Roxio Creator 2009

Welcome news for those with HD camcorders is the addition of full AVCHD support. Editing, authoring and transcoding are all supported as standard. Support for burning Blu-ray discs costs an extra £15, but there's also the facility to author 40 minutes of AVCHD material to a standard single-layer DVD disc. Given the expense of Blu-ray writers and blank media, this is an option that we can imagine many consumers taking full advantage of.

The sheer breadth of Creator's abilities has always been its greatest selling point, and this new iteration is no exception. For £50 you get a comprehensive package capable of disc burning, basic photo editing and manipulation, music ripping, copying and transcoding, video editing and authoring - as well as a basic backup tool.

It comes as little surprise that none of these actually rival dedicated packages for quality or sheer power, but when buying standalone software would soon add up to hundreds of pounds, it's difficult to fault Creator 2009's wide range of talents.

Author: Sasha Muller