In Search of the Suite Spot: 3 Media Creation Packages Face Off

Posted 01/16/2012 at 2:33pm | by Paul Lilly

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Roxio Creator 2012 Pro

Proof that a bundled photo editor doesn't have to suck

The way we see it, $130 is a big investment for software, even a fully loaded media suite. So once we resign ourselves to spending a jester’s ransom for a chunk of computer code, the very last thing we want to see is a banner ad on the main screen proposing we drop another 40 bucks into the till, yet that’s the first thing Roxio does as it tries to hawk a USB capture device for converting video from VHS, Hi8, and V8 to DVD. But hey, you’ll save $10 off the list price, so there’s that. With a little digging, we discovered you can remove this and other solicitations by heading to Tools > Preferences and unchecking the box that offers to “Display relevant production information and offers from Roxio.”

Roxio commits the cardinal sin of trying to upsell customers, who have already spent $130 for the flagship suite, on more media related products. Thankfully, you can turn off the annoying banner ad.

First impression out of the way, Roxio quickly gets to work atoning for its money-grubbing introduction. The main menu isn’t as sleek or slick as CyberLink’s, but it’s just as straightforward and easy to navigate. A total of seven frequent tasks appear on the home screen so you can jump right in and copy a disc, burn an audio CD, or edit video, among other things. On the left side of the menu are five additional tabs to choose from—Data/Copy, Video/Movies, Music/Audio, Photo, and Learning Center—and each one brings up a new set of options.

Roxio is the only media suite in this roundup to give any serious consideration to photo editing. It’s not nearly as robust as Photoshop, GIMP, or even lower-level consumer editors like Photoshop Elements, but where CyberLink and Nero offer only a bare-bones editor, the one built into Roxio offers quite the expansive toolset. The basics are there, like red-eye removal and color enhancements, but so is an advanced tool that’s slightly similar to Photoshop’s awesome spot healing brush for removing blemishes from photos. There’s a wrinkle removal tool to help you stay one step ahead of father time, and another one for touching up scratches, although both of these are little more than glorified blur brushes. A second tab introduces more editing utensils, including a cloning tool we didn’t expect to find. One of the most useful items is a customizable touch‑up brush with nearly a dozen different uses. You can stroke parts of your photo to turn it black and white or apply certain effects like lighten, darken, sharpen, soften, desaturate, and more. You’re able to fine-tune each brush, as well, adjusting the size, edge fading, and transparency level. On top of it all, Roxio provides a plethora of special effects, clip art, frames, and other items so you can tap into your inner Rembrandt (or Picasso, as it were).

It's not Photoshop, but you can do much more with your photos in Roxio than you can with CyberLink or Nero.

You can also convert 2D images into 3D in a variety of formats, including anaglyph (old-school blue-and-cyan glasses) and both side-by-side (Nvidia 3D Vision) and top/bottom stereoscopic configurations. What’s more, Roxio affords a bit of fine-grain control over how the final image will look. Don’t fret, tweaking a 3D image isn’t as complicated as it sounds, at least not in Roxio. You start by opening a 2D image in Roxio’s 3D Photo Creator. The photo you select is automatically converted to 3D, but before you save it, you can adjust its 3D effect using a graphical dial in the edit window. There’s also a grayscale button, in case you find it easier to work your 3D mojo without color (this is just for editing—it won’t save your photo in grayscale), and a crop tool. When you feel you’ve leveled up your 3D editing skills and are ready for a bigger challenge, Roxio provides a second method for creating 3D photos by letting you select independent images for both the left and right eye. In other words, it won’t be long before you start driving your family nuts by insisting they hold a pose while you take multiple shots from different angles. Stay still, Bobby!

Creating a DVD movie is just as easy, albeit harder to find because the option is not clearly labeled on the main menu. Whereas there’s an option to “Create 3D Photos” on the Photo tab, there’s no “Create 3D DVDs/Movies” under the Video/Movies tab. To get to it, you click “Create DVDs” and then you can select either 2D or 3D. There are two options for 3D movies, standard definition (DVD) and high definition (AVCHD Blu-ray). Both support anaglyph and a wide range of stereoscopic formats.

Whether you’re editing a 2D or 3D movie, the process is fairly straightforward and easy. Roxio uses a storyboard format in which you drag videos, photos, and music to wherever you want them to appear in your timeline. There’s an option to stabilize video, and a whole bunch of special effects and transitions to spice things up. If you want to take the lazy route, another option is to have Roxio automatically edit your videos by choosing from a set of themes, but the results are often hokey.

Roxio makes it incredibly easy to fetch a video from YouTube and convert it to your Android tablet, or just about any other mobile device.

