Roxio Easy Media Creator 8

Easy Media Creator 8 has not followed Nero 7 in looking for new areas to conquer. Unlike EMC, Nero added a media-centre interface to its latest version so that those who don't have XP Media Center installed can still enjoy wirelessly accessing their content from the couch. But EMC has added some interesting tricks of its own. The most welcome is LiveShare, the peer-to-peer photo-sharing app built into Media Manager. Digital-camera users know that showing people their photos can be more difficult now than when we simply had prints to pass around. LiveShare aims to help. To use it, create an album and share it using the Sharing pull-down menu. The people you want to share with get an e-mail showing thumbnails of the first 10 photos in the album. Unfortunately, your computer needs to be on for your friends to access the album, which is a major drawback, especially when you could use free online photo-sharing services such as Sony ImageStation, Kodak EasyShare Gallery, and Flickr.

The Media Manager lets you share digital photos directly from your hard drive, but your computer will need to be on for anyone to see them.

In another unexpected feature, Easy Media Creator 8 adds music tagging. The trouble with not tagging your songs is that you turn on your portable player and have to choose between several songs called Track 1. EMC helps solve this problem by comparing digital fingerprints of your songs to reference copies online. It's a slow process and not a foolproof one (it misidentified several of our test tracks), but we were impressed that it worked at all with songs captured from an analog source, such as an LP or a cassette.

Other new tricks for this old dog include DivX import and export and support for HD video. We're surprised that it doesn't offer full MPEG-4 video support, though. With its focus on new features, this review only scratches the surface of the suite's capabilities. EMC still handles all types of data, audio, and backup disc creation, and it can juggle a variety of media-related tasks. Some of its tools are more complicated than others, and we'd like to see the included VideoWave movie editor beefed up a lot, but on the whole, Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 is a true bargain at US$99.

Roxio Easy Media Creator 8
Company: Roxio
Price: US$99.95