Easy Media Creator 7.5

Nero and Roxio have been locked in a competitive square-dance for years, and we’ve given both companies’ capable disc-mastering suites our Kick-Ass award in the past. But the upgraded modules within Easy Media Creator 7.5 tilt the suite in a direction that may make choosing between the two easier than it has been previously.

In most applications, Nero Ultra Edition and Easy Media Creator remain equals. Although we prefer Easy Media Creator’s extremely calm, plain-English interface to Nero’s SmartStart front-end, that’s an issue of personal taste rather than technological advantage.

Common disc-authoring tasks such as data and audio CD creation could hardly be improved upon from previous iterations, so Roxio keeps competitive with power-user features like support for bit-setting (which lets you “tag” burned DVDs as DVD-ROMs for higher compatibility with PCs and set-top players) and integrated support for HP’s fab LightScribe disc-labeling technology, which requires a LightScribe-capable optical drive.

Easy Media Creator 7.5 offers a very useful Divx-to-DVD module, which converts MPEG-4 compressed video to the DVD-Video format and burns the files to a DVD that will play automatically when placed in a PC or set-top player. This isn’t a unique feature in a disc-mastering suite, but it is unique in that it didn’t choke on any of the Divx or Xvid files we threw at it.

Another welcome addition to the suite is the Backup MyPC utility, which extends beyond the applications bundled with other suites and matches the power of Nero’s own backup utility feature-for-feature, including scheduling and incremental backups. Roxio also shored up its audio-editing application. Now it supports multi-track editing and includes wizards for recording and cleaning up audio from records and cassettes.

But Easy Media Creator one-ups Ultra Edition in video editing. The VideoWave module makes short work of chopping and presenting video, placing titles, adjusting letter spacing, and adding transitions. The real power lies in the timeline view, where simpletons can create entire videos with edited clips, background music, and titles. Were it not for VideoWave’s propensity to lock up during clip edits, we’d be much more enthusiastic.

There is one other annoying drawback to Easy Media Creator 7.5. In order to update the suite, which you ought to do whenever updates are available, you must register the product. This is irksome; even though sharing your e-mail address with other companies is exclusively opt-in, we’re annoyed that we have to provide personal information to receive bug fixes. When we attempted to update our copy of Easy Media Creator on one machine, we were turned away because it detected a serial number from a prior installation. Why? To make matters even worse, the auto-updater proceeded to crash. Thanks, Roxio!

Because of the ridiculous registration policy and the VideoWave instability, we are withholding a Kick Ass award from this otherwise fine package.

Ultra Edition and Easy Media Creator are still neck-and-neck in their features and ease of use, but the two suites are moving in subtly different directions; Ultra Edition is moving toward making once-exotic features like network media streaming and video compression simple enough for technophobes, while Easy Media Creator moves toward integrating video editing for the mainstream. We hope Roxio improves Easy Media Creator’s stability and takes a big step forward in its next revision; nonetheless, it’s a power-user’s suite in newb’s clothing.
—Logan Decker

SNOOZES: Wildly comprehensive suite; Divx-to-DVD is a snap; very easy to use.

STOOGES: Mandatory registration, and video editing app is somewhat unstable.

Month Reviewed: August 2005
Verdict: 9
URL: www.roxio.com

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