EasyMedia Creator 7.5 Review

Late last year, Sonic Solutions acquired the consumer software division of Roxio. With the acquisition, Sonic Solutions are in the unique position to offer consumers the broadest possible range of applications for managing, editing, sharing, protecting and being creative with their personal photos, music, video, and data.

 

Supersonic adds full-featured Sonic applications to the already solid base of powerful components in Easy Media Creator 7. These include Backup MyPC Deluxe 6, the comprehensive data protection and Disaster Recovery application; CinePlayer 2 a full-featured software DVD player and MyDVD & Slideshow 6 a fast and efficient application for creating stunning slideshow DVDs.

Additions the Suite contains

• Backup MyPC Deluxe 6
• MyDVD & Slideshow
• New LP and Tape Assistant
• Easy Audio Capture
• Enhanced Sound Editing Capabilities
• CinePlayer 2
• Disc Image Loader
• DivX-to-DVD Creator
• DVDInfo Pro
• LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling Technology Support
  Media Centre PC PVR Support
• Disc Copier Performance Improvements

This is all in addition to Roxio's PhotoSuite 7 Platinum, VideoWave 7 Pro, DVD Builder, Disc Copier, and Creator Classic, that were in the earlier release.

Of the contents, the main interest to photographers are the photo editing tools in PhotoSuite 7 Platinum along with MyDVD & Slideshow 6. Another very useful tool is the Backup MyPC Deluxe 6 which is an excellent way of protecting all those precious pictures as well as guarding against your computer failing.

In PhotoSuite 7 Platinum, there are all the editing tools you would need to enhance, crop, adjust and frame your pictures. There are also more powerful tools such as the Photo stitch feature in which it is simplicity itself to create panoramas from multiple pictures. It took a matter of minutes to create a simple project, easily managing to align the images.

		It was simple to align these two separate pictures of the same deer to get the eyes to look as though it was the same face and give a strange looking animal. Nikon D70, 70-200mm VR

The one disappointment in the package was the inability to edit photographs with the help of a histogram, but with that exception there was plenty of control.

A perennial problem with photographs is how to display them, share them with the family or relatives in other parts of the country or the world. MyDVD & Slideshow 6 is a welcome addition, making the creation of slideshows as simple as it could possibly be. This part of the package enables the photographer to select series of pictures and burn them to both CD’s as well as DVD’s, so you don’t even have to have a DVD burner as it will produce VCD’s (Video Compact Disc) with the same ease as DVD’s. In fact, we selected 30 images to try and it took longer to work out how to operate the DVD player than it did to compile and burn the disc!

The jewel in the crown of this upgraded package for anybody, photographer or not, is the inclusion of Backup MyPC Deluxe 6 which is also available as a stand-alone product.

Features include

• One-Button Restore: Restore a system in one step without reinstalling Windows
• Flexible Backup Options: Choose full, partial, incremental, differential or scheduled backups
• Advanced Compression: Powerful compression technology allows you to save disc space
• Data Security: Secure your data with password protected discs
• Data Integrity: Software automatically verifies data integrity during backup phase to ensure backup accuracy
• Flexible Storage Options: Backup data to CD, DVD, recordable and re-writeable discs, DVD+R DL discs, tape devices, network shares or external hard drive

You can see from this screen shot, the application has an easy to follow set of wizards and instructions that manage to remove all of the fear and mystique from making a full back-up of your PC’s operating system, files and data.

Verdict
Whilst the original Easy Media Creator 7 was a versatile package for the photographer, the new version with the added functionality, Easy Media Creator 7.5 Supersonic is, to all intents and purposes, the real deal. Supplied on two CDs it took about 20 minutes to load on an average PC (2 gig processor, 768meg RAM, XP) The navigation through its various capabilities is easy to follow and fairly straightforward. The same can be said of each of the suite’s individual components.

The two minor niggles that I found were, as mentioned above, the lack of a histogram in the Photosuite editor, and the fact that the whole package will only operate with a screen resolution of 1024x768 where the visually impaired (like me) may wish to use 800x600.

That aside, the package is good value for the money.

Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 Supersonic will be widely available in early April 2005.
The suggested retail price in the UK is £69.99.

Test by Ian Andrews