In a world where video editing software is becoming more and more accessible to everyday users, people are demanding more out of the software they purchase. Roxio Creator 2012 rises to the challenge and high expectations, maintaining an affordable price while including powerful enhancement and organizational tools in its video editing suite.
When you launch Roxio Creator, you'll find that the video editor component is just a small part of a much larger suite, but more on that later. To get to the video-editing portion of the suite, select the Video/Movies tab from the main screen, and then select Edit Video – Advanced. If you have any experience with video editing, the learning curve is gentle. If you're a novice video editor, it will take you a few hours to become comfortable with how Roxio Creator works.
Loading your footage into Roxio Creator is a simple operation; simply connect your camera or other media device to your computer and hit the Capture/Import option under the tools tab to the right of the main viewer. This brings up a special screen that allows you to select which media files you want to import. Some professional- or prosumer-grade cameras require you to have FireWire or other connectivity ports on your computer to import your footage. Roxio Creator is fully compatible with these high-end devices and connections.
After you have transferred your video and picture files to Roxio Creator's media library, you're ready to start editing your video project. This video editing software gives you a couple modes for editing your videos, storyboards and timelines. Each mode has its own strengths and weaknesses.
The storyboard editing mode is similar to what you find on other consumer-level applications such as iMovie. In Roxio Creator, the storyboard is located directly below the clip viewer. Just drop each clip from your media library onto its place along the storyboard. The storyboard makes it easy to arrange video clips into the order you want them. Additionally, storyboard mode is great for adding transitions between clips and adding effects to whole segments. However, this mode limits the granular control needed for precise video editing. For that, you need to switch over to Roxio Creator's timeline mode.
Professional video and movie editors all use what's called a timeline to create their cinematic masterpieces. The timeline mode in Roxio Creator gives you many of the same tools and features the pros use. Among them is the ability to precisely cut a video clip exactly where you want it cut, down to the millisecond. The timeline also gives you more control over where effects and transitions begin and end. Furthermore, the timeline mode gives you the ability to edit your audio tracks in conjunction with their placement alongside the video, which is something you just can't do in storyboard mode.
What's great about Roxio Creator is that it lets you switch between these two editing modes with your changes in tact. Our recommendation is that you use storyboard mode to make the broad strokes of your project. Arrange your clips, add your transitions and effects, and then switch to the timeline to fine tune the details of your video. That way you’ll have the ease of use of the storyboard combined with the precision of the timeline to make your video really shine.
When you’re finished editing your project, you have a few options for exporting your video. First and foremost is the ability export your project as an independent file. Format options include AVI, DV-AVI, HDV, MPEG-1/2/4, MPEG2-HD, WMV, WMV HD, AVC (H.264), MP4 and 3GP. That's a comprehensive list, but the MOV format is conspicuously absent. MOV is the format used natively on Apple products such as QuickTime, the iMac and MacBook. However, Roxio Creator does export files as other formats QuickTime recognizes such as MP4 and MPEG 2. If Roxio Creator had MOV-format compatibility, it would have placed higher on our side-by-side comparison chart.
Another note on Apple compatibility: you cannot install Roxio Creator on Mac OSX machines. This is a letdown because more and more people are turning to Apple products, and that trend doesn't look like it will slow down any time soon.
Other export options include burning your project onto a CD or DVD. A related feature in Roxio Creator is the ability to copy DVD and CDs. This doesn't just apply to DVDs you've created yourself, although it is a great tool to produce multiple copies of your project. It also allows you to copy and reproduce nearly any DVD or CD in your closet. This is great for backing up your library in case anything happens to your movie collection.
Further still on export functionality is the option to upload your finished videos directly to Facebook from within the application. This function also applies to photos in your media library. The functionality allows you to skip several steps in sharing your photos and videos. The software will log into Facebook for you and upload whatever you want into the folders you select.
As we mentioned earlier, the video-editing features in Roxio Creator software aren’t all that this media suite has to offer. This application is multimedia organizer, editor, copier and much more. Functionality apart from the video editor includes the afore-mentioned DVD and CD duplicator, a photo organizer, a slide show creator, a video converter, a music player and a sound editor. That's just scratching the surface of what Roxio Creator can do. It's truly a highly versatile piece of software aimed to put all your multimedia needs in one place, and it does that very well.
One more note on new features that are not found in the previous versions of Roxio Creator. The 2012 iteration of the software includes video conversion for iOS devices such as the iPad and iPhone, as well as some Android devices and other smartphones. Roxio has also added compatibility with DivX-certified devices, something which along with a few other niceties placed this software ahead of some less versatile video-editing suites.
If all you're looking for is a clean, competent, easy-to-use video editor, you'll be happy with Roxio Creator 2012. However, if you're looking for a multimedia hub that can handle video plus pictures, music and more, this software has exactly what you're looking for. We were impressed by its intuitive video-editing features and the many diverse tools this multifunctional software suite contains.
