A descendant of Roxio’s Easy CD Creator, Easy Media Creator 10 by Roxio offers a CD copying option but only allows you to copy non-protected CDs and DVDs. The program has numerous other capabilities. The suite seems designed to put all the tools you need to manage your digital life into one software application. Basically, Roxio took all of their individual media creation, format conversion, and disk burning applications and bundled them into Easy Media Creator 10. It is a general disk authoring tool whose programming code has been rewritten to be windows vista compatible and well as still fully supporting windows XP.

Features

Disk Copying - This program allows the user to easily copy data, audio, photo and video CDs and DVDs including Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks. It has the capability of spanning multiple disks so you can copy movies without needing to use compression and lower the video and audio quality. While the quality of the copy is excellent, the program only allows copying unprotected disks.

Video Compression - the software allows video compression to permit copying the DVD-9 format onto a DVD-5 blank disk.

Catalogs - Easy Media Creator 10 automatically catalogs and tracks disk content even after removal from the drive.

Scheduling Backups - the software allows the user to schedule unattended backups of your system and can encrypt the data and/or password protect the backup disk.

Audio - the software includes an audio editor that allows you to edit and record audio tracks, add multiple sound layers, apply filters and effects includes support for VST effects. The program can convert audio files into other formats and lets you add professionally designed menu templates to your DVDs. In fact the program automatically converts audio files to Dolby Digital format before burning them to a disk.

Easy Audio Capture lets you configure a predefined volume level and file format for any audio input, such as a webcam microphone or the auxiliary input from a sound card. It can also split out the audio from a video file. Probably the most controversial use of this feature is to capture streaming music from internet radio stations.

Video - the video editor allows the user to perform up to 32 overlays with audio and text tracks to your project using the VideoWave timeline which can allow even a relative novice to create complex, professional quality CD and DVD disks. It includes technology called Smart Sound to enable the user to add a soundtrack to a movie or slideshow that will perfectly sync up with your project to match the flow of the slides or mood of the video scenes.

CineMagic is a feature that is geared toward novices who want to create a professional quality production with fancy graphics and transitions by loading a sequence of video clips. After the user is finished loading the clips, CineMagic will automatically generate the production.

Mobile Devices - Easy Media Center 10 has a built in cell phone doctor that optimizes photos for display on a cell phone screen using a feature called Mobile Photo fit. There is an additional feature that allows auto synchronization to permit transferring music, photos and video from PC to mobile phone and back. The user can configure specific file formats for each mobile device. The media manager will automatically transcode incompatible formats to the specified formats.

YouTube - the software allows you to upload your video to YouTube with a single click of the mouse while in the media manager. All you have to do is provide user id and password.

iPod - the software allow you to copy audio, ringtones, movies and TV shows from and iPod.

User Interface

Installation - the program is easy to install and requires little configuration to use the basic features.

Navigation - The main screen for creating a music CD is shown below. As you can see the buttons are pretty self explanatory and should be easy for most users to understand.

Embedded Help File - Some topics in the embedded help files such as the Roxio LP and Tape Assistant have step-by-step instructions that make it easy to perform a complex task. Other topics like Roxio Media Import rely on a Windows help file that assumes the user understands all of the technical terms.

Conclusion

There is no built-in playback for Blu-ray orHD-DVD, no conversion of HD video files into the DVD compatible AVCHD format. While you can burn and retrieve data backups with Blu-ray and HD DVD disks, you can’t create disks that are compatible with standalone Blu-ray and HD-DVD players.

The biggest downside is the inability to burn copy protected DVDs. Many of today’s movies are CSS-encrypted and Sony ARCCOS protected. As a consumer, I want to be able to make backup copies of all the movies I purchase, not just the ones the manufacturer didn’t copy protect.

While the program has many nice features and should appeal to the avid YouTube and mobile phone crowd, there are enough negatives that, in my opinion, makes its approximately $100 cost unappealing.