Features:  

Roxio 2010 is one of the few consumer class Digital Media Studio packages that offer a media manager to keep track of media files on your computer. It doesn’t offer good application integration but the applications in this suite work well individually. For example, you can capture still images using the video editor, but have to open a separate application to edit that photo, save it, and then import the edited photo back into the video editor. It would be cool if this could all happen in the same interface.

Audio capture is not in our matrix for this category, but Roxio offers a tool for this that we should mention. Roxio Easy Audio Capture can use the soundcard in your computer to capture any audio that can be played through the speakers on your computer. This is great if you want to capture short audio clips for your home videos but can’t figure out how to download the track. There are “other” uses for this tool, but we trust you will comply with federal laws and rip responsibly.

Photo Capture:  

This suite can import photos from digital cameras, removable media like flash drives, scanners and supported mobile devices such as cell phones. When a device is attached to your computer Roxio will automatically scan the device for supported media files and will ignore nonmedia files like text documents and spreadsheets.

Supported image formats include JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and GIF.

Video Capture:  

Roxio Creator 2010 allows you to import video from digital video (DV) and high definition (HD) cameras, video enabled cell phones, USB or 1394 web cameras, analog capture cards, MPEG 2 hardware devices and DVDs. This data can either be saved on the device, or imported live.

Supported video formats include AVI, DV, HDV, DV-AVI, MPEG-1/2/4, MPEG2-HD, DVD-Video, IFO/VOB, XviD, DVR-MS, TiVo, ASF, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, 3GP, MPEG2 Transport Stream, AVC (H.264), AVCHD. This list is quite extensive so you shouldn’t have a problem importing with this suite.

Also, if you have a video capture card installed on your computer you can capture steaming video from the web.

If you plan to capture video from a standard camcorder you will likely need the Roxio Video Capture USB ($49.99). This handy tool allows you to import video using standard RGB or S-video cables.

You can burn high-definition video stored on your camera directly to DVD or Blu-ray without having to save it on your PC. This retains the original format and makes it easy to edit your video later.

One caveat listed on the Roxio website is that this product “does not rip or copy encrypted or copy protected content.” This includes commercial CDs and DVDs.