Roxio today launched Roxio Creator 2010, an upgrade focused on streamlining and accelerating the process of capturing, editing and enjoying personal video, including high-definition content. Building on Creator's current feature set for editing and sharing digital video, Roxio Creator 2010 now offers automatic smart encoding to decrease rendering times while maintaining optimum video quality, and leverages ATI Stream and NVIDIA CUDA technologies to make project encoding up to five times faster. Creator 2010 also adds a range of Blu-ray Disc (BD) features including AVCHD Archiving, BD-RE on-disc editing, and complements its Blu-ray Disc authoring capabilities with a new array of new high-definition motion menus.

Roxio Creator 2010 also makes it easier to enjoy video on a range of mobile devices with a newly simplified and reorganized output display that enables users to quickly transfer videos that are automatically optimized for the display characteristics and playback features of their particular device. Adding to Creator 2010's video capabilities is a Web video capture feature that allows users to grab streaming video, such as user-generated content on YouTube, for viewing offline on portable devices and DVD players.

Roxio Creator 2010's new video features are accessed via a redesigned user interface that emphasizes commonly used tasks and includes a built-in Learning Center with dozens of video tutorials and step-by-step instructional guides. Roxio Creator 2010 also expands other functional areas of the suite dedicated to working with photos and music as well as completing burning projects.

Fully Windows 7 compatible, Roxio Creator 2010 is available today at www.roxio.com for $99.99 and will be introduced early next month in retail stores worldwide. Roxio Creator 2010 Pro, priced at $129.99, also includes the Blu-ray Disc authoring capability as well as a set of additional applications. These Pro features include built-in photo enhancement with LightZone, custom soundtrack creation with Sonicfire Pro, audio noise reduction in both audio and video files with SoundSoa SE, hard-drive backup and recovery with BackOnTrack 3, and direct editing of HD video on BD-RE.

Roxio Creator 2010 Highlights:

- Accelerated encode processing - support for ATI Stream and NVIDIA CUDA technologies means encoding and rendering is now up to five times faster.

- Automatic smart encoding - Creator 2010's intelligent video editor speeds rendering of edited clips by determining which parts must be re-encoded (e.g. titles and transitions) while leaving the remaining footage in its original form. In addition, Creator 2010 is the first application to support Smart Encoding for AVCHD videos.

- Flexible encoding control - Creator 2010 now allows users to preview the results of current video encoding settings before committing to a lengthy conversion, to pause and resume processor-intensive encoding operations, and to schedule conversions for times when the computer is not otherwise in use, such as overnight.

- Blu-ray Disc authoring - Creator 2010 builds HD video clips into true high-definition discs playable not only on PCs but also on set-top BD players.

- Direct BD-RE editing - video recorded on BD-RE can be edited directly on disc without first transferring to a local hard drive and then re-recording back to disc.

- AVCHD archiving - Creator 2010 backs up an entire camcorder's worth of AVCHD video at its original high-definition resolution to a recordable Blu-ray disc (BD-R or BD-RE) or a standard DVD in AVCHD format.

- BD playback on PC - an optional Blu-ray Playback plug-in enables playback on PC of BDs including Hollywood movies.

- Direct HDV to disc - high-definition camcorder video can be recorded directly to a PC-hosted DVD or Blu-ray recordable drive without the interim step of storing the video to the hard drive.

- Web video capture - online streaming videos can now be grabbed to a local hard drive and converted for viewing away from a PC, including from portable devices and set-top DVD players.

- Streamlined output options - newly simplified and reorganized, the output display now emphasizes target output devices which are represented with easily recognized pictures to aid identification.

- Video compilations - improved compilation features allow fast assembly of clips into compilations that are optimized for DVD playback and burned to disc.

Functional areas have been enhanced to include new photo and music options, as well as to provide better burning and backup:

- Task-oriented design - Creator 2010's Home page brings frequent tasks to the forefront while still enabling quick access to less-used features.

- Built-in Learning Center - users have built-in access to dozens of video tutorials and printable step-by-step instructions for quick help when needed.

- Desktop burning - files can be dragged directly onto the Roxio Burn desktop icon to immediately begin the disc burning process without first launching a separate application.

- Web radio capture - audio from streaming internet radio can be captured and automatically added to an iTunes-compatible music library for playback from a PC or a portable player such as an iPod.

- Photo slideshows - Creator 2010 lets users turn a photo collection and video clips into an engaging slideshow, complete with music and professionally-designed graphics that can be burned to DVD or shared online in a personal PhotoShow.com gallery.

- Access to Roxio CinemaNow - direct online access to a massive selection of premium entertainment for downloading, including new movies often on the same day and date as they are available in stores.