Category: Video Software
I love a program where you can immediately sit down and it all just seems intuitive, without the program being "dumbed down" or feature-impaired as a result. Vegas Video 3 (referred to as "VV3" hereafter) is like that. Using an interface similar to the that seen in the acclaimed Acid audio looping tool (which I also highly...
Product: MediaStudio Pro 5.2
From: Ulead www.ulead.com
Version tested: 5.2 (tested on Win95 and Win98) A trial version is available for download.
Pros: CG, audio, video and capture suite for Windows 95/NT with device control, MPEG input, editing and output, MOV and AVI support.
Cons: QuickTime for Windows (QTW) not supported under NT. Note: free...
Final Cut Pro is one of the leading non-linear editing (NLE) applications available for the Macintosh. However, a key drawback of FCP version 1.x was its lack of support for a feature now widely available on PC-based video editing systems: real-time special effects. In a nutshell, RT effects allow you to apply a transition -- say, a page turn or...
How low can you go in digital video systems and still get acceptable output quality to your TV or video recorder? That, it seems, is the question many users of low-end systems and potential purchasers alike are asking. One thing's for certain: there are a number of systems we consistently hear problem reports about. The software originally...
Video For Windows and OpenDML
One of the best descriptions we've seen of the "2GB limit" issue plaguing some Video for Windows-compatible programs is provided by Richard Jones (rich...@activeservice.co.uk), the author of a series of MediaStudio Pro tutorials at www.activeservice.co.uk. Says Jones,
"The problem lies in VfW (Video...
Looking to edit videos with your computer? Steve McDonald (bigr...@webtv.net) recommends the following solution for high-quality results at a low-budget price.
If you already have a good video-friendly computer system on hand, says Steve, and you want to incorporate some NLE (non-linear editing) into this, then expect your total cost to be...
FX program provides professional results
After Effects
From: Adobe
For: Macintosh, Windows
Price: US$995; US$1,995 (production bundle)
Pros: Powerful animation and post-production processing. A few years ago, these effects required an expensive FX generator. Good tutorials.
Cons: Fairly complicated, number-oriented interface.
After Effects is one...
Introduction
Both Apple and Microsoft released new versions of their respective "free" consumer video editors in Jan. 2003. Apple's iMovie 3.0.1 description reads: "iMovie is the easiest way to import, edit, and share your movies." In this article, I'll attempt to discover whether the program lives up to this claim. I'll also...
As many long-time users of Apple QuickTime-based digital video editing products noted in a Macintouch reader report, Apple's DV codec shipped with QuickTime 4.1 for the Mac, was deeply flawed and products that relied on it to produce high-quality output of titles, transitions, and motion graphics suffered noticeably from its limitations....
Introduction
Touted as "The best MPEG-4 technology" by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the product's introduction at at his WWDC keynote in May 2002, QuickTime 6, released July 15, 2002, includes integrated support for AAC, "instant on" streaming, free QuickTime Broadcaster and MPEG-4 encoding.
The software was released as a public...
QT3's crippled MoviePlayer makes this 6MB download a dubious upgrade, but the new features provide improvement for Macs and Windows PCs - albeit with some caveats.
QuickTime 3 for the Macintosh and 32-bit Windows PCs is now available in freely downloadable and US$29.95 "Pro" formats from Apple's QuickTime website. It brings feature...
Product: PowerDVD 1.5
From: CyberLink Corp.
The CyberLink PowerDVD player, as we noted in our previous review of DVD players, is one of the best of the software players, providing an MPEG-2 file mode in addition to DVD disc playback, and excellent visual quality. However, version 1.3 didn't work well on our Windows 98 test systems. The 1.5 update...
There's no doubt about it -- television and video are powerful forces in our society, and as prices fall and high-capacity storage systems make digital video capture and editing systems more widely available, it is likely that in-house "video sampling" will soon be a common task for tomorrow's media-savvy students, marketers and...
Play On!
Even as modems have evolved over the past few years from 14.4 to 28.8, 33.6 and 56K (the latter yielding no more than 49K most of the time), alternative technologies such as ISDN, cable modems, ADSL and TCP/IP-connected office networks have pushed the envelope of our expectations of what forms of media the Internet can competently deliver...