Easy Media Creator 9 brings more new features to the table, many of which also revolve around HD optical support. For a start, you can burn 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray data discs in Creator Classic, using the same interface as for CD or DVD. Unlike Nero, you can create Blu-ray HD video discs in DVB or ATSC formats. The Quick Blu-ray Disc tool gives you a simple drag-and-drop interface, but there’s limited control over encoding quality: just four settings from Average to Best Possible are available. The application only creates menu-less discs too. Although MyDVD does include BDAV as a format option, this merely closes MyDVD and opens the Quick Blu-ray Disc tool. That leaves the suite falling behind Ulead’s DVD MovieFactory 5 in the extent of its HD optical video support, as the latter allows you to author menus for HD DVD discs.

EMC9 also contains a number of handy audio tools, such as Easy Audio Capture, which makes it simple to record whatever’s coming out of your sound card, be it an Internet radio station or streaming music service. Quick Music DVD lets you bring together a DVD’s worth of music to create a compilation with a menu you can play on your DVD player through your TV. With up to 8.5GB of music, the result is a mix that will last your entire all-night party and beyond. The menus include a Shuffle option too.

The new AutoMix tool uses a track you select to create a music compilation for you in the same style. The process involves ID tags and the Gracenote service, so keeping your tags accurate is essential for it to work. We found results could be patchy, with smooth jazz and rambunctious rap music being suggested as similar in mood. EMC9 will go through your database and try to tag tracks for you, but this will be time-consuming for a large library.

Video editing has been augmented by an improved standalone version of CineMagic. This is another automatic movie-creation system, and now includes the ability to choose which scenes you want to use. VideoWave has had support for up to 32 overlay tracks added, although about all you can do with them is create static picture-in-pictures. Automatic colour-correction and noise-removal tools have also been added, which we found worked adequately. Interestingly, VideoWave 9 already supports AVC HD as an output format. This is the video type about to arrive in Sony’s forthcoming MPEG4-based HD camcorders, so Roxio is well ahead of the game on this. But VideoWave otherwise remains a rudimentary editing app. Filter effects are still added on their own layer, and can only be applied to every single layer beneath, not just one.

These are just the highlights of EMC9. It also comes with tools for bringing video and photos to and from mobile phones and portable media devices like iPods and PSPs. The good news for Nero fans is that if you already own Nero 7 Premium, Reloaded is a free update you can download from Nero’s website. All the new apps and features should be made available by your existing serial number. This is handy because, apart from HD optical disc support, the majority of Reloaded’s extra abilities are a detour from Nero’s core strength of disc burning. In contrast, Roxio’s EMC was already the more comprehensive package. Version 9 further cements this lead.