Time to hit the big time, so I got a 16x10x40x with Waste-Proof Write Strategy. So, instead of making a coaster, it would close the session and finalize the disc. I ended up with a bunch of finalized half-filled CD-Rs. Yes, this burner had a bundled copy of Easy CD Creator 4 basic. Then Roxio, in there infinite greed, proclaimed from the rooftops — Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum was available only for registered users at a deep discount, plus shipping and handling, of course. Two weeks after sending them my check, COMPUSA had the new software at a cheaper price. Bitter? I’m not bitter. Not much anyway. Sad to say, their once outstanding newsletter has since gone in the toilet. Now, it’s just another SPAM sales notice. My new 24x10x40x burner came with Nero, a dream of a program that I have been using since they came out with a full function free demo over a year ago.

When we received this review copy of Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum, I decided to load it in the instructors computer in the Advanced Lab in the Alamo PC Resource Center. The machine is a Dell 4300 with P4 1.4 Ghz, 20 GB HD, 256 MB of RAM, a 16x10x40x burner of indeterminate origin, and Windows XP Pro operating system. To install ECDC5 with WinXP, you need to download two files from the Roxio Software Updates page to complete the installation (xp_up.exe and ecdc_v502d_up.exe).  Then I uninstalled ECDC5 basic, and installed the new software using a custom installation, removing Take Two from the installation. Roxio has decided to no longer support Take Two. No big loss to me, I never could get it to work right anyway.  If you stop the installation here, you probably won’t be able to see your CD drives in Windows Explorer. So reboot. Then open xp_up.exe (self installer) and reboot. Then open ecdc_v502d_up.exe, and reboot. Follow these instructions in the right order and you probably will get a good install. If not, uninstall it and try again. If you still didn’t get a good install, go to the Roxio knowledgebase — they have many ideas. My XP install is still doing discumbobulated things, it bit me twice in my last class and keeps locking the burner tray. Predictability is important in developing confidence in a product. ECDC5 Platinum on my personal Win98SE machine is exceptionally stable and dependable.

So who do I recommend buy Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum? If you want the Swiss Army Knife of burner software that will do most everything, hold your hand while doing it, is easy to learn and has an exceptional manual (I’m sorry, user’s guide), lots of how-to on their Web site, and if you only burn stuff that is not copy protected — this could be the burner software for you. The price is usually somewhere between $65. and $99. for the complete box. Updates are regular and free for download. Help is always available if you know enough to ask the right question.

Let’s take a look at this bugger. Auto Insert Notification (AIN) must be active for this software to function. There are three ways to open this program. Click the icon, Start - Programs - Roxio Easy CD Creator5 - Project Selector, or insert a blank CD in your burner. The Select a Project window will appear showing the four main project modules - Music, Data, Photo or Video, and CD Copier. Move your curser over the Make a Music CD button and three music choices will appear — 

• SoundStream
• Music CD Project
• MP3 CD Project.

