I have had Roxio products before, notably Easy CD Creator and was happy with it, so I was not prepared for the screwing I was in for when I bought this product. This thing is virtually impossible to learn without buying "EMC 8 in a Snap" and "EMC 8 For Dummies". I am glad I bought both books, btw. Neither is enough of a reference in itself, this thing is THAT complicated to use.
You will need to go to the forum run supposedly by non-Roxio employees (the link for the forum is on the Roxio web site) to get tips on what to do to make this thing work, and even then there is no guarantee that it will. You will however read the many laments by users of EMC 7 & 7.5 who kick themselves for ever getting rid of their old programs and "upgrading" to EMC 8. What they did in fact was retrograde to a much inferior product.
The behind-the-scenes dope is that Sonic merged with or took over Roxio and that is when the product tanked. I bought this on an upgrade and I didn't even know there are three versions of this product if you go to the store and buy it in a box. I apparently got the mid-size version with stuff greyed out. But listen to the others and even the ones who have the Super Deluxe EMC 8 have LOTS of stuff greyed out! Features that prior versions had that they chose to not incorporate in the new version, things they may include later, who knows? Not even the main guru who runs the forum seems to know why they have all that stuff disabled and/or N/A.
There seems to be a lot of arrogance and cold bloodedness in the company now. If you have an issue with the product and if it isn't the software's fault you are charged $35 to talk to tech support, and this is even one day after you bought it. Send an email to tech support and you will get ignored and your request for help will go into the trash.
Talk to Roxanne with a tech support question? It is a pic of a gal with a headset on, but she doesn't exist. You ask Roxanne a question and it gives you a database that probably won't even answer your question, unless it is VERY basic. The tutorials are elementary and mickey mouse, the voice talks a hundred miles an hour and stops when things start getting involved and then sends you to the help files, which won't help you either. Not really.
I have progressed far enough in some three weeks to burn an old VHS tapes to DVD, but it is still not the quality I am looking for. I just recently read that the forum's head guru goes through several steps that end up taking hours to burn one DVD in order to get the quality he wants. You don't just follow the normal steps and get a decent product. Then to top it all off, I wanted to put a couple old TV programs on DVD and guess what?
The menu buttons won't work and I can't even select between the programs on the main Menu (unless I play the DVD on the computer and click on the titles with the mouse!) Go to the forum and perhaps one quarter of the posts there are about how to make the menu buttons work when playing your disc on your set-top DVD player. Pretty basic, being able to navigate a menu on the disc you just burned with this product. Your set-top DVD player may be able to handle professional DVD's with scenes, extra features, sub-titles, etc. But that is no guarantee it will be able to play something EMC 8 spits out. No sirree.
The software they use in Hollywood to author DVD's costs around $20,000. It may sound like you can duplicate professional-quality stuff at home for a hundred bucks, but just remember: You get what you pay for. Well, usually anyway.in this case you don't even get what they promise you in the come-on on the box. If they promise you professional DVD's it is perhaps because they are aiming their pitch at the folks who go around the Internet looking for something for nothing and don't like to pay their own way.
If those people get taken I have no problem with it. They got what they deserved. It's the innocent, the unwary, the sincere people whom I am trying to help here. Watch out, shop around, do your homework, and get prepared to research all the products out there, many of which aren't even sold in stores. You MAY, if you invest the time to learn enough about how to make your own, have some success at creating your own quality DVD's.
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