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WinOnCD 5 Power Edition is effectively a wide collection of CD utilities bundled together under the same product name and user interface.
As well as the obvious CD copying tools, it includes audio encoding, VideoCD creation and disc emulation from CD images. The interface will be familiar to anyone with experience of earlier versions of WinOnCD, as it's virtually identical.
Divided into two sections, WinOnCD uses the top half of the window to list the directory structure of your PC for system navigation and file location.
Files from here can then be dragged into the bottom half of the window, which usually represents the file structure of the particular project you're working on. To make things easier, a start up screen is presented which lists the various job types available.
This is divided into six groups: Favourites, Data, Audio, Video, Copy and Other. Each group contains different options within that category and a specific description of each one.
The Data section includes standard options for creating a data CD, appending existing volumes, making bootable discs and creating hybrid MAC/PC-compatible volumes. However, the selection now includes Universal Data Format volume support for data DVDs and OverSpan data CDs.
This latter feature lets you create file sets that would normally be too large for a single CD. A copy of the OverSpan utility is automatically included on each disc, allowing you to transfer large amounts of data to a system without WinOnCD installed.
The Audio section includes options for creating standard audio CDs from compressed audio formats such as MP3 or WMA, audio CDs that contain separate data files in a second session or music albums suitable for playback on MP3-compatible CD or VideoCD/DVD players.
Music files that don't match the required destination format are transcoded first, while compatible files can be burnt directly to disc. MP3 albums include a customisable HTML file for playback through a browser, as well as M3U play list information. You can also attach image files to each track.
The Audio section includes an advanced audio editor, so you can analyse audio tracks, add effects, silence or fades, adjust pitch and gain or cut out unwanted noise before burning your compilation to disc.
WinOnCD 5 Power Edition also lets you create basic and interactive VideoCDs (VCDs) and Super VideoCDs (SVCDs) by importing MPEGs. For MPEG-2 DVDs, a plug-in is required, which Roxio claims will be on sale soon.
Again, non-compliant files will be transcoded into a VCD or SVCD-compatible bit rate before the disc is burnt. Interactive VCDs can be built with a basic menu system and include image slideshows with background music.
A distributable VCD player can be included on the disc for PC playback. As with the Audio CD options, disc artwork can be created, along with image acquisition from Twain scanners.
These advanced features complement an already impressive range of CD copying and authoring options. Raw data copying can be used to circumvent copy protection and DirectCD is included for simple packet writing.
Ripping CDs to WAV, MP3 or WMA is supported with compressed bit rates up to 320Kbit/s for MP3 and 128Kbit/s for WMA, while CDDB internet querying is included for CD track and title information.
What lets WinOnCD 5 Power Edition down is its user interface. With the inclusion of so many disparate elements, trying to adapt the Explorer-style layout to fit some of the advanced features results in a cluttered appearance.
Price: £54.99 (ex. VAT).
Minimum requirements: Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP; 400MHz processor; 32Mb Ram; 80Mb hard drive space.
Contact: Roxio www.roxio-shop.com
See also:
The latest version of this popular Mac CD-creation application boasts many new features and an incredibly daft name. 02 Aug 2002
Roxio's multimedia authoring software offers professional editing facilities in an easy-to-use package. 05 Jul 2002All Audio Recording, Editing & Mixing
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