Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 is a suite of products that not only allows you to create home movies, but burn them to CD or a DVD. The audio and music capabilities of the suite also mean that Media Creator 8 contains one of most versatile collection of programs you can have on your desktop.

Edit video, back up all sorts of data, burn and copy all of your video, photos, music quickly and easily. However, the most important aspect to new releases is support for the latest video file formats that arrive on the scene and Media Creator 8 is up to speed in this regard. DivX import and export and support for double-layer DVDs covers two of the more important developments over the past year, as well as all the usual suspects such as MP3 and OGG for audio and MPEG1 and MPEG2 on the video side. Considering that DivX is effectively a version of MPEG4, no support for the official MPEG4 video standard is somewhat surprising.

As seems to be the way these days, Media Creator 8 presents the user with an opening interface that acts like a hub, directing you to the most appropriate part of the application suite to perform a task. If you want to keep the personal input to a minimum, 'task assistants' breeze through most standard operations such as video movie projects and photo album tasks. All you basically need to do is let the program know where all your assets are and it takes over, operating through a template process. The results are surprisingly good for basic projects, however its not as easy to dip in and out of the process like other programs such as Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0.

Although not specifically a video feature, the DVD Music Disc creator is surprisingly powerful, using your music collection to create a virtual Jukebox from a single DVD, with the ability to create DVD style menus to control from the DVD player. One DVD disc can comfortably hold up to 50 hours of music, turning your DVD player into the audio hub of your home.

Another music feature that owners of music records and tapes will love is the Music ID feature, which acoustically fingerprints unknown music files to automatically fix or add the correct ID3 tag information such as title, artist, and genre. If you don't want all the applications that the suite has to offer, choose the Custom option and select what you need. A second disc is full of multimedia content to use in your movie projects as well as templates.

Media Creator Home is where all the magic happens, with the program prompting you to select from a list of tasks. The interface is simple yet effective, although at times it almost feels like the program is aimed at educating seven year olds rather than experienced PC users. The editing workflow is clear and effective, with finished projects burned to DVD after the final tweaking in MyDVD is completed. All in all, a nice package that performs all the basic tasks as well as most other entry level applications in the market.