Entries from Manifest Tech Blog tagged with 'Software'
Video Editing Software Buyer's Guide
The range of the video editing software market has been remarkably stable over the past decade or so, with a clear divide between "consumer" tools in the $50 to $100 to $150 range, and "professional" tools from the likes of...
Authoring HD Productions to Blu-ray Discs
It's the era of high definition, shooting with equipment from professional video cameras and video DSLRs, to HD consumer camcorders, and even small pocket camcorders. Video-editing software also has stepped up to the challenge, so you can edit even HD...
Sony Vegas Pro 9.0d Software Update
One big splash at last week's NAB Show (see earlier post) was the release of Adobe Creative Suite 5, an impressive update of Adobe's entire collection of 14-plus tools (see previous post). Meanwhile, Sony Creative Software continues to update its...
Adobe Announces Creative Suite 5
Adobe has just announced the new Adobe Creative Suite 5 collection of publication, Web, and production tools, spanning the creative workflow across print, web, video, interactive and mobile (see previous post). These are due to ship within 30 days....
Corel VideoStudio Pro X3 for Beginner and Enthusiast Video Editing
Corel VideoStudio Pro X3 is intended as a complete consumer video editing program, to import, edit, burn and share standard or HD video. However, over time even consumer tools like VideoStudio have bulked up with a wide range of...
Google Translate on Android - Cloud Processing
The Google Android platform is focused on smartphones as cloud devices, integrating with online services like Gmail and Google Contacts and Calendar. But it also integrates with the cloud at a deeper level, with Google back-end services like voice input...
Sony Sound Forge Pro 10 -- Audio Editing Suite
Sony Sound Forge Pro 10, the latest version of Sony's professional digital audio production suite, was released in September 2009. It's a full suite of tools for professional audio editing and mastering, including recording, sound design, audio restoration, and...
Compress and Deliver with Sorenson Squeeze 6
With all the different ways to share your videos these days, do you find yourself spending more and more time converting files to different formats with your video editor, and waiting for files to be compressed? Then take a look...
Sound Off With Sony's 1,000 Ringtones for the iPhone
If you want to customize your iPhone -- or other mobile phone -- with distinctive ringtones, then Sony Creative Software has a disc for you -- the Sony 1,000 Ringtones DVD. That's enough clips to assign a different sound...
Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c Software Update
Sony Creative Software continues to release updates for its Sony Vegas Pro 9 nonlinear HD video and audio editing software. Now that video editing tools have settled into support for the new HD formats like HDV and AVCHD, the...
Sony Vegas Pro 9 for Pro Editing
Sony Vegas Pro 9, the latest version in the Sony Creative Software line of professional video and audio editing software, was released in May 2009. The product also includes DVD Architect 5, which adds support for Blu-ray Disc authoring....
RealDVD - The Product and the Case
In September 2008, RealNetworks released RealDVD, a $30 software product that allowed consumers to "save, organize and watch DVDs on their PC and on the go" by copying DVD discs to your PC's hard drive (see my RealDVD product...
Roxio Creator 2010 Available
Roxio Creator 2010 shipped today (press release). This is Roxio’s flagship suite of digital media applications -- Roxio describes it as the top selling multimedia software suite, with over 350 million copies shipped worldwide. It's a deep collection, with...
PC Health Insurance: iolo System Mechanic 9
Health insurance matters for your PC too. And it's not just about emergencies -- it's actually the preventative care and regular healthy practices that can avoid panic calls to the computer doctor. I'm often uninstalling and reinstalling new applications, so...
MotionDSP vReveal -- Easy Video Enhancement Software
Do you want to enhance video like on CSI, so you can read the writing on a shirt collar a block away in a camera phone video? Well not exactly, but more of this kind of technology from forensic video...
Apple Updates Final Cut Studio
Apple has announced and released an updated version of Final Cut Studio, with new versions of Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Color 1.5, and Compressor 3.5 (see press release). The price has dropped by $300...
David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual
David Pogue has done it again, with his modestly named David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual, part of the Missing Manual series which up to over 90 titles. This book is chockablock with good, clear, sensible advice, highlighting...
