Number 9, Number 9; Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 Suite

Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned ... hey, not that Nero. I'm thinking about Nero because Roxio is alway bumping heads with that company when it comes to more than all-in-one suites that offer CD and DVD authoring, burning, photo, video and music applications.

Roxio's Easy Media Creator 9 is a substantial upgrade to that company's comprehensive suite, including more than 100 new features and trend-anticipating capabilities such as mobile entertainment support, Blu-ray Disc (BD) recording, Microsoft Windows Vista compatibility and HD video creation tools.

Easy Media Creator 9 comes at a time when more people are interested in working with digital content and even creating their own content. (Like me!) With portable media devices, music players, low-cost video cameras and still cameras, people have more content than ever to work with and more platforms to show and distribute it. Creator 9 is part of a new generation of tools that fosters creativity and enjoyment.

Let's take a look under the hood at just some of the capabilities.

Within Creator 9's Media Manager, the application used for quickly organizing and accessing photos, music, video files and multi-media projects, you can now upload selected content to multimedia mobile phones through a USB or Bluetooth connection. Photos and video clips can be sent to phones to create mobile digital albums -- or music segments can be uploaded as personalized ringtones.

Creator 9 also allows you to record to both single and dual-layer BD discs and archive as much as 50 GB of personal data – or 12,500 music tracks, 50,000 photos or four hours of raw HD video. (Now, that's data!)

Creator 9 also enables you to span large projects across multiple BD discs and secure content through disc encryption. In addition, Creator 9's Drag-to-Disc packet writing software offers the convenience and efficiency of dragging and dropping files to a Blu-ray Disc in the same way these files would be placed on a hard disk or flash drive.

New music enhancements include Audio Capture Widget, which is a desktop application that enables you to easily record any audio playing on your computer, such as Internet radio programming. The Capture Widget includes a unique Pre-Roll feature that can automatically record and store audio even before the record button is selected. Acting like a Personal Video Recorder for audio entertainment, the Pre-Roll feature ensures that you never miss a moment.

Easy Media Creator 9 includes a rich selection of authoring and video editing tools that offer the perfect blend of automation and hands-on control. For creating professional-quality videos, you can use the HD-enabled, 32-track timeline editor with advanced video overlay tools and fine-tune editing controls.

The enhanced CineMagic 2 takes raw video footage and a favorite song and automatically generates a polished production complete with professionally-stylized video introductions, special effects and appropriate transitions that are all synchronized to the tempo of the selected music.

Creator 9 also includes an enhanced version of MyDVD, which gives you the power to generate blockbuster-style DVDs with professionally designed menu styles that include matching scene menus – coordinated with the CineMagic styles.

You can choose to enter the MyDVD Assistant, which will guide you quickly through the production of a personalized DVD, or enter the advanced editor and take complete creative control. Advanced features include motion menus, menu-to-menu transitions and animated buttons.

There's a lot more, too!!