W
Wings
This Wall Street article: http://ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html
pretty much says it all. I'll post it here.....
New Multimedia Suite For Windows Is a Step, But Can't Beat Apple's
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from a reader that said: "As a PC
user who juggles multiple applications to complete multimedia projects,
I'm jealous of the integrated approach" of Apple's iLife programs. "Is
there any product on the PC that comes close to the integrated solution
you've discussed so many times for the Mac platform?"
I get these e-mails regularly. When you buy a Macintosh, you get a free
suite of excellent, integrated programs, called iLife, for managing and
editing photos, music and videos, and for creating DVDs and CDs that
include these multimedia files. The programs include iPhoto, iMovie,
iDVD and iTunes.
All of these functions have been available on Windows from various
companies, but not in a truly integrated suite that has a unified user
interface and works together well. And the individual Windows
applications for doing these things have tended to be harder to use
than Apple's.
But I have been testing the first program that claims to bring
iLife-type simplicity, integration and power to the Windows PC. It's
called Easy Media Creator 7, and it's from Roxio.
The new suite wraps together the company's CD- and DVD-burning
software, its PhotoSuite photo software and its VideoWave home-video
software with some new cross-program tools and a new user interface. It
also includes the software for using Napster, Roxio's online music
service. A Roxio official describes Media Creator as "iLife on
steroids."
Media Creator lists for $99, but it can be bought for as little as $55,
after rebate, at places like Amazon.com. It requires Windows XP or
Windows 2000 with the latest patches (called Service Packs) from
Microsoft. And, to use all its features, you'll need a pretty robust
PC, with CD and DVD recording drives, 256 megabytes of memory and
plenty of free hard-disk space.
After testing Media Creator, I believe it is a good step forward in
Windows multimedia software. Roxio has done a lot to create a more
unified user interface, and the new cross-program modules do help to
tie the program's functions together.
But in my tests I found these efforts to be mainly skin deep and
sometimes confusing. And I encountered a number of flaws and defects.
Screens and functions launched slowly, occasionally froze or quit
unexpectedly. Worse, it took three tries to create a multimedia DVD
that actually played.
When you launch Media Creator, you get a home screen that lists common
tasks -- like copying songs from an audio CD, editing photos and
videos, and burning DVDs -- without reference to the component programs
that perform them. But, confusingly, the same screen also lists the
separate underlying programs by name and has yet another list of common
tools. The intent is to simplify and unify, but it can also mystify.
The various modules now sport a clean, consistent user interface --
except for Napster, which is entirely different. Three important new
cross-program modules help bring everything together. One, called
Capture, imports various media from discs or external devices like
cameras. Another, called Media Manager, helps collect disparate types
of media like pictures, video clips and songs. And a third, called
StoryBoard, lets you create slide shows of photos, video clips and
music.
Even the Apple suite doesn't have these cross-program modules. Apple
also lacks some other features found in Media Creator, like a quick
method for simply transferring the contents of a camcorder tape to a
disc, and an automated video editor that creates a movie from a raw
video file.
But these things don't quite tie together as well as they're supposed
to. Every time you switch to a new module, the program slows down. In
fact, the most frequent part of the new user interface I saw was a
yellow box saying, "Please wait...Loading component."
When I was in the Media Manager and tried to use a command to send an
item to the StoryBoard, I got a puzzling error message that said, "The
task selected requires StoryBoard, but it is already running." Also,
the StoryBoard is essentially identical to another module for editing
videos, which, confusingly, has a different name.
One nice feature allows you to choose how to output your production.
You can create a video file for playback on a PC, the Internet or a
camcorder. But a separate module is needed to burn the production to a
CD or DVD.
In my tests, burning to a DVD was a big problem. I created a very
small, simple slide show in the StoryBoard, consisting of a single
video clip, a couple of photos and some music. Then I selected a stock
menu layout for the DVD and picked the option to burn the production to
a DVD.
But the program failed to burn the DVD properly on two different brands
of blank DVDs I tried in my off-the-shelf Hewlett-Packard Pavilion PC.
It finally worked a third time, but only after I substituted a more
expensive rewritable blank disc. The company insists that failures like
mine are rare.
Overall, I found Media Creator to be significantly inferior to the
Apple suite. It's harder to use, less consistent in the way it works,
less well integrated, and it fails to display the same delicate balance
between power and simplicity that is the real strength of the Apple
software.
pretty much says it all. I'll post it here.....