The Little Digital Video Book
Consumer video has gone YouTube. -- It's so easy and fun to shoot a short little clip on your camera phone, grabbing a brief slice of life (cool -- the cat in the toilet!), and then upload it to enjoy...
Preventive Maintenance with iolo System Mechanic
I'm a big believer in preventive maintenance for PCs. Windows systems just accumulate cruft over time, as the disk fills up with junk files, disk access slows down with files broken into multiple fragments, and more and more applications want...
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 -- How-Tos
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 shipped in October 2008, with deeper support for developing advanced websites. Dreamweaver CS4 is easier to use, having adopted the Adobe interface design, especially for customizing your workspace. For editing individual pages, the new Live View...
Walter Bender on the Sugar Software for OLPC
The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project (see Wikipedia), founded by Nicholas Negroponte (co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory) has reopened its Give One Get One program (see Wikipedia) so you can donate an XO laptop for...
Nero Move it: Convert and Transfer Your Media Collection
We love our media -- music, photos, videos -- and we've got so much of it. We've got photos and video shot on digital cameras and cell phones. We have copies of some of these copied up to our PCs...
Nero 9 - Digital Media and Home Entertainment Suite
Nero has just released the latest version of its digital media suite, Nero 9, featuring an updated StartSmart launcher that has built-in quick media playback, ripping, burning, copying, and backup. The suite still is based on Nero's long-established disc...
Roxio Creator 2009 - With Blu-ray
If you're a fan of the Roxio Creator suite of digital media tools, you have only one more day to snap up a free copy of the Blu-ray/HD plug-in for the new version. Roxio Creator goes back to Easy CD...
Corel WinZip 12 with JPEG Compression
After 11 major versions of WinZip, you'd think there would not be much more to do in file compression. And you'd especially expect that at least photo compression was a solved problem -- since JPEG files are already aggressively...
Summary: Adobe Premiere Elements 7
Adobe has announced new versions of its Elements line of consumer digital photo and video software -- Adobe Premiere Elements 7 and Photoshop Elements 7, due to be released in October. Adobe has worked diligently with each release to make...
Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9
Sony Creative Software features a well-respected line of higher-end professional video and audio tools, including Vegas Pro for video editing, Sound Forge for audio editing, and ACID for music creation, plus the newer Cinescore for professional soundtrack creation. Sony also...
Blu-ray Movies on Your PC: CyberLink BD Advisor
Blu-ray Disc format (BD) is the next-generation DVD, so that once you move up to a beautiful widescreen HD television you can also enjoy high-definition movies on Blu-ray discs -- as long as you upgrade your set-top DVD player to...
Delivering Video with Sorenson Squeeze 5
So you've shot and edited your video. Now what? There are just so may different ways that you'll want to deliver video these days -- over the Web, burned to disc, played toyour PC -- from high-res on a widescreen...
CyberLink Steps Up PowerDirector 7
CyberLink, best known for its PowerDVD player software, has really stepped up the latest version of its consumer video editing application -- CyberLink PowerDirector 7 is a convenient and powerful tool that combines a friendly and straightforward interface, "Magic"...
Adobe Soundbooth CS4 Beta -- Transcripts & Metadata
You can try out the beta of Adobe Soundbooth CS4, to clean and sweeten audio clips, and to automatically generate music soundtracks (see previous post). But there's another less-obvious addition beyond editing individual clips -- a focus on collecting...
Adobe Soundbooth CS4 Beta -- Environment Scores
Adobe is providing a sneak peek of some of the elements of the next major release of its Create Suite collection of design and development tools for print, video, and web. The Adobe Labs site has beta versions of Dreamweaver...
Pinnacle Studio 12: HD Video Editing
Pinnacle Studio 12 was released in June 2008, providing simplified video editing and DVD creation for entry-level users, with versions for editing high-definition video and bundled with additional pro-style tools and a green-screen backdrop for chroma key overlays. The...
