scapp70's Full Review: Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 8.0 Full Version fo...
I must say that I never have much luck with Roxio's products. I am never able to fully utilize all of the software's features. I have been buying each and every upgrade since 4. To pass the test for me, I must be able to
a. make CDs
b. clean up audio from cassettes and vinyl
c. make DVDs successfully
Audio
Making audio CDs is always easiest with Roxio in my opinion. Mixing and manipulating the CDs is a snap if that's what you wish to do as well. The enhancements here from the last upgrade aren't that different.
To just go into this new menu, and choose Audio is not what I'm used to. This screen gives you no options, and there's no way to choose between what you want to record. In the old format, they had data, MP3 and Audio Disc options.
Luckily Roxio kept this old format, because if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You can find it under the Data menu, and it reads, Creator Classic. So here, in this Creator Classic, there are no options for making an audio disc, but you can make your data discs obviously, and your MP3 discs, which they now call Multimedia Discs.
To make the MP3 audio CD, or Multimedia Disc is still not fixed in my opinion. I like to always put my songs in a specific order. For MP3 CDs, Roxio does not allow this. It only allows either a numeric order, or alphabetic, or a mix of the two. It's a shame because there are some nice features that I would have worked with. There is a tag editor, so you can add album art and get "official" song info when you press the button MusicID. You cannot add lyrics or notes though.
DVDs
For the first time, I decided to try to make a music DVD. The amount that this software allows you to author the disc was surprisingly plentiful. I figured; let me make a Beatles DVD. I decided on making this thing huge, so I used a double layered DVD, which means it holds almost twice the capacity (8.5 gigs) of a regular DVD (4.7 gigs).
I fit everything I had, that was precisely 676 songs. I included every Beatles album, including the three double Anthology CDs, The double At The BBC CD, and the 1 greatest hits compilation. I also included three Ringo, six Lennon, two George, and many McCartney.
This disc promised many things; I could choose to play the songs either in order, by year, by album, alphabetical, genre or play list. It allowed me to put my own images in for each song, and with the overlay, it looks really professional. In the overlay, it shows the song title, the album title, duration, genre, and year. This is what I allowed; you can put less info, or possibly more.
Now all I had to do was burn it. So far it took me three long tries, about an hour each, maybe 75 minutes. That time is not bad considering there's probably 30 or so hours of music on this one disc. One out of the three discs was somewhat successful, I was able to play about 100 songs on my DVD player, and then it would just stop and eject. The successful disc played fine on my computer, but if I tried to play song 101 or above in my DVD player, it would not allow it. The other two would not play anywhere. I am going to try and do it again, but this is the fourth dual layered DVD I have wasted if it doesn't work. I'll let you know if it works...
...it didn't. Four more wasted DVDs later and still no luck. I give up. I am going to give it one more attempt on my Ulead software just to make sure it is not the media content at fault, and that it's just Roxio to blame...
Ulead did make the DVD, but it is nowhere bear as nice as the Roxio software promised. The fact that it wasn't my files is the important thing.
I attempted to make two regular video DVDs. The first was a home movie that I had to capture with my video card software because, Roxio had problems. Wow what a surprise!
Anyway, this home movie came out really good except for a couple of noticeable little bugs that still need to be worked out.
The home movie is one constant stream of video, not snippets here and there and I feel this helped in the success of the product. But, I see in some spots where I made chapters (not all), there was a tiny hesitation that lasted only a second. Me being the video's editor, I know where I would add the chapters, so I noticed right away.
That was my only gripe with that DVD.
The second DVD I made was a collection of my favorite Ernie & Bert skits. The video came out really good, and the menus look good, but the DVD will not play all the way through.
To see each and every segment, you have to go to the menu and select the skit you want and view it, and then it returns to the first menu when it ends instead of flowing into the next segment.
The first 12 segments play fine, and then these last 17 or so will not play in a flowing manner.
Another glitch that Roxio won't fix from the versions before. They allow you to place the chapter windows anywhere in the chapter menus. They are trying to prove that Roxio allows you to author your DVDs more than the competition. The only thing is that you cannot maneuver through them after you finish the DVD. Even if you let Roxio tell you where to put the windows, you still have trouble maneuvering about the menus.
Some of the Other Stuff
The Photo section was okay at best. This section allows you to import photos into the Roxio library, and fix them. The photo manipulation consists of
~~~~~~~~Auto fix which was pretty good from what I have played around with. This brightened a dim and shadowy digital picture to a more vibrant photo. As far as I could tell, it was just the colors, brightness and tints that the auto fix fiddled with, not the sharpness.
~~~~~~~~Exposure, Saturation, Sharpness, and Red Eye all seem to be auto fixes too. If there is a manual option, I can't see it.
~~~~~~~~Transform menu just consists of rotating, flipping and resizing. Besides the resizing of pictures, I don't see much use for this area.
~~~~~~~~Special Effects menu has only three options; Black & White, Invert and Sepia. I have yet to find a reason to use these effects.
~~~~~~~~Convert/Rename seems a bit limited. Here it gives the option of renaming you photos. It also gives you the option of converting your photos to different types. You can choose bmp, jpg, gif, png, and tiff.
The one thing I found useful was the LP and Tape Assistant. I found an old cassette tape that I wanted to convert to a CD. This made it very easy for me. I finished up a sixty minute tape in about two and a half hours.
This timeframe includes recording the music to the computer, cleaning up the sound, and burning it to disc. Cleaning up the sound was done with the Sound Assistant. It could make the sound brighter, more bass, less hiss, and my favorite widening the stereo. It made a huge difference and a great improvement in the sound.
It's new software, give it a break?
I realize that there will be updates and firmware upgrades coming down the line. This review is actually based on the firmware update 8.05 from December 2005. I can't give Roxio a break. I have been blindly faithful to a product that refuses to fix their bugs. These are the same bugs that were present in the last four editions. I'm guessing that this will be my last purchase of Roxio products; we'll see when 9.0 comes out.
~~~~~For Further Reading on Roxio Disappointment from Scapp70~~~~~~~
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