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When friends or family members you haven’t seen in years suddenly show up at your front door, the proper thing to do is invite them in, find out whom they’re married to these days, and then reminisce about old times over a tall glass of Guinness. What you don’t do is drag out a two-ton box full of photo albums and Super-8 tapes and bore your company to tears, like you might have done before the digital era drop-kicked that kind of coma-inducing behavior into obsolescence. That might still work for your computer-illiterate parents, but this is a different time, and you’re much more likely to have your memories and adventures preserved as digital bits scattered all over your hard drive. In the back of your mind, you keep meaning to organize your digital photos, home movies, and even your epic music collection, and wouldn’t it be rad to mash them together? After all, a home-brewed DVD with a custom soundtrack and visual effects would dazzle your friends and relatives in ways a simple photo album and unorganized video can’t.
This is where fully fledged media suites come into play. They not only help you organize and spice up your digital collection, they’re also capable of converting music and videos into formats better suited for portable devices, like your handheld game player, smartphone, or tablet. Today’s media suites are all about managing and manipulating your content so you can view it whenever, wherever, and however you want, and not simply burning to disc like you did in the 1990s.
To help you choose the right one, we rounded up three of the biggest, most popular media suites around: CyberLink Media Suite 9 Ultra, Nero 11 Platinum, and Roxio Creator 2012 Pro. Each one brings a barrelful of tricks to the digital party, so we narrowed our focus to the tasks you’re most likely to use over and over again. Specifically, we’re testing for Blu-ray/DVD/3D playback, DVD/Blu-ray burning, basic video and photo editing chores, and transcoding. Is there a suite that stands head and shoulders above the others? Let’s find out!
Comparing media suites isn't easy. Each of the three suites in this roundup comes with a laundry list of features and bullet points, and it really starts to get overwhelming when you consider that each of the individual programs included within each suite has its own list of selling points. This chart compares the three on a macro level, skipping over most of the features that apply to all three suites—like making DVD backups, for example—and focusing instead on differentiating features that actually matter to the end user. Are you rocking a touch screen? Roxio is the only one with a mode specifically for touch screens. Is overburning important to you? Nero does it; the others don't. This isn't by any stretch an all-inclusive list of features, but it does reveal some key differences that could play a part in your decision to drop a wad of cash on one suite over the other.
| Nero 11 Platinum | CyberLink Media Suite 9 | Roxio Creator 2012 Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blu-ray Playback/Burning | Y | Y | Y |
| 3D Support | N | Y | Y |
| System Backups | Y | Y | Y |
| Overburning | Y | N | N |
| Photo Tags | N | Y | N |
| Social Media Integration | Y | Y | Y |
| Touch-screen Option | N | N | Y |
Comments are closed on this article
CatherineMcClarey
January 18, 2012 at 7:28pm
What I currently use:
Scanning - the software that came with my Brother inkjet all-in-one;
Editing scans & digital photos - BookScan Enhancer (which came with the Brother all-in-one) first, then ArcSoft PhotoImpressions 5 (originally came with a standalone scanner I had; have since bought another copy; prefer this to ArcSoft's current version of this program);
Gameplay video capture - CamStudio 2.0 (a freebie, but perfectly adequate for old DOSBox games and old Windows games without a lot of animation);
Video editing - Serif MoviePlus X3 (cheap because it's an older version, but runs fine under Windows 7, and with superb tutorials); Any Video Converter (free version; converts CamStudio's AVI files into more compact FLV files, which are much quicker to upload to YouTube); and YouTube's own online video editor (much more limited than Serif's program, but occasionally useful for fixing something that's already been uploaded to YouTube).
I'm currently looking for a video capture program which can handle newer, more animation-heavy PC games. I wouldn't mind paying for a good program that would do what I need, but simply can't afford hundreds of dollars for a full version of Camtasia (f.ex.). What would be some less expensive alternatives?
tony2tonez
January 17, 2012 at 5:13am
opening up the maxpc homepage, and seeing a pic of that big eye scares the crap out of me.
Sentinel137
January 16, 2012 at 6:59pm
I would like to say Thank You all for the cool articals and reviews, I pay close attention to articals like above and give some of them a run but come up with the same issues you guys have come across, I would like to see more Vidio reviews thats for sure,, Gordon, where are you,, Back up on stage you go,, Really groove your hardware reviews,,
Sentinel137
January 16, 2012 at 6:47pm
In the Free apps should be added Hand Brake,,, I tred Media Expresso, Does not hold a candle to H,B, inless you have the newest hardware to run the soft ware,,,
Engelsstaub
January 17, 2012 at 3:44am
I love Handbrake.
One thing to know: The FFMPEG AAC encoder used on the Windows version sucks bad (you need AAC audio to encode videos compatible with iPods/iPhones and Zune HDs.) This isn't the Handbrake dev's fault. They can only use what's available to them on that platform. Handbrake for Macintosh is not affected by this as it uses Quicktime and CoreAudio for AAC encoding. The QT encoder is well-tested and documented to provide transparent audio encoding at low bitrates. (I think Nero's encoder is supposed to be decent as well but I have no experience with it and it is not included in either version of HB.)
That's no single reason to blow money on new hardware or switch platforms (if you're a Windows purist.) It's just good to be aware that the encoder is less than ideal for certain types of encoding.
Sentinel137
January 17, 2012 at 8:47am
Now a Days Mostly people are tring to get there DVD / Blue rays down to store on there Iphones or back ups on there home hard drives, This is where HandBrake really shine through, And so I rather save the money to get one of those 6 or 8 core cpu's just to let HanBrake grind through those encodes a hole lost faster, It take my old 9770 cpu approx 25 mins to convert, With AnyDVD at that same amount of time to strip and rip to harddrive, Blueray strip and rip little longer but ok, Other software is like take a nap and wait,,,
for Photos and so on, Picasa 3 suits me just fine,,
AETAaAS
January 16, 2012 at 2:57pm
Have to agree with the last segment. At over $100 each, I'd look high and low, probably making some sacrifices along the way to save that cash. Plus not being forced to use a prescriptive suite of programs, but cherry pick what suits you best is a bonus. :p
While most of the video editors worth talking about are paid for, I'd like to put foward Paint.NET as a good, free 'semi-advanced' photo editor that gets me by and Media Coder for video transcoding onto my phone (because I must have 2 pass encoding :D).
