Creative media player: The Vision:W

$299 (30-GByte version)

Figure 1. The wide-screen appeal of the Vision:W is obvious. The high-resolution screen can easily handle movies. Now, if only it were easier to get TV shows and movies for non-iPod devices. (Source: Creative)

It’s always Christmas at the Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs, at least when it’s not Halloween and time for tricks or treats. This week brought a real treat in the mailbag—the Creative Vision:W media player. This is a top-of-the-line Creative media player with a 30-GByte hard drive (it’s also available in a 60-GByte version), 4.3-inch high-resolution color screen display, and a replaceable, rechargeable battery. It supports video in WMV, MPEG1/2/4-SP, Motion-JPEG, and DivX. For input the player supports USB 2, of course, but also has a Compact Flash port so that people can pull the memory from their camera and put it into the player. Finally, it has an FM radio and a built-in microphone and AV-out to connect to a TV. Honestly, I do believe this is the first time I jumped up and down when I opened the mail.

Readers of JPR’s Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs reports will know that we’re a contrarian bunch. It’s not that we don’t think that iPods are the best thing to ever grace the earth—but we don’t—and it’s not that we just want to be different—though perhaps we do. The thing is, there are so many great toys out there for watching video, looking at pictures, and listening to music that we just don’t understand why people don’t look around and see the choices that are available.

Meeting expectations

Actually, we do understand some of the reasons. There are several arguments at play here but they could all be summed up in one phrase: it works like I expect it to. Is there any area in which this is more important than entertainment systems? Most people do not find the process of troubleshooting entertaining. In general, this is not the fault of the device makers, or for that matter the alternative (to iTunes) music serv-ices. (However, companies like Sony and YouTube are complicating the proc-ess out of fears for copy protection.) So far it’s been difficult to impossible to create a synergistic relationship among the players, the services, and the operating system when the operating system is an increasingly unstable Windows. Microsoft has tried to solve the problem with the Plays For Sure program. But, not knowing the internal workings at Microsoft and being pretty sure that Microsoft wouldn’t level with us anyway, we can't help but believe that Microsoft’s commitment to Plays for Sure was compromised early on. The company’s need to fight—as best it can—attacks on the operating system security means it cannot ensure seamless interaction between players and services; it can only provide fixes after something breaks. Obviously, that’s where Apple has had the edge and they’ve kept it. Most recently Microsoft’s commitment to Plays For Sure seems even shakier now that Redmond has decided to develop its own media player and service with Zune in order to take on Apple.

All that said, great progress has been made on the PC side, and we believe Creative is one of the major contributors to that progress. It has revamped its own tools for ripping and synching and it has improved integration with the Windows Media Player. Still, the care and feeding of a media player is time-consuming enough to smother a Yamaguchi pet and make a Nintendog beg to be left alone. The beautiful LCD screen on the Zen Vision—as big as that on a PSP—makes the process a little more fun with bright graphics and clear information. And on the PC side, the interface that comes with Creative’s Vision:W Explorer is very complementary to the Zen Vision in look, feel, and controls. In this sense it’s superior to the iTunes player/device relationship, and it’s a vast improvement over earlier -efforts by Creative. Unfortunately, Creative includes the whole kit and caboodle of software with the player so it’s possible to find oneself suffering through the MediaSource’s opaque interface instead of the better-designed Vision:W software. Many users will probably rely on the Windows Media Player to rip and transfer audio files. Go ahead—I find it annoying, but it’s a free country. However, if you want to synch your Outlook contacts and calendar, convert and transfer video, and in general get the full bene-fit of the player be sure to check out the Vision:W software before throwing anything against a wall. The feature we appreciate the most is the ability to rip music files directly to the player, bypassing the computer.

We also found synching with our Napster to Go service to be blessedly easy. (In general I have found that newer players work better than older players even when the older ones have been upgraded. It may not make sense but there you go.) Here we’ll take another opportunity to digress. The subscription services are marvelous if a little unwieldy for the power user—i.e., someone who changes devices and computers frequently. It has trouble keeping up with licenses and permissions. In the case of Napster we have found the company’s support system to be very responsive, often fixing a problem almost immediately with an email request.

