Plentiful media-management features come at a high price
IT CAN'T BE EASY for a mature software suite to remain relevant year after year, version after version, especially amid increasingly tough competition from commercial products and free tools. Such products must work ever harder to improve themselves, even when it seems like there's nothing left needing improvement. How has Roxio managed this with its $99.99 Creator 2009, the latest version of its ridiculously comprehensive
media-authoring suite? As it turns out, the update reflects both innovation and desperation.
Creator 2009 comes with a heavily revamped and streamlined Interface that makes it easier to find the most common tasks while adding a serious dose of elegant visual appeal. While the launcher for last year's
version, Easy Media Creator 10 Suite, was useful, it contained visual bloat that complicated the process of finding exactly the app you wanted. Creator 2009, however, has a scrubbed-up launcher that puts your six most commonly used functions front and center on the home page. Broader category listings (Data-Copy, Video-Movies, Music-Audio, Photo, and Online) are on the left, and links to videos, tutorials, and support options are on the right. You also
have the option to choose any of the category pages as your start page by simply clicking a pushpin icon next to the category header—a nice touch for personalizing the experience.
You have almost as much control over everything else you do in Creator 2009, as well. Want to burn data onto a CD? Use a simple drag-and-drop interface, a more advanced Explorer-style window, or even a backup utility to save whole folders with a single click. You're granted the same flexibility when it comes to video editing: Creator 2009 can make your video clips and photos into a movie automatically, or you can drag and drop everything into an advanced storyline or timeline view to arrange everything just the way you want it. For DVD
creation, the program lets you select from any number of pregenerated options or develop your own from scratch; similarly, ripping music horn a CD can be either a mindless or a more detailed process.
There's plenty of other useful functionality to be found, too: a three-step wizard for digitizing LPs and tapes, as well as modules for capturing audio directly from a sound card, converting content for easy playback on your portable devices, and sharing photos and videos using Roxio's integrated online services.
Not all of the available options are essential. A new function called "beat-matching" will rearrange and adjust the cross fades of music tracks you're burning to CD to create ideal dance mixes that flow smoothly from one song to the next. There's not much call for this, and in our tests it
didn't work very well: Vocals and tempos were frequently distorted, to distracting effect. (We recommend sticking with instrumental tracks with heavy beats for best results.) And while some users will undoubtedly appreciate the ability to automatically break audiobooks into workable chunks for a portable music player, we're not convinced that's a vital feature that couldn't already be decently replicated via Creator 2009's other audio-editing tools.
Alas, many of Creator 2009's functions have an antiquated quality about them anyway—Windows Vista and some freely available apps let you do many of the same things at roughly equivalent quality. True, Roxio's photo-editing feature is rather more robust than Windows Photo Gallery, with dedicated tools for removing wrinkles, blemishes, dust, and scratches and for fixing other imperfections. But the Roxio video-editing and DVD-authoring apps are more or less on par with Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker, and dedicated music managers such as Windows Media Player, Mines, and Zune have friendlieruser interfaces and can more conveniently catalog and spin songs than the Roxio tools can.
Creator 2009 has another shortcoming that should be a strength: HD. Although you can create Blu -ray discs with content directly from an AVCHD camcordet, you can't otherwise burn Blu-ray out of the box. For that, you'll need to drop $29.99 on an additional Blu-ray plug-in. bringing the total bill up to almost $130. And, even for that much money, you still won't be able to play Blu-ray discs using Creator 2009: for that, you'll need something like CyberLink's PowerDVD or Cores WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray. We understand the issues having to do with licensing fees and content-protection regulations, but it's still a notable omission in a package that offers so much else. —Matthew Murray
www.roxio.com
Computer Shopper January 2009
Roxio Creator 2009
Adobe Premiere Elements 7
HD and SD video editing for novices and hobbyists alike
NO, YOU DIDN'T BLINK and miss versions 5 and 6 of Adobe Premiere Elements. Adobe skipped a few numbers to bring the version number in line with its Photoshop Elements sibling. And with Premiere Elements 7, Adobe has also brought the $99.99 program more in line with the features of midrange video-editor competitors like Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 and Corel VideoStudio X2. It's in no danger of harming sales of the $799 Premiere Pro CS4, but it no longer feels as if it was intentionally held back to ensure that it doesn't.
The program now imports video in AVCHD format, supporting newer HD camcorders like Canon's Vixia HF100, in addition to standard-definition and HDV high-definition video. The interface is easy to use, whether you're new to video editing or an old hand. For a quick video, simply drop video clips onto the sceneline, drop in transitions, and render the results.For more control, switch to the Timeline view, where you can work with up to three different video tracks, narration, and a soundtrack, making precise edits and adding advanced video effects.
