Back when Roxio’s product was called
Easy CD Creator, it was a favorite among
enthusiast disc-makers, but over time it
became bloated and buggy, allowing Nero
to gain traction. Knowing this, it’s hard not
to perceive a hint of one-upmanship in
Easy Media Creator 10. This suite offers a
whopping 29 individual apps to Nero’s 22
(whether that’s a good thing depends on
your uses for such a bounty).
Furthermore, EMC 10 is actually certi-
fi ed for Vista, for whatever that’s worth. (As
in Nero, the suite’s individual apps certainly
performed reliably enough, even in Vista’s
64-bit mode.) Also, EMC 10 offers two
sidebar gadgets (versus Nero’s one): Audio/
Video Converter, which you set up with your
preferred profi les, and Audio Capture, for
recording Internet radio via your soundcard.
Furthermore, metadata such as tags and
ratings created in EMC 10 are integrated
with Vista’s media tools and vice versa.EMC 10 outdoes Nero in other ways as
well. In its PhotoSuite, for example, you’ll
fi nd an even greater array of editing options
and support for layers, as well as templates
for a number of photo projects (calendar,
collage, card, etc.). EMC’s movie-creation
app, MyDVD, also packs more effects and
transitions than Nero’s; its video editor, on
the other hand, is equal to Nero’s, sporting
a timeline for editing video footage and sup-
port for two audio tracks.
The area of movie-creation actually
serves as a good example of why EMC 10’s
total app count is so large. Besides MyDVD,the suite also offers MyDVD Express—an
unnecessary simplifi cation of an already
straightforward program. You also get
CineMagic, which lets you drop in video and
audio, select a theme (e.g., Memories), and
then sit back while a movie is instantly cre-
ated for you, complete with a cheesy theme-
related opening and music that perfectly fi ts
the length of your footage. In other words,
there’s something for every experience level
here. And to this end, Roxio does a decent
job of integrating compatible apps for seam-
less use with one another and providing
clear instructions and help fi les.
Still, we were disappointed with the
DivX-to-DVD creation we made in MyDVD.
We merely added a static menu to the start
of our video, but the resultant disc was
unplayable in EMC 10’s own playback app,
CinePlayer. The menu froze at the title, and
we couldn’t bypass that screen to access
the movie itself. This happened with two
different discs. Interestingly, the discs
played fi ne in a set-top DVD player. Their
image quality, however, was noticeably
inferior to that of the disc we made with
Nero (same source material, similar menu,
same procedures).
EMC 10 redeemed itself with competitive
performance in its Copy & Convert program.
To test it, we fi rst shrank the contents of a
double-layer commercial DVD containing
episodes of a TV show to fi t on a single-layer
disc. The transcoding/encoding took a little
more than 17 minutes (the same as Nero),
the video quality was acceptable, and the fi le
contained all the elements of the original—
distinct episodes, menus, everything.Like Nero, EMC 10 eases you into the app-stravaganza with a categorized front end.MyDVD offers a respectable, easy-to-use tool for creating movies.54 MAXIMUMPC | APR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
Roxio Easy
Media
Creator 10
A suite that makes Nero 8 Ultra
seem svelteROXIO
NERO
vs.