Adobe Betas for New Soundbooth, Dreamweaver, Flash
Adobe has really opened up its development process by releasing public prereleases of its applications -- beta versions posted as free downloads for you to try out. The Adobe Labs site provides early access to evaluate new and emerging Adobe...
CyberLink PowerDVD 8: Enhanced Movie Experience
CyberLink has released the latest version of its well-known DVD player software, CyberLink PowerDVD 8. As you might expect, this new release adds support for the latest buzzwords in high-def video and audio formats, including Blu-ray Disk playback --...
Creating Music and Editing Audio
Even non-musicians and beginning enthusiasts can collect, organize, mix and mash up, and create new music using today's inexpensive and accessible software tools, such as the Sony Creative Software tools -- ACID Music Studio for music creation and mixing, and...
Adobe Updates Terms of Use for Photoshop Express Site
In response to user feedback, Adobe has revised the Terms of Use for the Photoshop Express beta site (www.photoshop.com/express) -- its free Web-based photo editing and sharing application (see previous post). The terms of use for the Adobe sites basically...
New Roxio Media Products for Discs, DVD, and Music
After releasing Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 in September 2007, Roxio now has shipped three subsets of the full EMC suite for specific applications: Disc copying (Easy DVD Copy), DVD authoring (MyDVD), and music creation (RecordNow Music Lab). Released in...
Media Suites: Nero 8 and Roxio EMC 10
More and more consumers are facing growing collections of media stuff -- music and photos and video -- and facing the desire to get organized, be creative, and share their digital content. But there are some many media formats, stored...
Adobe Photoshop Express Beta
Adobe has released a beta of Photoshop Express (www.photoshop.com/express), its free Web-based photo editing and sharing application that brings Photoshop tools to the browser. You can upload your images to store online, edit them in the browser, and then share...
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 is now available for the Macintosh. The clean, uncluttered interface offers three edit modes for beginner to expert photographers -- Guided, Quick, and Full edit -- with step-by-step assistance in the new Guided Edit mode....
Adobe Premiere Elements 4 and Photoshop Elements 6
Adobe continues to pull off a difficult trick with its Elements applications: providing an accessible interface for novice editors (at under $100) that still provides access to the underlying power and flexibility of its high-end...
Paragon Partition Manager 9
I've been retrofitting some older PCs, and facing the once-common problem of partitioning the hard drives. The issue now is to remove the old partitions in order to consolidate the space back to one large C: drive -- but without...
PC Video Trends: Camcorder Formats and Editing Software
Video has never been more accessible for consumers -- and more confusing. It's even easier to use -- and harder to understand and master. It's all about "one-click" simplicity -- and an overwhelming profusion of options. If you're ready to...
HD on the Desktop: HDV and AVCHD
High-definition video has arrived -- in under-$1000 consumer camcorders, and supported by sub-$100 consumer video software that can run on your desktop. Camcorders are moving from tape to disc to memory cards, like the Panasonic HDC-DX1 DVD camcorder (back)...
Sony Music Studio 7 / Audio Studio 9
Whether you already are working with music and audio, or are interested in getting creative and learning more, the Sony Music Studio and Sony Audio Studio software products from Sony Creative Software are a great way to get started. These...
Adobe Audition 3
Adobe has released the new version of Adobe Audition 3, its flagship stand-alone tool for professional audio production -- recording, mixing, editing, and mastering. Adobe replaced Audition in the Adobe Creative Suite 3 collection last year with the new...
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 was released in September 2007, with new emphasis on a cleaner interface for quick and fun editing, including a shared Organizer with Premiere Elements 4, new Guided Editing assistance, new and enhanced tools for quick...
Summary: Adobe Premiere Elements 4
Adobe Premiere Elements 4 was released in September 2007, with new emphasis on a cleaner interface for quick and fun editing. It includes integration with Photoshop Elements 6, new automated Movie Themes, and an updated Sharing Center with export...
Gallery: Sony Vegas Pro 8
Sony Creative Software has released the latest version of its professional video, audio, and DVD creation tool, Sony Vegas Pro 8. As in previous versions, the Vegas Pro product is actually a suite of products: the Vegas Pro 8...
