 [Larger view] | Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 Digital Media Suite
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Average user rating:  | |
| Not for Beginners | |
| I used previous Roxio products and wanted software to start converting my Hi-8 video to DVD and better editing software for digital images. Also wanted to make some DVDs that combined photos, music and film clips.
I found that after hours of work I had burned a DVD that had no sound and horrible quality vido. Using this software is not easy without someone to teach you what to do. Their previous, earlier versions were much easier to use. I also find that the "Photo Doctor" often highly distorts photos and any adjustments for exposure and saturation are better manually tweeked. I find that I'm only using a tiny part of this software, because I can't figure out all the rest. Even burning CDs has proven a challenge. Very few templates for CD labels and I've yet to find a list of songs that would actually fit in the template space provided. | |
 Adequate, at best. | |
| I was the previous owner of Roxio products and was satisfied. This piece of software is, at best, adequate for what it promises. Out of the box, it cannot handle dvr-ms files the format used by Microsoft Windows Media center. Roxio has an update that is supposed to be able to handle dvr-ms files, along with other fixes, but the update has caused the software to freeze numerous times, until I eventually uninstalled it and reinstalled just the original version.
It's nice to have all the media capabilities together but you just be patient with this software. PS: Customer service is awful. | |
 Keep looking... | |
| I received the Basic edition bundled with a very nice Plextor burner. Most of my experience so far has been with the EMC 7 Capture function.
The bundle itself is truly bloatware, and loads tons of stuff that you will never use. It would be nice if places like Roxio would add a one-line description of each useless package's function, with the option to install or not after reading. Capture is the kind of program designed to be "easy", meaning you never really know what is happening. It does (mostly) capture video. However, it will hang periodically with cryptic messages, to which the only option is click "OK". Then it starts over from the beginning. The Smartscan feature would theoretically be great (you must make sure your DV camera supports this function). My cam (PV-GS200) does. However, the purpose of Smartscan is to fast-forward looking for scene codes on the tape, to let you preselect the scenes you want to capture. Unfortunately, it gets lost, a lot. Once Capture has lost its place, the only option is to start back over at the beginning of the tape. It will invariably hang at the same places, so after wasting a LOT of time and over-exercising the fragile tape, you will give up and just Capture the whole damned tape (have a very big hard drive handy). Now that you're capturing the full tape, it will hang in other places. It hates when you have fast-forwarded the tape in camera, because that causes a black frame that it cannot seem to move past. Eventually, you will find that the best option is to manually move past the spot with the controls on your camera, then start capturing from there... but you will never really know what the software is doing until its over. Never knowing what the program is doing, and having neither options nor meaningful Help when difficulties are encountered, is the recurring theme of this whole software suite. The only Help you will get from Roxio is their user forum (which is pretty good); otherwise, their idea of support is to try to get you to buy an upgrade version. I believe much of this stems from trying to make something which is still inherently complex (video capture) overly simple for some perceived grandparental audience. The problem with all the friendly screens is that they blithely assume nothing will fail. When problems inevitably arise, there is no recovery other than Start Over. You will never know where you are in a tape, where your restart begins, what happened to the video you may or may not have already captured, or what to do to manually jumpstart a stalled capture. The same look and similar issues were thoughtfully embedded in the Videowave authoring suite, although I have not had much experience with it, given that I am spending most of my time capturing and recapturing (I think). I am not sophisticated enough to recommend something else yet, but there has to be something better and I would recommend you find it instead of anything from Roxio. Their whole progression as a software megabundler has been toward sales and away from functionality (and support) and it is really a shame that a first-class outfit like Plextor had to "partner" with them. |
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