As with previous versions, there's a good selection of professional-looking video
filters, transitions, and titling options for manual editing. New to version 7 is the InstantMovie feature, which does a surprisingly good job of taking selected clips and creating a movie from them in just a couple of steps, complete with titles, effects, transitions, and credits. Though there are 20 InstantMovie templates. we'd like to see more variety. For example, there's only one birthday template and two travel templates, so if you use the feature often, your videos will lack variety.
Other new features include Videomerge, an automatic compositing filter that creates a slick combination of two clips by replacing any solid-colored background with the second
clip, and SmartSound, which generates a musical soundtrack to match the length of your video or scene exactly.
Premiere Elements 7 works best when paired with Photoshop Elements 7; Adobe bundles the two programs for $149.99. They share the same Organizer database (listing all the videos, sounds, and stills in your library). and you can send still frames to Photoshop for editing or send slide shows to Premiere
Elements 7 for incorporation in an InstantMovie. The Organizer has been significantly optimized in this version. in Premiere Elements 4, if you had a large library of photos and videos it was nearly unusable, as it was so slow. Now it's a useful tool for locating and organizing video clips, particulary if you take advantage of the software's tagging functionality.
As with Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 works together with Photoshop.com. You get 2GB of online backup storage of your videos and photos for free (not much when
you're dealing with video) and the ability to view your backed-up clips and movies from any PC. In addition to 20GB or more of storage, Adobe promises new tutorials, themes, sounds,
and special effects on a regular basis for those who purchase a $30 Plus membership. Photoshop.com doesn't have public movie galleries, however, so you'll have to rely on YouTube or a personal Web site for sharing.
Once your video has been created, you can burn it to a DVD or Blu-ray disc, publish it directly to YouTube or a personal Web site, or render it to a file. You can create videos in the Adobe Flash Video. AVI, MPEG, Windows Media, and QuickTime formats.The AVI function supports additional codecs that you
install, such as DivX. Premiere Elements 7 can also create files for the iPhone, iPod, PlayStation Portable, and Zune; for 3rd
Generation Partnership Project-compatible cell phones; and for a number of other devices.
You'll want a powerful PC to use with Premiere Elements 7, particularly if you're editing HD video. The program will take full advantage of dual-and quad-core CPUs to speed up rendering,. You'll also want plenty of memory. On our 2GB test system, we got occasional warnings that Premiere Elements 7
was running low on memory. We also had a few crashes when rendering HD video, though we were working with a prerelease version of the program.
Premiere Elements 7 strikes an excellent balance between ease of use and flexibility. The only real frustration is the lack of variety in InstantMovie templates. We hope to see regular additions to the template selection for Photoshop.com Plus members; additional templates would make membership even more appealing. -Denny Atkin
www.adobe.com
Computer Shopper January 2009
ACT by SAGE 2009
Complex Contact Management
ACT! by Sage 2009 is the newest version of the widely used contact management software. This applet lets you bring together any different kinds of information about individual contacts, groups of contacts, and whole companies, so it's great for keeping tract of your calls, e-mails, and letters to business prospects and customers. ACT! excels at gathering dozens of different kinds of contact information on a single screen, but this also means that the interface can be intimidating, especially for new users.
ACT! not only tracks your communications, build mass mailings on paper or e-mail, and alerts you with to-do lists, it also shares your calendar and other data across your company or, in more advanced version, across a whole enterprise. You can live almost your whole professional life in ACT!, using it to launch e-mails from Oulook or to fire up Microsoft Word to send mass mailings-and you can even use its built-in low-frills word processor if you don't want to be overwhelmed by Word.
The basic ACT! interface is similar to that of earlier versions, and reasonable well organized for the amount of data it supports. It includes sidebar iconds for many features and a dashboard that displays a set of brightly colored charts showing the number of activities you've performed, the opportunities you've followed up on, sales you've closed, and other items that you can manually add to the display.
Over the years, the product has built up staggeringly extensive feature set, but it's still weighed down by a few clumsy interface flaws. For example, too much of the programs uses ACT!'s special-purpose vocabulary instead of plain English. There is, however, improved Outlook integration in which ACT! automatically records your e-mail activity and uses your Outlook message-sorting rules. You can also back up your data automatically at almost any interval you choose.
Thanks to its new lookup features and expanded Outlook integration, ACT! 2009 is an essential upgrade for existing users. Potential new users should prepare for a rough initiation preiod before thay can manage this app'z dazzingly wide and powerful range of functions. -Edward Mendelson.
PC Magazine November 2008.
APPLE iTUNES 8
iTunes 8 Gets with the Times
Whenever Apple upgrades iTunes, people take notice. The new version, iTunes 8, brings some noteworthy additions-some of which are cosmetic and others that bring it more in line with how people are using digital music these days. The new window dressing in iTunes 8 consists of a tiled album-cover view and Visualizer update.
