Digital Home Thoughts: Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 - One Rockin' Media App!

Disc Copier - Copy unprotected DVDs


Figure 2: The "advanced" area of Disc Copier lets you burn DVD folders.

Disc Copier is Roxio's simple disc copying utility. However, it's pretty much useless if you want to back up your DVDs. This is because federal law currently prohibits tampering with encryption on DVDs. However, if you want to back up your copy-protected DVDs, there are several programs available that can make an unencrypted DVD-Video folder of your movie. This folder can then easily be burned to disc using Disc Copier.

PhotoSuite - Don't bother


Figure 3: A program that simplifies photo editing.

Photosuite allows you to edit and enhance your photos. I personally did not find this program useful. First of all, the edit controls are very basic, and most of the time, Roxio wants to edit the photo automatically. It didn't feel like I was in the driver's seat. Think of it like driving an automatic when you're used to a manual transmission.

I found the photo stitch feature useful for stitching together multiple photos of one scene. The resulting photos came out very well.

Photosuite also allows you to create projects using your photos. This includes creating a calendar, an invitation, or a collage. I couldn't test this feature since my review CD did not contain the necessary content to play around with these templates.

There's an "Online Photo Services" feature, but "feature" is not really the word I'd use for this. I was expecting the program to automatically upload the pictures to some web service for people to review. Instead, it saves the pictures to a certain folder on your computer, gives you the location of that folder, and asks you to launch a web browser to upload the pitures yourself! That is quite ridiculuous, considering programs such as iPhoto are tightly integrated with online services.

Overall, I was not impressed with Photosuite. It is in desperate need of a complete overhaul.