Gallery: Miraizon Cinematize 2 Pro for DVD Extraction
DVD was originally designed as a write-only delivery format, with the video and audio and menus all glommed together into obscure VIDEO_TS folders and humongous VOB files. But these days DVDs are just another video format, and many video editing...
Summary: Pinnacle Studio 11
As discussed in my previous post on working with AVCHD video, Pinnacle Studio 11 provides great support for editing high-def video. You can browse, preview, and import HD clips, mix high-def and standard-def formats edited together on the timeline...
Editing AVCHD Video -- With Today's Consumer Software
The good news is that high-def video is now accessible to consumers -- with sub-$1000 camcorders, today's computer power, and now $100-range consumer video editing software. The new AVCHD consumer video format promises better compression than HDV, especially for camcorders...
Adobe CS3 -- Soundbooth and Audition
The new Adobe Creative Suite 3, now available on Windows and Macintosh, includes the CS3 Production Premium suite of video tools -- with After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore for DVD, plus the new Soundbooth for audio (replacing Audition in...
Adobe Flash Video Updated to H.264
Adobe announced today that its Flash Player 9 is being updated to add support for the H.264 video standard and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio, plus full screen video playback with hardware acceleration, and multi-core enhanced vector rendering. The...
Apple iLife '08 - iMovie and iDVD
Apple has released Apple iLife '08, with major new version of iPhoto and a "completely reinvented" iMovie. The complete suite includes iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, iDVD, and the new .Mac Web Gallery. It's included with all new Macs, or available...
Summary: Sony Sound Forge 9
While video editing tools like Sony Vegas+DVD Production Suite and Adobe Premiere Pro have strong support for audio, dedicated audio editing tools like Sony Sound Forge and Adobe Audition can do much more for cleaning and enhancing existing tracks,...
Converting Flash Video: TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress
To continue with our discussion of Flash video -- One of the first compression tools to address importing clips in Flash video format is TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress, which converts between most popular video formats, with assists like color correction...
Creating Flash Videos: Sorenson Squeeze
To continue with our discussion of Flash video -- Sorenson Squeeze is a great encoding tool that supports encoding Flash video in both the older Spark and newewr VP6 video formats. Squeeze is now up to version 4.5.6, with...
Flavors of Flash: Adobe Flash Uses and Formats
To continue with our discussion of downloading and using Flash video on the desktop -- Adobe Flash is all about animation, interactivity, and video. But Flash is not just one thing -- it's a range of Adobe tools for...
Applian Replay Tools: Record, Play, Convert Flash Video
To continue with our discussion of downloading and using Flash video on the desktop -- beyond the open source / freeware tools covered in the last installment, for more packaged solutions for recording, playing, converting, and editing Flash and...
Freeware Flash Tools: KeepVid, VLC, SUPER
To continue with our discussion of downloading and using Flash video on the desktop -- While this need is relatively new, the world of open source and freeware software has already responded with handy solutions. These are great for...
Downloading Clips from YouTube and Converting Flash Videos
YouTube and other short-form Web video sites are a huge hit, partially because of the way Flash Video makes them so easy to use -- just click on the video window, and the clip just starts playing. There's no fuss...
Nero 7 Ultra Edition ENHANCED
Nero has continued to upgrade and expand its Nero 7 suite of tools for working with CD/DVD discs and digital media files. However, it's sometimes hard to keep track of what's going on with the product, since Nero confusingly...
Adobe CS3 Production Premium Ships
Adobe has shipped the last part of its Adobe Creative Suite 3 -- the CS3 Production Premium suite of video tools -- with After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore for DVD, plus the new Soundbooth for audio (replacing Audition in...
Adobe Soundbooth: Audio for Video (Updated)
Adobe has just shipped the last part of its Adobe Creative Suite 3 -- the CS3 Production Premium suite of video tools -- including the new Adobe Soundbooth for audio editing Adobe Soundbooth is targeted for creative professionals without the...