Many of Roxio’s abilities come with an advanced option, and that includes ripping music. Clicking Rip is the fastest way to get the job done, but selecting Rip-Advanced gives you access to higher bitrates. Roxio supports a medley of audio codecs, including AAC, AC3, FLAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, OGG, WAV, and WMA.

Transcoding video is equally versatile and virtually dummy-proof. It’s not quite as streamlined as CyberLink’s program, but there are a plethora of device profiles to choose from, both by type (tablet, smartphone, etc.) and brand. Unfortunately, while you can edit any of these profiles, you can’t save the changes or create custom ones. You can, however, pull source video from online sites like DailyMotion, YouTube, and, ahem, other types of Tube and convert them to your specific device.

Roxio isn’t as slick as CyberLink, and it lacks features like face tagging and overburning. But it’s easy to use and is the only media suite of the bunch to include a photo editor that doesn’t feel like an amped‑up version of MSPaint.

Roll Your Own

How to create a media suite from free apps

Our DIY mentality doesn’t just apply to hardware and building PCs, it’s applicable in the world of software, too. Each one of these full-fledged media suites will set you back a Benjamin or more, and one thing they all have in common is that each is really just a collection of individual programs served on a pricey platter—some more elegantly organized than others. If you’re willing to give up certain premium features and don’t mind managing multiple applications on your own, it’s entirely possible to put together a low- or no-cost home‑brewed media suite of your own. Consider this your penny-pinching cheat sheet.

Overcoming the Blu-ray Blues
Getting a Blu-ray movie to play on your PC for free is tricky, though not impossible. There just aren’t many free players out there, and if you find one, be careful—it might be a rebadged (and unauthorized) version of a paid program (i.e., pirated). In most cases, your Blu-ray drive or BD-equipped PC should have shipped with a lightweight player. If it didn’t, or if you bought your system used, you can either pay a small premium for a dedicated player app, or rip your Blu-ray and view it on VLC (free, www.videolan.org) or any media player that supports MKV (Matroska) file formats. MakeMKV (free, www.makemkv.com) is a popular program that decrypts and rips Blu-ray discs to MKV, though you’re technically circumventing copy protection here. As long as it’s for fair-use backups, we don’t have a problem with that.

Forget Windows Media Player, VideoLAN's VLC player will play just about any media file you throw at it, including MKV files.

Burn, Baby, Burn!
Again, your optical drive should have shipped with at least an OEM version of Nero or some other disc burning software, but if not, there are plenty of free alternatives to do the trick. And if you’re using Windows 7, you can burn CDs, DVDs, and BDs without any third-party software, including ISO and IMG files. Alternately, both CDBurnerXP (free, www.cdburnerxp.se) and ImgBurn (free, www.imgburn.com) work well.

Photo Finish
Whether you’re looking to touch up a photo by adjusting the brightness and removing those evil-looking red eyes, or you want to go crazy with layers and an advanced toolbox filled with virtual utensils, there’s a free photo editor out there tailor-made just for you. For the former, Google’s Picasa 3 (free, www.picasa.google.com) is a no-cost editor nearly identical to the one built into CyberLink’s Media Suite 9 Ultra. It’s great for making quick edits and even shows a histogram and camera information. Another option is Photoshop. No, not the über-expensive photo editor, but the online version (free, www.photoshop.com), where you can store, edit, and share photos at no cost.

For professional-level editing, GIMP (free, www.gimp.org), is a free, open-source alternative to the mega-version of Photoshop. It’s arguably just as powerful and fleshed out, and you can do some amazing things in GIMP, once you've learned the interface.

Picasa isn't as powerful as GIMP, but it's nowhere near as complicated, either. For quick-and-dirty edits, Picasa is hard to beat.

Lights, Camera, Action!
If you’re rocking a copy of Windows 7, Microsoft’s Windows Live Movie Maker (free, www.microsoft.com) is sufficient for basic video editing with transitions and other effects, but it’s not a high-level editor by any means. Alternately, Avidemux (free, www.avidemux.org) and VirtualDub (free, www.virtualdub.org) are both general-purpose editors with a wider range of codec support, but they’re a bit intimidating for less savvy users. There isn’t much middle ground here, and this is one of the areas you sacrifice by rolling your own media suite.

Rip It and Rock Out!
Ripping your gnarly collection of audio CDs to MP3 format so you can listen to those old-school Beastie Boys beats on your media player is easy. But ripping archival-quality MP3s from CDs? That takes a little more work than those one-click solutions you’ll find in Windows Media Player and iTunes. If that’s something you want to do, you’ll need an audio grabber—Exact Audio Copy (free, www.exactaudiocopy.de)—and the LAME MP3 encoder (free, www.lame.sourceforge.net). Once you’ve gone and grabbed those, point your browser to our online guide to ripping high-quality MP3s.