 It has been suggested that the most likely market for subscription services is the broadest market for digital music overall—users 18 to 30. Contrary to popular belief this age group was not born with a digital gene that makes them more capable of using these devices—they just have more time on their hands. A quick read of chat sites will reveal that a great many avid music fans are simply clueless about how subscription services work, what players work with what, and what happens if you don’t synch your player every month. (It won’t play because the subscription service hasn't been able to verify that the subscription is up to date. File this under duh.)

Personally, my music model is somewhat simpler. Subscription is perfect. Normally I buy one or two CDs a month—sometimes more, often less. I have been disappointed a few times, but the subscription service helps me avoid disappointment. I like to try out music before I buy it. Or even live with something for a while and then get rid of it. Remember that Boxtops album that you listened to every day for a month and then never listened to again?

Finally, speaking of muddy and unclear, the Vision:W is Viiv-verfied. This means that if you have a PC Entertainment Center that supports Viiv, your Creative Player will fit right in so you can record TV shows and transfer them to the player. (You can also do this with TiVo players and media players but it’s not for the faint of heart.)

A couple of uh-ohs

There are complications with the Zen Vision:W, and, as you should expect, it’s in the area of software interface. Working with photos leaves something to be desired. It feels like Creative just bolted the feature on. For example, I plugged in my Compact Flash directly from my camera and imported photos using the player’s own interface. That was easy, but then I couldn’t find the pictures. Seems they were in an external folder on the player instead of in the Pictures folder where you’d expect. On the plus side, I could copy files from this external folder back to the computer (something you can’t do with other media). On the negative side, I couldn’t view my photos without a certain amount of poking around. Even more disappointing, Creative lets you create slide shows with music background but you’ll have to deal with the dreaded Media Source interface. Basically, you’re working within Windows and creating slide shows by right-clicking and choosing “Create Slideshow.” It’s best if you put the -photos you want in a slide show in a separate folder so you can click the whole folder. Good luck. It’s the sort of thing you start out bright and young to do in the morning and end up a bitter old grouch in the afternoon.

Usage model

Because the Zen Vision:W is a hard drive player, it should probably be a stay-at-home model for most users. Dropping a hard drive player isn’t a good idea. And after all the work that goes into putting video and pictures on the player, losing one can inspire thoughts of suicide or murder depending on which way you incline—this we know from our bitter experience after losing a much-loved 60-GByte hard drive music player. In general, this -player should not go to the gym. However, if you promise to be careful, it could be a marvelous travel companion, allowing you to create instant slide shows to show friends your pictures or video. Oh, and I forgot to mention its internal speaker. The sound it produces is not all that great. If you really want road music you’d be better off investing in travel speakers. But in a pinch, the player could cheer up a quiet room.

Finally, let’s admit that the progess of consumer digital video is in its infancy. Creative has done a good thing by creat-ing ZenCast—a video and podcast download site that takes advantage of RSS to let users subscribe to content. So far there’s not much content and we couldn’t get it to work. However, the Zen Vision’s video converter works so that if you do find videos you can convert them to your player. The best bet is to shoot videos of the family on vacation and then whip the player out and force people to comment on your kids.

Creative has the 30-GByte version on sale on its site for $300.

Roxio’s Creator 9

$79.99

In this day and age of low-cost consumer video products, it can be pretty hard to make a buck. Roxio met the challenge by combining its formidable disk-creation software with video- and photo-editing and charging a premium for the suite compared to similar products. The ace in the hole for the com-pany was their CD/DVD-burning tools acquired with Adaptec. Well, time marches on—Sonic Solutions acquired Roxio and now the company has all kinds of expertise including DVD-making, video, audio expertise, and -backup.

An adequate review of Roxio’s new Creator 9 should probably take a few months and a few disasters to fully assess its features and backup capabilities. Over the years it seems that Roxio, a division of Sonic Solutions, has simply added stuff to the program. It sure doesn’t seem like anything has ever gone away. That means that some of the capa-bilities in this portmanteau of products are pretty venerable, and it means that the program can be a tad leisurely when you’re navigating through it.

The audio and the video of it

It’s the new features that are the best in this new collection of tools from Roxio, and some of them have become indispensable to me in no time.

For example, Roxio has added audio recording, and it’s a tool I use almost every day. I use it to record financial calls in the background so that I can then transfer them to my iPod and listen to them in the car. Likewise, radio shows can be recorded. The software can analyze tracks and break between songs. I find that knowing I have the tool means that I use it a lot more than I thought I would just reading about it. It’s the equivalent of a screen-capture tool for audio. If further editing is needed, Roxio has included a simple audio editor that is really a dream to figure out and to use.

