5. Utility Programs: NTI Media Maker 8

Both Corel DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus and NTI Media Maker 8 come with utility programs. I’ll start out by taking a look at the utilities packaged with NTI Media Maker 8.

Audio Editor: The NTI Audio Editor displays two main window panes, one at the top that shows the entire audio file, and one on the bottom that focuses in on a working area. The editor includes cut, copy, and paste functions, and can be used to open multiple audio files at the same time; this can be useful, for example, if you want to combine audio files into a single track.

NTI’s Audio Editor also includes 6 effect filters: Trim, Normalize, Fade, Echo, Filter and Amplify. In terms of basic editors, the only feature that seems to be lacking is the ability to zoom in or out of your selected working area, beyond that of the default zoom seen in the bottom portion of the interface.

Cinematic Video: This application is used for burning video to CDs using the VCD or SVCD format. Step 1 is used to add video clips, step 2 to add background music, and step 3 to select a “style” that will be applied to your video. Styles include Sepia, Personal, Pro Medium, Velvet and Cool Moon, and additional styles can be purchased from NTI partner Muvee for $7.95 to $24.95 each ($19.95 is a typical price). Note that this application should not be confused with Media Maker’s main program, Home Video Maker, which burns to DVD and includes DVD features such as menus and chapters.

Digital Jack: This is a digital audio player that supports the CDA, MP3, OGG and WMA file formats. Digital Jack can play files from your drives as well as commercial CDs.

DVD-Fit: This program is designed to import DVD video and force it to fit into less space. This can be accomplished by applying compression to the video, removing unnecessary audio tracks and removing subtitles.

Jewel Case Maker: As its name implies, this utility is used to design CD/DVD jewel case covers and printable labels. A variety of images are provided, and you can import your own images and add straight or curved text.

Photo Maker: This utility performs basic photo editing; functions include Rotate, Resize, Crop, Exposure, Sharpness, Add Text and Red Eye Correction. You can also create photo slideshows with voice annotation. Unfortunately, I found Photo Maker to be unusually crash prone.

Ripper: Ripper is a small utility for ripping CD Audio to your hard drive. It converts files to the MP3, OGG, WAV and WMA file formats, with customizable compression settings (64 kb/s to 320 kb/s for MP3/WMA, and quality 0 to 10 for OGG). You can also choose from among several options for assigning file names to your ripped audio tracks.

Test Drive: Test Drive is a program that tests the capabilities and performance of your hard drives and optical drives.

Two free programs can also be installed during initial setup: Digital Flix (a software DVD player) and Backup Now Standard Edition (backup and restore software).