Software Review: Roxio Creator Pro 2010

Roxio Creator 2010 and Roxio Creator Pro 2010 is an optical disc authoring software product that will allow you to burn and copy CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray discs, edit movies, rip CDs, digitize analog LP, and mix playlists. It also can create photo slideshows, cards, calendars, and panoramas. It will also let you share your creations on everything from CDs to mobile phones to YouTube.

Depending on standard or pro, the Roxio Creator suite is a very comprehensive burning product as you can find. It covers all aspects of audio, data, video, editing, and just about anything else you want in a suite. I will separate what is new in both versions editions of Roxio Creator. If you want to know what it takes to run the suite, please visit Roxio for complete system requirements.

So what is new with Roxio Creator 2010?

• Faster – by almost 5 times is the improved video encoding with support for ATI stream and nVidia CUDA technology. Not only that, but with this smarter encoding, the software now only re-encodes portions of your video that have been edited and have changes. This also will take advantage of the full power of your PC’s multi-core technology as well.

• Burn and copy – disks directly on your desktop using the Roxio Burn desktop widget. Using this handy desktop widget lets you easily drag and drop files for burning right on your desktop.

• Build an iTunes library – by capturing streaming internet radio and having the ability to send it straight to iTunes. You can record audio on your PC and Creator will mute all systems sound that might occur from email notifications, or keyboard errors and allow you to capture exactly what you need.

• Backup HD camera – video and burn it directly to DVD. You can now backup an entire camera’s worth of high-definition video directly to optical media without having to take up space on your PC and it will maintain it all in the original format.

• Capture streaming web video – from sites like YouTube and record them to your hard drive. Then you can play them later. You can convert them to play on devices like your iPod or iPhone, or you can even create video compilations that can be burned to DVD.

• Improved conversions – for portable devices will let you take DVD, web, or any other video file and convert it to preferred format for playback on mobile phone, iPod, or other portable device. In case you are unsure what type of format is need for a particular device, images are presented to make the selection easier.

So what is new with Roxio Creator Pro 2010?
• Author high definition Blu-ray Discs – using the Built-in High-Def/Blu-ray Disc authoring gives you the ability to capture high-def video footage from AVCHD or HD camcorders as well as TiVo DVRs. You can create Blu-ray Discs or even standard DVDs with HD content that can be played on any standard Blu-ray set top box or PlayStation 3 game console.

• SonicFire Pro – lets you easily create complex music tracks for your videos and slideshows. You can use unique automatic Mood Mapping or select from a library of included music tracks to perfectly match your productions.

• SoundSoap SE – will automatically remove unwanted noise like wind, hissing, scratches and pops from LPs, cassettes, or almost any audio, music or video soundtrack. Through the use of an intuitive user interface, this makes advanced noise filtering easy.

• LightZone– makes it easy to enhance your photos with sophisticated features like Zone Mapping and Relight. It’s like turning on a light inside your photo.

• BackOnTrack 3 – gives you the ability to back up your entire hard disk including the operating system, files, settings and programs and protects you in case of system or disk crash, virus attack or other catastrophic failure.

I really like the new features in Roxio Creator and Roxio Creator Pro especially the increased speed, the streaming capture, and the improved conversions. On the pro side, the ability to create Blu-rays and BackOnTrack make this worth the purchase.

One feature that is a major convenience is the new smart encoding feature that re-encodes only the portion of a video that have been edited and changed which will speed up your processing ability. If you are looking for a product that gives you not only the ability to create CD/DVD and Blu-ray discs, but the ability to create professional video’s, photo disks, and burn music, then I highly recommend both Roxio Creator 2010, and Roxio Creator Pro 2010.