Intervideo, which bought Ulead not so long ago, is itself being acquired by Corel, with the announcement coming only a week or so after the launch of the latest version of its well-known DVD copying application, DVD Copy 5 Platinum.

Corel now has a broad range of video applications as well as a strong stable of graphics (CorelDraw, PaintShop Pro, PhotoPaint) and office productivity products (WordPerfect).

DVD Copy 5 Platinum is designed to copy complete DVDs, or selected scenes from them, to a variety of other media. Blank DVDs are an obvious choice and the program supports single and dual-layer discs up to 8.9GB, but neither Blu-Ray nor HD DVD. It does, however, support HDV format video and can translate video into highly-compressed DivX or MPEG-4. It can write to formats used by mobiles from LG, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung, too.

The process of copying a DVD has been reduced to three steps: pick the source of the video, pick its destination and select the format of the copy. Press the Copy button - OK, that's four steps - and the process begins. DVD Copy copies quickly; its speed is largely governed by the speed of your DVD reader and rewriter.

Copying is only one of four main options. The other three are; Merge DVD, which enables you to combine DVD, VCD or SVCD titles onto one disc of up to 9.4GB; File to DVD, which enables you to compile a disc from your selection of files; and Copy to Go, which will copy files to a Video iPod or PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld in the correct formats. In each case the process is step-by-step and remarkably straightforward to run through.

If you record TV shows there are two more useful additions to the package. Intelligent Folder Monitoring keeps an eye on designated folders on your hard drive and converts any new video files it finds into the format you specify, so you can view them immediately. CopyLater - the clue's in the name - can be used to schedule batch conversion jobs while you're asleep or away from your PC, so it doesn't interrupt your normal work.

Finally, some useful little bonuses include DiscLabel, which supports LightScribe discs, plus Virtual Drives, which can set up and run disc images as if they were separate drives on your PC, and a copy of WinDVD so you can preview and run movies, windowed or at full screen.

If you do any amount of video work, it's hard to see how you could cope without a copy of DVD Copy 5 Platinum. It makes all kinds of conversions and copying to discs, portables, mobiles and hard disk files so simple that anybody could do it. Just don't expect it to copy commercial movies: it won't break protection systems.