The big news, however, is Genius, a feature that in one click creates playlists from songs in your library that go together. It's somewhat similar to Pandora's seeded, automated playlist building, but it works locally, with pre-existing music as opposed to streaming Internet radio. Although Genius brings iTunes closer to Rhapsody, Pandora, and Slacker, two shortcomings still exist. First, Genius pulls from your existing library instead of exposing you to some new and perhaps undiscovered music. also, if you get new recommendations from the iTunes Store, you have to pay to download them, instead of checking them out for free the way you can with Pandora and Slacker.
Other upgrades in iTunes are harder to fault, such as its reconciliation with NBC, offering Battlestar Galactica, 20 Rock, Monk, and The Office in HD. Finally, new accessibility features are a nice inclusion, such as VoiceOver (for Leopard users) and Window-Eyes (for XP and Vista users), and a screen reader for downloading content.-Jamie Lendino
PC Magazine November 2008
DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 10 PROFESSIONAL
Talk to Your PC
Say the words "speech recognition software" and most people think of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon has ruled the roost for years, partly because it's a perenially great piece of sotware, and partly from lack of competition. Event though Dragon now has rival products to contend with, it has secured its positions as the leading voide-recognition software with this new version. Here you get new automation tools, improved hands-free navigation, updates to the interface, and increased accuracy and speed.
Most general-purpose versions of the product include an Andrea NC-19 monaural headset, but the $349 Preferred Wireless Edition subtitutes a slock little Calisto Bluetooth headset from Plantronics. Dragon requires considerable PC muscle: a 1-GHz CPU and 1GB of free hard drive space at minimum, as well as 512MB of RAM. DUring setup, you create a user account, which involves choosing a language (U.K., U.S., Australian, Indian, or SE Asian English), a regional accent, and a microphone connection type. A vocabulary option lets you specify General, Command Only, or Teen. The Setup routine also requests that you read some of your e-mail and word-processing documents. All told, the installation process took me about 45 minutes.
I was very impressed at how accurately and quickly the program transcribed my test script, showing only occasional blips even when I spoke without pauses between words. You can actually decide on how much speed to trade for accuracy using a slider-a handy feature. But is Dragon better than the free translation feature in Vista? With straight forward text both were identical, but on more difficult materal Dragon made fewer mistakes than Vista. The more significant difference is that Vista shows a delay before producing text; Dragon was more prompt. Both programs let you launch other apps from the Start menu by speaking the command "Start Menu." For subsequent commands, Vista was more intuitive, but with Dragon, you also get time-saving Voice Shortcut.
Despite some problems-for example, typing while Dragon is running sometimes slows your system down- and an interface that's not polished as Vista's, Dragon is a serious dictation tool that beats Vista in accuracy, speed, and customization options, thus earning our Editors'Choice.-Michael Muchmore
PC Magazine November 2008
NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2009
Norton's Powerful Protection Won't Slow You Down
Most users love the protection security software gives them but hate the way it drags down their daily activities. Good News: Norton Internet Security 209 affects performance less than any suite I've tested. Most security tasks happen in the background during idle time. My performance tests confirm that Norton slows systems less than the rest.
The big independent antivirus testing labs all certify the efectiveness of Symantec's antivirus technology; those who have tested the 2009 edition find it improved. It scans files on demand, on access, and during idle time. A full scan took 50 minutes on my standard test system, but the Norton Insight feature reduced that to 5 minutes on later scans.
Norton scored better than other suites in the malware removal test, and it was unusually thorough. In th emalware blocking test it elimidated all but one of the malware samples before they launched. Overall it did better than all of the other suites and standalone antispyware products that I've tested with my current collection of malware. Norton's phishing protection works the same as of the 2009 edition and continues to be extremely accurate.
The firewall is hardened against malware, and it easily passed my barrage of Web-based assaults. and when I attacked a stest system using the Core Impact penetration tool, it blocked all the sample exploits.
The Network Security maps shows all the devices connected to your network and reports whether your wireless network is secure. From th emap you can remotely monitor other computers on the network that are also running Norton. And you can lock out specific devices by setting their trust level to restricted.
Spam protection, however, is useless. In testing, it tossed more than a third of my valid personal mail into the spam folder and missed nearly 30 percent of undeniable smap. Don't rely on this feature.
Norton's Itentify Safe is a password-protected way to store credentials and log in automatically. It also fills web forms with your predefined personal data, all protected by a strong master password.
This is definitely the slimmest, most unobstrusive Norton ever, yet its protection is top-notch where it counts. Despite a few weaknesses, it is the best all-around security suite I've ever seen: I'll be installing it on my own system.-Neil J.Rubenking
PC Magazine November 2008
