Roxio Creator Software Review

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Product Review

Review Provided by : PCPro

Ever since CD and DVD burning facilities were first included in Windows, companies such as Roxio and Nero have been searching for other ways of convincing us to buy their software. Their answer to this tricky conundrum has been to create suites of media tools, and over the years their offerings have mushroomed into vast, sprawling - and sometimes chaotic - collections of every media utility under the sun.

Roxio Creator 2010 sees no halt to this seemingly never-ending expansion, adding a bevvy of new and sparkly-looking tools to its already huge collection. There's Windows 7 support for a start - that we'd expect to see - but the capture web video tool is more unusual. This allows you to record Flash video hosted on the web - YouTube clips, for instance - and convert those clips to a format usable on your PC or media player.

Also new, and particularly useful to the keen amateur videographer, is the ability to archive and span large AVCHD files across multiple CD or DVD writable discs. It will take some time to burn all those clips of Johnny learning to ride his bike at the park, but at least you'll be able to reclaim some of your valuable hard disk space without sacrificing your original raw clips.

Rounding off the selection of new features is support for Nvidia CUDA and ATI Stream for offloading transcoding duties onto the GPU, along with the ability to schedule and pause video conversion jobs and a tool that automatically applies ID tags to tracks recorded from internet radio.

But that's not all. The Pro version on review here also includes four extra applications, in addition to the pile included under the Creator 2010 umbrella. SoundSoap SE lets you remove noise from audio tracks. SonicFire Pro 5 allows fine control over the matching of music and soundtracks to your video clips, with the SmartSound plugin offering a selection of generic, royalty-free tracks.

Lightzone is a usable, and surprisingly powerful, way of applying lighting effects to photographs, with extra exposure tools available to those who shoot RAW images. There's also a backup tool, plus the ability to edit video directly on Blu-ray BD-RE discs and author Blu-ray discs. There's also the potential to play back Blu-ray movies, though you'll have to purchase a plug-in to do this.

And all of this comes in addition to the already broad selection of media tools. There's a decent video editing app (much better than Nero's equivalent), which not only lets you edit multiple video and audio tracks, but also boasts support for a good selection of HD file types, including AVCHD. You can also upload to YouTube direct from your video projects, while CineMagic will create movies for you automatically.

Other video tools include label and CD-insert designers, and a useful drag and drop converter. Simply drop files onto the latter for conversion to your chosen portable device and, as long as you've configured it with the correct profiles and file target locations, it makes transcoding a very easy task indeed.

For audio, there's a similar smorgasbord of applications and utilities. You get a basic audio editor, a tool that lets you create simple beat-matched music mixes, a utility for creating indexed audio books from ripped CDs and a utility for capturing and cleaning up analogue audio. And let's not forget Roxio's collection of disc capabilities, which include CD, DVD and Blu-ray burning, image creation, disc copy and DVD conversion.

It's to Creator 2010's eternal credit that the front-end feels so clean and uncluttered given that such a mass of tools and utilities lies just under the surface. But despite the clean, well laid-out hyperlink-based front end, once you start to use the suite in anger, the fact that all the tools launch in their own windows, and that the extra applications mentioned earlier don't even get a spot anywhere on the launcher, begins to grate. Our biggest gripe, though, is the way Roxio remains wedded to its own file browser dialog boxes. We'd far rather browse files using the standard Windows approach.

It's far from perfect then, but there's no getting away from the fact that Creator offers a great deal for the money. It will never rival the likes of Adobe's Photoshop Elements bundle for sheer photo and video editing power, and neither would we recommend it for beginners - its sheer breadth will soon confuse. But for those with a little more experience who want something to cover the full gamut of digital media editing tasks that doesn't cost the earth, it's well worth a look.