Review by CKE

I create and produce hundreds of small info videos each year, and I have searched for the perfect easy to use video editing software. I’ll save you the suspense… in my opinion it does not exist. Roxio Creator is an interesting suite of software since it does a couple of things that does not come with standard video editing software - i.e. photo editing and file conversion. While I don’t use these features every day - they do come in handynnNotes-nn- Photo Editing - I am sure a professional photographer would need a more powerful photo editor, but for me it is more than adequate. Roxio let’s me modify and adjust the photo - while being pretty straight forward in use. While I prefer Ultimate Director and Adobe Elements for videos - the Roxio photo editor is helpful.

- File Conversion - lots of options for changing and modifying flles. I especially like that it allows you to modify the file size (although I wish it showed you the file size when completed). Conversion rates are a bit slow (I have a 24G or Ram and NVIDA 770X video card) so slower computers may bog down a bit.

- Lots of ways to burn DVD’s, audio CD’s and data files…. although I haven’t used these features yet.

A few notes on comparing video editing software (which I am borrowing from my review of Ultimate Director)nniMovie HD The king of the easy to use software. I stuck with iMove for several years because you could produce decent videos without investing much time in learning the software. This was a big mistake on my part. iMove HD is very slow and lacks features once you use (and learn) a few of the other video suites on the market you realize that iMovie HD is unacceptable.

Final Cut A HUGE jump from iMovie in terms of price, features and performance. It is such a quantum leap that unless you are a very serious videographer it may be beyond your needs. Final Cut requires a large investment in time, money (for the software and a high end computer) so be prepared.

Adobe Elements Not as easy to use as iMovie HD, but still rather easy to use. Adobe Elements provides most of the features that basic to intermediate users will need. It gives you the ability to use multiple cameras and PIP. It also has a wide variety of features for saving your videos - again, it is very straight forward. Adobe Elements is not quite perfect - it is a bit of a processor hog when rendering HD videos, and unless you have a beefy computer (at least 8gig or ram and a decent video card) it will take you up to 45 minutes to render a 300meg file. Another annoyance is that (for some reason) it only recognizes the audio portion of an .avi format (at least for me). Having said that - it is still my favorite video processing software.

Ultimate Director More features than Adobe Elements - but it is not quite as intuitive to use. Surprisingly, Ultimate Direct is quicker rendering files than Adobe Elements. Ultimate Director has more options and features, but it is not as easy to save a specific type of file. i.e. if you want to save a file optimized for YouTube in HD Ultimate Director tries to post the video directly onto YouTube instead of writing to a file.

Roxio - Not quite as straight forward as Adobe Elements and not as powerful Ultimate Director. I have used it a couple of times, but I never really saw an advantage. While I may be wrong (due to inexperience) I was never able to do PIP or use multiple videos source. However, for a one stop-shop the Roxio Creator is more than passable, and certainly better than iMovie HD. Although it does seem to have the edge for anyone who wants to create Video Slide Shows.

Final Verdict - Roxio Creator is certainly a handy program to have - while it does not excel in any one area it does provide capability across several functions different functions. it provides decent video editing for photographers or it provides decent photo editing to videographers…and it provides file conversion for both.

4 Stars