The main premise behind Roxio's Creator is to take care of just about every multimedia need you might have. This includes burning discs, editing video, tweaking photos, backing up data and more.

Now on its ninth version Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9 brings with it a host of new features.
All tools can be accessed direct from the clutter-free Home screen. Roxio has decided against using flashy graphics and instead gone for a more text-based menu system.

Navigating through the options is simple. Eight sections are available: Audio, Backup, Copy, Data, My Media, Photo, Video and Tools. Clicking a section reveals further options, which are explained in more detail in the right pane.

The Audio section is home to applications such as the Jukebox (for playing all manner of music files) and a simple utility to convert audio CDs to mp3 and other formats. Should you have any vinyl or cassette tapes that are slowly getting covered in dust, the Convert LP and Tapes option will come in handy.

Aside from setting the recording levels and adding in periods of silence between tracks, there aren’t many additional features, but it’s certainly a useful tool to have. An interesting new audio feature is the ability to record internet radio stations while disabling all system sounds, thereby preventing your favourite track being ruined by a 'you've got new mail' jingle.

Video editing is taken care of by VideoWave 9. This lets you add transitions, special effects and menus while also providing a timeline for you to organise various clips into a full movie. It also provides tools for image editing and will burn the finished products to DVD. However, neither the photo nor video tools will impress those who looking for total control of their projects, but for the average home users it will suffice.

Roxio has included support for mobile devices in a number of utilities, allowing you to convert video for compatible iPods, the Sony PlayStation Portable and most mobile phones. As well as formatting video, it will also resize images and send them direct to your portable device. Should you want to irritate the general public, Xingtone Ringtone maker is also bundled in.

Although high-capacity HD-DVD drives are very thin on the ground, Creator 9 includes HD-DVD support - something that would come in useful when backing up large amounts of data. Blu-ray (the rival to HD-DVD) support isn't currently available, but Roxio expects to release an update patch in the future.

During testing, we found Creator Suite 9 was sometimes more than a little sluggish at loading not only the main homepage, but also the various applications. We were using a PC with an Athlon 3200+ processor and 2GB of memory, so were hoping for it to be a little faster. It's not a huge problem, but one that may start to frustrate if you use the program a lot.

Despite its occasional slow operation, we can't deny that Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 is a hugely powerful software suite. It covers just about every media task you'll ever need to perform and, despite its mammoth proportions, is reasonably easy to get to grips with.

At £60, you're getting amazing value for money.

Also consider
Pinnacle Studio Plus 10 Titanium Edition
Verdict: Not half as many versatile tools as Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 but those new to video editing have even more compelling reasons to choose Pinnacle's Studio with this tenth version
Rating: 4/5
Price: £70

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