide what needs to change. You can crop your photos, take the redeye out of photos where your kids look like demons, change the brightness, and even add special effects to your photos. Then, to show off your new photos, you can create a slideshow and put it on to a DVD, the Web, or on your computer.
A media management center for playback in creation of music
Roxio has included a media management center that nears the same level as Microsoft Windows Media Center. This media management application has the ability to play all of your organized DVDs, music files, and photos. It also has the ability to search your local network to act as a "server" to play any video or music files, or even view photos that are available on your network. If you share files from multiple computers (under the UPnP protocol), Roxio has the ability to find them and play them. The interface is very user-friendly. With large easy-to-read and easy-to-pick options, the media management center within Roxio is a powerful tool to replace much more expensive applications.
Backup utilities that allow you to save your hard work to CD, DVD, or external drive
Roxio Easy Media Creator includes a backup utility called "Back up MyPC" to backup all your files either to a hard drive on your computer (internal or external) or a CD or DVD, depending on how much information you need to back up. This quick utility allows you to have peace of mind that the work that you spent your valuable time on will be saved. You even have the option to save your system files. You can do a complete backup of your computer with this utility.
A ring tone creator for your cell phone
This suite includes a third-party application called "XingTone ring tone maker." You can take any music file on your computer and turn it into a ring tone for your cell phone. You can even edit the ring tone with fades and other effects. You can make unlimited ring tones for your phone with this utility.
I'm getting pudgy just contemplating all of these applications
If you haven't figured it out, I've just described hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars of software applications that are included in this suite. Roxio continues its legacy of being a one-stop shop for media creative types. They have filled this bundle with incredibly practical applications that allow you to take full control of all of your media on your computer, for the incredibly low price of $79.99. If you have a media project, check out Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9.
What's Hot: The generous amount of apps in this suite is hot. It is all you need for media creation and adaptation. Check out the home screen (see screenshot) and listen to all that's included in this heaping bundle:
Roxio Applications:
Like baseball, hotdogs and Intel, Roxio brings back the classic CD Creator and burning application. Remember the days of dragging to disc? Well, they're still here. You can burn a data disc; a multimedia disc to hold photos, videos, and music; and bootable discs (for those of you who actually do make legal copies of operating systems); You can back up to DVD or CD, and label the disk.
Photo Suite 9 lets you organize and edit your photos with ease. Roxio sets the bar high for its competitors. The suite includes this application, which sells by itself for $29.99.
Record Now and Xingtone are two third-party utilities included in this suite. You can make unlimited ring tones for your cell phone and capture live audio from the Internet with this utility. These two applications sell together for $49.99.
Label Creator lets you design and print CD or DVD labels, as well as the jacket labels for CDs and DVDs.
Cineplayer allows you to play your favorite DVDs on your computer with digital clarity and sound. This program retails for $29.99.
Media Manager is a complete manager of all media, even media contained on a network where UPnP sharing is available Video Wave and MY DVD Studio are combined in this Suite. They allow you to import /capture videos, edit them with numerous transitions and effects, and output them to DVD/Blu-ray media with a high-definition option. To buy them separately you would spend $119.99.
Backup My PC is also included in this Suite. All the hard work you put into your media can then be backed up for peace of mind. This sells separately for $49.99
I'm no math major, but I can see a deal. If you are to buy these applications separately, you would spend over $275. That would be if you only went with Roxio brand names. If you went with other software companies, you could spend thousands of dollars to buy the same processing power that is found in Roxio's Easy Media Creator Suite 9 for $79.99.
What's Not: Seriously, if you're like me and you have ADD, you're in big trouble! I can sit down and open this application and be completely overwhelmed by the amount of things that I can do. Do I want to edit a video or create a ring tone for my cell phone? Do I want to capture some audio off the Internet or edit the photos from my last party? Wanna go ride bikes?
What's Hot: The Easy Media Creator Suite took over 25 minutes to install. I got the idea that there was a semi-truck load of files that were being loaded onto my hard drive. It just gave me the feeling that I was getting my money's worth. I installed it to in a 32-bit Windows XP environment and a 64-bit Windows Vista environment. Under Windows XP, the suite works flawlessly. It auto-uninstalled the old version of Roxio that I had on my computer and replaced it. The Video Wave application did a hardware test on my computer as well. It alerted me to upgrade my video driver. I found no problems whatsoever with this suite working in the XP environment. It is a bit of a resource hog when running the Video Wave application, enough so that video sometimes plays back choppily. I would suggest at least 1GB of RAM, even though the website says the minimum requirement for memory is 512MB.
What's Not: Although Roxio claims compatibility with Vista, I found that certain applications within the suite didn’t work well on my 64-bit version of Vista. When I captured video from my Canon DV camera running Video Wave, the application froze and forced me to do something I haven't consistently done since Windows 98: reboot my computer! The application completely locked up, and I tried to end it with Process Explorer; I couldn't even get it to respond to that. After my reboot, I opened Video Wave again, only to find that the captured video was missing multiple frames and would not play back on my computer. That seemed to be the only application within this Suite that did not work with 64-bit Vista. I emailed Roxio only to find out that the Suite "should be compatible with every version of Vista." Thanks for that tasty bit of information, Roxio.
Also, when you load the software, be aware that it loads three applications into your Startup folder. I cannot stand memory parasites. Thank Redmond for msconfig.exe.
What's Hot: As stated before, this suite is chock-full of features. Here are some that I may have missed.
When capturing video in Video Wave 9, the audio is piped through to your speakers by default. No longer are the days of captured video being only heard on the video camera speaker. This is nice when trying to figure out the quality of audio that is on your video shots.
There is a "pre-roll" option in the audio capture application. This means you can be capturing audio even before you hit record. You can adjust the amount of pre-roll time. This allows you to hear the song that is playing on Internet radio, decide whether or not you want it, and then record it.
You can quickly transfer music to your iPod, PSP, or mobile phone.
You can extract soundtracks from live concert DVDs for use in your own personal videos.
You can easily rip audio CDs into the formats MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, FLAC and more. You can then open those music files in Sound Editor to put on effects or voiceovers, or mix them together for your own personal jock jam. You can also add smooth transitions and automatic volume adjustments for studio-quality sound.
You can automatically add title, artist, and genre information to your audio files--even those captured from Internet radio or streaming music services.
Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9 is so incredibly filled with features that I'm not sure I would have any suggestions. There is always room for more effects and transitions in the video editing software. There would also be room for more effects in the audio editing software as well. Possibly the only thing missing would be an entry-level web development application. But for an entry-level software suite, Roxio is in a league of its own.
Have you ever run across one of those deals where you wish you would have made the purchase but you didn't? If you're looking for an entry-level media software suite, I hope I can help you avoid that frustration. I'm not exactly sure how Roxio is making money on this software suite, but they are selling it. Again, this suite is a one-stop shop for all of your media needs. If you want to catch a company going against the flow and actually giving you more than your money is worth, stop and pick up a copy of Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9.