Roxio Easy Media Creator 8

Every time we look at Roxio's Creator software we are surprised by how much is crammed into one product. For this eighth outing there are a few new additions and, thankfully, the overall quality remains the same.

Anyone familiar with Creator 7 or 7.5 will be a little surprised on viewing this new version's main interface screen. The useful layout of previous versions, where the screen was filled with possible tasks in one easy-to-see layout, has been replaced with a system of menus.

It's still easy to follow, but the new method of clicking a heading, such as Audio or Photo, before choosing a task, is less intuitive. However, once you're familiar with the program, it's possible to jump straight into an application before having to navigate the task menus first.

At first glance not much has changed in terms of the various software titles included, but several enhancements have been made that become apparent when doing more complex tasks.

For instance, it's now possible to create two or more discs at the same time, if there is more than one disc-writer present in the PC.

Most of the programs use the same wizard-based hand-holding as previous versions, although this has been tweaked so it is less restrictive than before.

Other new features include facilities for dealing with high-definition video. Although this is not important at the moment, since there are few high-definition sources available in the UK, it's good to see that Roxio has thought about the future.

The package also includes both Sonic BackupMyPC and Roxio Backup, although these have not changed substantially since the last version. There's a great new feature called MusicID which automatically identifies and adds missing ID3 tag information. It found all but four of our 20 test tracks.

As ever, the most impressive thing with Creator 8 is how integrated everything is. Although this is one product made up of several pieces of software, they are all cleverly linked. When the video-editing program needs to burn a disc, the disc-writing program is fired up, and so on.

It's true that there are more powerful separate programs around but no other single piece of software offers the flexibility across audio, video, pictures and disc creation.