New Multimedia Suite For Windows Is a Step, But Can't Beat Apple's
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from a reader that said: "As a PC
user who juggles multiple applications to complete multimedia projects,
I'm jealous of the integrated approach" of Apple's iLife programs. "Is
there any product on the PC that comes close to the integrated solution
you've discussed so many times for the Mac platform?"
I get these e-mails regularly. When you buy a Macintosh, you get a free
suite of excellent, integrated programs, called iLife, for managing and
editing photos, music and videos, and for creating DVDs and CDs that
include these multimedia files. The programs include iPhoto, iMovie,
iDVD and iTunes.
All of these functions have been available on Windows from various
companies, but not in a truly integrated suite that has a unified user
interface and works together well. And the individual Windows
applications for doing these things have tended to be harder to use
than Apple's.
But I have been testing the first program that claims to bring
iLife-type simplicity, integration and power to the Windows PC. It's
called Easy Media Creator 7, and it's from Roxio.
The new suite wraps together the company's CD- and DVD-burning
software, its PhotoSuite photo software and its VideoWave home-video
software with some new cross-program tools and a new user interface. It
also includes the software for using Napster, Roxio's online music
service. A Roxio official describes Media Creator as "iLife on
steroids."
Media Creator lists for $99, but it can be bought for as little as $55,
after rebate, at places like Amazon.com. It requires Windows XP or
Windows 2000 with the latest patches (called Service Packs) from
Microsoft. And, to use all its features, you'll need a pretty robust
PC, with CD and DVD recording drives, 256 megabytes of memory and
plenty of free hard-disk space.
After testing Media Creator, I believe it is a good step forward in
Windows multimedia software. Roxio has done a lot to create a more
unified user interface, and the new cross-program modules do help to
tie the program's functions together.
But in my tests I found these efforts to be mainly skin deep and
sometimes confusing. And I encountered a number of flaws and defects.
Screens and functions launched slowly, occasionally froze or quit
unexpectedly. Worse, it took three tries to create a multimedia DVD
that actually played.
When you launch Media Creator, you get a home screen that lists common
tasks -- like copying songs from an audio CD, editing photos and
videos, and burning DVDs -- without reference to the component programs
that perform them. But, confusingly, the same screen also lists the
separate underlying programs by name and has yet another list of common
tools. The intent is to simplify and unify, but it can also mystify.
The various modules now sport a clean, consistent user interface --
except for Napster, which is entirely different. Three important new
cross-program modules help bring everything together. One, called
Capture, imports various media from discs or external devices like
cameras. Another, called Media Manager, helps collect disparate types
of media like pictures, video clips and songs. And a third, called
StoryBoard, lets you create slide shows of photos, video clips and
music.
Even the Apple suite doesn't have these cross-program modules. Apple
also lacks some other features found in Media Creator, like a quick
method for simply transferring the contents of a camcorder tape to a
disc, and an automated video editor that creates a movie from a raw
video file.
But these things don't quite tie together as well as they're supposed
to. Every time you switch to a new module, the program slows down. In
fact, the most frequent part of the new user interface I saw was a
yellow box saying, "Please wait...Loading component."
When I was in the Media Manager and tried to use a command to send an
item to the StoryBoard, I got a puzzling error message that said, "The
task selected requires StoryBoard, but it is already running." Also,
the StoryBoard is essentially identical to another module for editing
videos, which, confusingly, has a different name.
One nice feature allows you to choose how to output your production.
You can create a video file for playback on a PC, the Internet or a
camcorder. But a separate module is needed to burn the production to a
CD or DVD.
In my tests, burning to a DVD was a big problem. I created a very
small, simple slide show in the StoryBoard, consisting of a single
video clip, a couple of photos and some music. Then I selected a stock
menu layout for the DVD and picked the option to burn the production to
a DVD.
But the program failed to burn the DVD properly on two different brands
of blank DVDs I tried in my off-the-shelf Hewlett-Packard Pavilion PC.
It finally worked a third time, but only after I substituted a more
expensive rewritable blank disc. The company insists that failures like
mine are rare.
Overall, I found Media Creator to be significantly inferior to the
Apple suite. It's harder to use, less consistent in the way it works,
less well integrated, and it fails to display the same delicate balance
between power and simplicity that is the real strength of the Apple
software.