SoundStream
	Click SoundStream and a funky jukebox interface will get in your face. In my opinion, this little treasure trove is the greatest value in the whole package. Use it for creating a favorites CD, analog recording from the sound card using Spin Doctor, filter the wav files you have created or on-the-fly as you rip or record them, expand old record or MP3 files with Realizer, normalize all the song levels, print a cover and jewel case insert for your new CD, and use Sound Editor to modify your wav files on hard disk. You find these hidden features by clicking the button on the lower center, the Open Options Drawer button. You start the process by clicking the Select Source button. There are three choices - CD, library, and from files. The music tracks will appear in the Source List window. It’s a good idea to listen to the music tracks by using the playback controls at the bottom of the window to make sure you have a good sound, and can also be used as a great jukebox including loop and random play. Add the song titles from the online CDDB or rename the track numbers if you have CD text capability. Select the songs you want to move to the Record List window and click the move button, or just drag & drop them to the record list window. You can mix tracks from different sources and file types. The music tracks will appear in the Record list window. You can change the record order by dragging the tracks. Click a Select Destination button - to burn on CD, library, or store on your hard disk. Select the filters you wish to run on-the-fly or to modify the music tracks on your hard disk, and click the record button. What a great intuitive interface and more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Close SoundStream and we are back at the Music Project window.
Music CD Project
	Select this button and the main Easy CD Creator program, modified for music, will appear. This is the bread and butter software and is loaded with some great features. It is also very sensitive to serial copy protection. Try to copy a copy and it will default to low quality mono and most times will do weird things in the setup window. The entertainment industry lawyers must live in Roxio’s nickers. Now don’t overlook the really good stuff just because they trample on your fair-use rights. Under the CD menu, you will find CD Information. A handy tool to check the status of the CD in your drive. Is it writable? What size is it, 74 or 80 minute? Is there anything already copied to it? All good to know stuff. Under the tools menu is the system tests. It will evaluate how fast your computer will provide the music data to your burner. It also does a digital audio extraction (DAE) test. A very important number to know, especially if you ignore everything I’ve tried to teach you and insist on recording on-the-fly. Now you can test your CD-ROM and set the record speed at about half the CD-ROMs DAE speed. I don’t know why, but different software will record at different maximum speeds above 12X.  The CD Drive item is some good info about some of your burner capabilities, but certainly not as thorough as Nero’s Info Tool. Also, under the tools menu is Options. Here is where you designate where on your hard drive you want the software to use as a temporary working area. You need about one gigabyte of open space for the program to create an image file. The layout of the main window is pretty standard. A source window on top to find and identify what music tracks, from any source, you want to setup to record to CD. A setup window underneath to organize the music tracks for the burn. At the bottom of the window is a time line to show how much time you have committed to this CD project. Remember, many music CDs will have set the original tracks as copies so this burner software will read it as an illegal copy and extract it as mono, 8 bit, 11K (the lowest quality), and sometimes act squirrelly in the setup window replicating the entries until you cancel. So if you want to make one archive copy of your CD, and use Win95/98/ME, install the alternate CD file system, open Windows Explorer to copy the music tracks on your original music CD as wav files in CD quality (stereo, 16 bit, 44.1K) to a work folder on your hard disk. Remove the read only file property. Start ECDC and identify the work folder in the source window and add the wav files to the setup window, and burn a great quality archive CD. For the WinXP folks, looks like CloneCD is the way to go if your burner supports raw read/write. If not, plug your CD player into the sound card and record analog with Spin Doctor. Close this application, back to the music project window, and select MP3 CD Project.
MP3 CD Project
	Clicking on the MP3 CD button will open the Easy CD Creator window with a few modifications to create MP3 CDs, playlists and encode music tracks to MP3. This is by-far the easiest and best organized interface I have used so far, for working with MP3 files. When you are dealing with around 200 music tracks to encode and burn to CD, it can get out of control in a heartbeat. Identify the music tracks (on CD), or files or a playlist in the source window, select the music files to be encoded to MP3, click the convert button, identify or name a work folder on your hard drive, pick wav, MP3 or WMA conversion to format, select the flavor of the encode, and click save. The files will be encoded and saved to your hard drive.  Only MP3 files can be added to the setup window when setting-up for a burn. The MP3 Playlist Editor is simple and straightforward allowing you to juggle the MP3 songs, in the setup window, into whatever order you desire, not in alphabetical order like most software. Now I’m not crazy about the Fraunhofer encoder, but it does a consistent and dependable job. My preference runs to the Lame encoder which uses a variable encode rate that just sounds better to these tired old ears, and creates a smaller file size. I haven’t figured how to swap the encoder to Lame yet. In the meantime, I’ll continue to encode my MP3 files using the Lame encoder with the Windows interface (free) and burn my MP3 CDs using ECDC. Moving on, close this application and back to the project window.

Slide the curser over the Data button and three choices will appear

• DirectCD
• Data CD Project
• Take Two.