I have been working on Podcasts lately and I have been switching between more sophisticated tools and the simple Roxio Sound Editor, and there are times when everything else is just too complicated. After all, all I want to do is trim an opening or clip out some noise. Within a few hours of fooling around with the Roxio’s Sound Editor I could edit files about as easily as I can type.

Figure 2. Now, if you shot video that was in any way worth keeping and cutting together with sound, you can do it in Roxio’s Videowave module. In some cases, I’m lucky if I can salvage a five-minute clip to combine with music and stills in Cinemagic. The beauty part is that the end product still looks pretty good.

The same is true for the new video-editing tool, Cinemagic. As it turns out I’m a fairly incompetent videographer. Luckily, I can take the few usable minutes I get from a day of video shooting, combine them with photos and music, and there is something to show for all my hard work. The software even analyzes the video and breaks it down into scenes that can be rearranged and deleted. It’s a lot easier than going into the video editor and trimming files. If you have used Muvee, a similar program, I’d say don’t switch. Muvee has a rock-and-roll heart. That said, the video editor, Creator 9, has backup tools to support Cinemagic. Videowave is handy and it can be used to fine-tune the work of Cinemagic so you can further pare out the weak video or punch up the -cadence.

It’s kind of handy that I have Crea-tor 9 at the same time I got the Crea-tive media player, because I have been experimenting with making files for the player. It’s gone pretty easily all in all. I can create an AVI file and send it directly to the Creative player. However, so far it seems all I can create are AVI files. When I try to make MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 or DiVx it still saves to an AVI file. As of this writing I haven’t tried to circumvent the software by going out to Videowave, and I’m not totally sure I’m not missing something. So, I’ll just fall back on the complaint that it should be more obvious. That’s not too much to ask in consumer software.

Nevertheless, the real strengths of Roxio’s Creator lie in its kindness to the incompetent and the busy. Usable media files can be created almost immediately using Creator’s bag of tricks. The lost art of making a party tape is back with the program’s easy CD/DVD disk creation.

In fact, some of those venerable capa-bilities are pretty hard to improve on. Creating data disks, audio disks, or backup disks is as easy as using Windows Explorer. It’s not pretty, but just about anyone can figure it out.

Backups, too

Roxio Creator 9 also helped me improve my lifestyle. I’m backing up more often. I hope that backup software is something that you never have to use. I never have. Not that I don’t back up my drives, but somehow only the drives that I have not backed up crash. Still, ever hopeful, I have used Creator 9 to back up my current system and at least I feel more secure. Perhaps my drive won’t crash now because I did backup.

Roxio’s backup capabilities aren’t blindingly fast, but compression ratios are over 200:1 and the background operation is painless and allows incremental backups once you’ve done your good work. We’d like to see tools for transferring information between computers so that moving from one computer to a new computer does not mean reloading all the software. These days there are so many things that require setup, it’s an incredible pain to get a new computer. It’s kind of hard to complain about things that Roxio has left out, however, because there is so much that is in.

Some people will use the media crea-tion capabilities, others the disk writing, and still others backup. There will be lots of people who can find a use for just about every module but you have to find them first. As I say, I’m still looking.

Creator 9 is absolutely perfect for notebooks or in situations where hard drive space is a consideration. You can easily get away with having Creator 9 on your computer and little else. You won’t need additional audio, imaging, or video applications. And you can backup between systems and write to DVD or CD. I’m not saying that Crea-tor 9 with all its capabilities is a small package; at 551 MBytes on the drive, it takes up some hard drive real estate but it’s considerably more miserly than similar suites and it has more capabilities including Sonic’s much-vaunted DVD capabilities and Roxio’s inherent knack for optical disks.

I have a minor beef with the product’s activation process—it seems like it wants to activate every module I use so it feels like a very long breaking-in -period. I have gone through the process of activating several times and sometimes it hangs when it goes online. Again, is it my system? Creator 9? I have no idea but it would seem simple enough to enable activation just once for all the features.

There are hiccups in Creator 9. As far as I know there is no suite of consumer media creation products that does not have its idiosyncrasies. But, after a few short weeks, Creator 9 has a few features that I will not do without.