Summary: CyberLink PowerDirector 6
CyberLink PowerDirector 6 is designed to make video editing straightforward and simple, especially for home users who want good results quickly and with a minimum of fuss. While PowerDirector supports higher-end features like the new high-def formats and widescreen...
ZoneAlarm Crashes and Slow Boot
I'm a long-time user of the Check Point (formerly Zone Labs) ZoneAlarm firewall, so it was the first thing I installed on a new Dell Precision 490 workstation. However, this time ZoneAlarm exploded into a frustrating series of crashes...
Recognize the Music -- Verizon Wireless V CAST Song ID
What *is* that song? It's so familiar -- dah, dah, dah, dum, de, dum ... But I can't quite get it. So frustrating! Never fear, your phone can recognize the music for you: Just hold your handset up to the...
Summary: Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6
Corel / Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 was released in February 2007, as the next generation of this simple and easy-to-use disc authoring tool, designed for consumers who want to get videos and photos from camcorders to disc. Key new features...
Summary: Ulead VideoStudio 11
Ulead VideoStudio 11 was released in April 2007, still focused on easy consumer editing with more automated assists for creating quick movies and snazzy-looking movie-style opening sequences. VideoStudio is also bulked up with the latest technologies, especially for editing...
Adobe CS3 Production Suite: Summary
A summary of the Adobe CS3 Production Studio, with quick summaries of the included tools and technology components, highlighting the new features of each: - Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional: Motion graphics & visual effects - Adobe Premiere Pro...
Adobe CS3: Upgrading to Master Collection
Want the whole Adobe CS3 Master Collection? You can get the Design or Web suite now, and then pay the difference in price to add the video production tools when they ship this summer. Adobe's recent release of Creative...
NAB / Deliver Everywhere: Adobe's Creative Suite 3
One of the themes of this year's NAB conference last week in Las Vegas was the continued proliferation of formats, channels, and devices that content developers need to support for delivering media. This broad range of needs for even today's...
Adobe Creative Suite 3
Adobe's Creative Suite 3 was just announced today -- March 27, 2007-- at the formal launch event in New York City. This is a huge upgrade of the Adobe Creative product line, with design and development tools spanning the creative...
Audio Editing for Video: Adobe Soundbooth
Video editors are focused on video, and yet we all realize the importance of audio in setting the emotional tone of a production. But what's the best way to work with audio within a video production environment? You can capture,...
Blue-Laser Blues: Getting HD video to disc
All we want is HD video on disc! It's bad enough to have the confusion of yet another messy format war between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats. But the industry is further dampening the promise of these formats...
SmartSound Quicktracks for Adobe Premiere -- free!
SmartSound Software announced that it is giving away its Quicktracks for Adobe Premiere software as a free download for users of Adobe Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements (on Windows). Quicktracks is a plug-in that works within the Premiere timeline to...
Basic Video Editing and DVD Authoring with Ulead VideoStudio 10
It's easier than ever to create good-looking productions using consumer video editing software, turning your video into a nice movie production, complete with transitions between scenes, background music, title text, and fun video effects. And you can share movies as...
Digital Media Trends: Roxio Easy Media Creator 9
In 2007, trends that began developing last year are coming to fruition. Sites like YouTube and Google Video have exploded interest in informal short-form video, and low-res video thrives on portable devices from pocket MP3 players to cell phones. At...
Video and DVD Formats: InterVideo DVD Copy 5 Platinum
So many video formats -- discs and files, video and audio, set-top and PC and portable, high-res HDV to TV-quality MPEG to tiny portable screens. How can you make sense of them all, figure out the right format for a...
Summary: Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 is targeted to serious hobbyists, people who are beyond beginners and are proud of their photos. The new versions of Adobe's Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Premiere Elements 3.0 became available in October 2006 for US...
Easier Editing: Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0
More power! But also easier to use. More formats and more devices! And yet drag-and-drop simplicity. It's a tough challenge for the developers of consumer-oriented video editing software. We want to import from any camcorder, edit with ease and sophistication,...
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