DirectCD
	DirectCD is just like a 500+ MB floppy if you format a CD-RW disc. Roxio has led the development of packet writing and, in my opinion, is still the best of the eight or so other formats, none of which are compatible with each other (to the best of my knowledge). But, Nero’s InCD is catching up fast in quality. The problem is, when you decide to trust your data to one format, you are pretty much committed from then on. Fortunately, The latest flavor of DirectCD can still read those formatted discs made four and a half years ago.  You can use it to store any kind of data from your hard drive — music files, pictures, video, and data files. You can do any operation to the files (rename, delete, etc) that Windows will do. All you have to do to start the process is insert the formatted disc in your burner. At any time, you can finalize the disc and it can be read in most multi-read CD-ROMs. Also, you can wipe the entire disc clean hundreds of times, and start again with a clean CD-RW. Big magic. Don’t overlook the Scan-disc feature on the DirectCD window hiding under the CD Utilities button. It’s a useful CD-RW repair and report tool, allows you to recover files to your hard disk if the disc is going bad, and allows recovery of some erased files. Next we close the DirectCD window and return to the Project window. Click the Data CD Project button.
Data CD Project
	Data CDs can be created in many flavors and file formats. You will want to create a CD that will play in most CD-ROMs. Click File menu, select CD Project Properties, and I select Mode 2:CD-ROM XA. That will copy those long file names I like so much, and will work on most CD-ROMs and Win9X/XP. This is a good time to decide if you want to continue to add data in several sessions, called multisession. If yes, select Track-at-once, Finalize session, don’t Finalize CD. That way you can add data sessions over time, until the disc is full. The status bar at the bottom of the ECDC window is handy to keep track of your settings. Then finalize the disc so it can be read on other computers. This section will also help you create a bootable CD if your BIOS supports it. Close this window and we are at the Project window again.
Take Two
	Take Two is the last choice on the Data Project window. Take Two is a backup and restore program that refuses to function properly on many computers. You can try it, but you are on your own, support-wise. It never did work for me, or maybe I’m just too dumb to figure it out. Do not install it in WinXP — it has Go-Back.

When you roll the curser over the Make a Photo or Video CD button, four choices will appear 

• Photo Album
• Video Postcard
• Video Impression
• Video CD.

Photo Album
	Photo Album is a neat program to organize your pictures. You can sort your pictures and photos into albums and burn them to CD. Or, you can create self-running slide shows with your narrative or music playing in the background. Boring! With the music added, the program will calculate how long to show each slide so the show finishes at the same time as the music. Then you can burn the whole thing to a CD.
Video Postcard
	Making a video postcard on CD is really simple. Click the Video Postcard button, select a template, select a background, enter a message for the end of the postcard, select a video clip to add in MPEG-1 format, preview it, and select Copy Video Postcard to CD, insert a blank disc in your burner, and click finish. This VCD will play on most PCs using MS Media Player and on DVD players that will play VCDs. I haven’t tried this yet. Maybe someday when I get older.
Video Impression
	Video Impression is a simple video editor and format converter. This version contains an MPEG-1 encoder and allows simple edits to create a video CD (VCD). The last VCD I made, I had to capture the video using an ATI all-in-wonder board in AVI format, edit the video and encode it to MPEG-1 in VideoWave (Roxio just bought MGI which makes VideoWave and PhotoSuite), then burn the VCD using ECDC. A lot of work. Now, most of it’s in one simple to use program. One of these days, I’ll try it again. Maybe right after I get that digital camera I’ve had my eye on for some time. Where’s Santa when you need her?
Video CD
	Burning video CDs is real easy now — just follow the wizard. Remember, you have to use MPEG-1 video files. Now MPEG-1 is not the greatest picture quality, but just like MP3 reduces the WAV file size and degrades the music, so does MPEG-1 reduces the AVI file size, reducing the picture quality to about half of VHS. So if you are using a good quality cam-corder, maybe you would be better off using data CDs to store your video footage, rather than on VCDs.

The fourth button on the Project window is the CD Copier. It will make a reasonably close copy of an entire non-copy protected CD. For audio CDs, it uses digital audio extraction (which unleashes the copy protection) or sometimes makes a low quality copy. When trying to copy a data CD with protection, many things can happen to spoil the copy. So, click the advanced tab and select test, then slow your normal burn speed for a more accurate read, check disc-at-once, and see what happens. If the test seems OK, then give it a try. Then test the CD to see if you have a useable archive copy. Most times you won’t. Almost every CD recently has some form of copy protection. Do not use on-the-fly reading from a CD-ROM to the burner. Use the burner as the source and the destination. That way, you will get the most accurate read to an image file, giving you the cleanest burn. 

I’m sure I’ve lost most of you long before now. Technical stuff is really boring unless you are looking for a solution to a problem that’s bugging you. It’s been my experience, it’s not the software that causes the coaster, it’s the way you setup the software for the burn, or copy protection that causes the coaster. Remember, there is no perfect or best “do everything” software, either by default or by design. This is a good group of programs for a beginning burner user who doesn’t have the time or inclination to devote to really learn how to burn CDs.