Burning discs is no longer a job for professionals, with all the dedicated software around to guide you through the process. Popular names in this industry have their designated league of fans and while most people like to stick to what they know, other less known applications are struggling to keep up.

One of them is the NTI Media Maker. This application provides the means to create CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray discs and to convert, rip, edit and backup your multimedia files like a professional, while remaining accessible and easy to use.

The installation process takes quite a while, given the wide range of utilities included in the installer file. NTI Media Maker 9 Premium features a colorful, polished, yet professional looking interface that offers you access to all of the program’s sections.

The main window of the program includes several utilities, organized in categories for Video / Audio / Data content. One of the most exciting features of the program is the Home Video Maker, which allows you to gather up your photos into unique slideshows and burn them to high quality DVDs.

For advanced photo effects, you can turn to the NTI Photo Maker and spice pictures up with the latest transitions and graphic filters. The NTI DVD-Fit allows you to compress DVD movies to standard DVDs, while maintaining the original quality at a decent level.

Also worth mentioning are the audio features that the application brings to the table. Aside from being capable of burning flawless audio CDs, users are also presented with a built-in audio editor, ripper and live recorder.

NTI Media Maker also sports a DVD Copy feature, which allows you to transfer the DVD content between two disc drives at a faster rate.

During our tests, NTI Media Maker acted like a friend. It’s intuitive, easy to use and does a marvelous job. We did notice though that the application takes a little while to load its functions at times, but that also depends on your computer configuration, of course.

The bottom line is that NTI Media Maker is a great alternative to the popular, but more expensive programs that most users are addicted to. If you’re willing to make a change regarding your CD burning software, this is one of the programs you should be looking at.