http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/issues/1507/pcmg0062.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
PC Magazine -- April 9, 1996
Linda and Erick Von Schweber
Sound, video, animation: Bringing together the diverse pieces of a dynamic multimedia event has never been easier.
What do the Sony multimedia CD-ROM catalog, the Windows 95 training application you just studied, and the kiosk you looked at to navigate your way around the mall all have in common? Each was probably built with a multimedia authoring tool (most likely one of the nine reviewed here). Could any of these products have been created with a multimedia presentation program? Probably not.
Multimedia authoring tools now sit squarely between multimedia presentation programs such as Gold Disk's Astound on one side and the custom programming of commercial multimedia titles (like games or encyclopedias) on the other. The difference is that authoring environments let developers create applications with sophisticated interaction: The user can navigate by clicking objects and hot spots, choosing from groups of answers, dragging and dropping objects to make selections, and even entering free-form text or numeric responses.
Authoring is about creating highly interactive applications in which information flows both ways: from application to user and from user to application. Presentation programs are primarily for communicating information in one direction, from application to user, with the users' interaction limited to navigation.
Multimedia authoring tools have grown up, and a new generation are poised to transform the landscape of personal computing. When we last looked at this category ("Creating Multimedia to Die For," February 22, 1994), many programs required the skill of a professional. Today, creating higher-quality audio and video needs little expertise, and mere mortals can develop cool multimedia apps. It should be noted, however, that our focus, and that of much of our testing, was on business-related CD-ROM development. In other words, we paid most of our attention to computer-based training, data collection, and conditional branching.
Authoring shouldn't require a team of programmers. Instructors, corporate communicators, and content specialists who don't have previous programming experience should all be able to learn and use the authoring environment. In testing, however, we found we could group authoring programs into two distinct types: those that relied entirely on point-and-click and those that required simple scripting. If you never want to write even a single line of code, take note and choose your tool accordingly.
To evaluate these multimedia authoring tools, we ran them through a gauntlet of tests on a Hewlett-Packard Pentium-class system. Our tests included the creation of noninteractive multimedia, computer-based training (CBT) applications, catalog creation, and even authoring for the World Wide Web.
Don't get the idea that audio and video are just standing still. With 16-bit wavetable sound, the applications we authored sounded better than ever. Video technology is changing, too. MPEG produces full-screen, 30-frame-per-second video, a big change from the postage-stamp-size .AVI output we saw in our 1994 evaluation. Most of the programs we examined can control MPEG playback boards through MCI commands.
Many vendors of authoring products have discovered the advantages of object-oriented programming, though none have developed a fully object-oriented program. Everest Authoring System offers object instancing, while MediaVerse and Oracle Media Objects let you add new methods and events to existing objects. Supplied templates in Authorware and MediaVerse save you time in implementing specific functionality.
Where do you put your multimedia app when it's done? The related story, "Create Your Own CD: CD-R Drives" in this issue examines the reality of placing your production on a CD. But you can also post it on the World Wide Web. Without a doubt, most of these authoring programs will soon serve as Web authoring tools and more, as Macromedia Director and IconAuthor already do.
While the traditional workhorses of authoring have matured, a new collection of media, programs, and formats have arrived on the scene--or will arrive in the near future. Among new media types, the most exciting is 3-D, supported by today's high-end graphics boards from Creative Labs and Diamond Multimedia, as well as by RealityLab software from Microsoft.
Strata's MediaForge (second release), Oracle's Media Objects 2.0, and mFactory's mTropolis Windows release will all include authoring support for 3-D in the form of VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language). In these environments, 3-D will become just another media object, like today's bitmaps, buttons, and list boxes.
The revolutions now taking place in multimedia authoring represent a fundamental change in the applications we will be creating. The interactive excitement and graphics adventure of today's best computer games will soon weave their way into our personal control, letting us produce gamelike online catalogs, kiosks, titles, training applications, and home pages that entertain as they inform. The winds of change are in the air.
Our Contributors: STEPHEN W. PLAIN and LUISA SIMONE are contributing editors of PC Magazine. PAULINE ORES is a freelance writer. LINDA and ERICK VON SCHWEBER are frequent contributors to PC Magazine. PETER MCKIE is the executive editor of PC Magazine CD. BEN Z. GOTTESMAN is a technical director, DAN SMITH is an associate project leader, and ARIE MOLLER is an editorial researcher at PC Magazine. LANCE N. ULANOFF was the senior associate editor in charge of this story.
How to Read the Suitability to Task Boxes
Multimedia authoring software
To create effective multimedia, you need tools that can handle a wide range of authoring tasks, including interactive title development, CBT, interactive catalogs/kiosks, and Web authoring. We evaluate each product's power and ease of use in the context of four tasks designed to address these issues.
Our CD-ROM interactive title development task focuses on the flexibility and power of screen design tools and the intelligence and support for managing memory requirements and playback data rates. We also look at each product's ability to create cross-platform applications.
Because creating computer-based training (CBT) is so complex, this task stresses wizards, templates, and other tools designed to make it easier for nonprogrammers to generate applications. Other features we look for included the ability to interface with a database--either proprietary or via ODBC--for tracking student performance, and special tools designed for creating exercises. These types of applications are generally developed and used within corporate environments.
Because the ultimate goal of interactive catalogs/kiosks is to sell things, we look for products that offer robust database-handling tools for processing sales transactions. We also examined the complexity of each multimedia application's programming language and the ability to plug new data, graphics, and media into the old program structure on a repeated basis.
Our Web authoring task involves generating an application that can be played by a helper application from within a Web browser, or something as complex as a standalone application designed to stream data from the server over TCP/IP connections and onto the user's browser without making the user download the application.
SUITABILITY TO TASK
Power Ease
Interactive title development Poor Poor
Computer-based training (CBT) Fair Fair
Interactive catalogs/kiosks Good Good
Web authoring Excellent Excellent
N/A--Not applicable: The product does not have this feature.
Editors' Choice
Corporate multimedia authoring:
Interactive title development:
In the past few years, we've witnessed increased interest in multimedia authoring, thanks to the proliferation of CD-ROMs on the PC. At the same time, corporations have come to realize that the multimedia used to entertain can also teach and train.
Although these tasks may at first appear to require a wide array of tools, we think that one of two powerful products can fill most if not all of your multimedia authoring needs. Consider our Editors' Choice selections, AimTech Corp.'s IconAuthor 7.0 and Macromedia Director 4.04.
With IconAuthor, AimTech has managed to upgrade its venerable corporate-level multimedia application-building tool with-out losing sight of the qualities that made it an Editors' Choice in our last evaluation.
Though still icon-based, IconAuthor took new strides with its SmartObject Editor, which now controls the objects so critical to multimedia application creation. AimTech had introduced SmartObject Editor in Version 5.0, but we were pleased to see the central role it now plays in this latest version. Put simply, SmartObject Editor takes disparate items like pictures, video clips, animations, text, push buttons, and list boxes and assembles them all into icon layouts that work.
And you can now build complex multimedia with finesse in IconAuthor, thanks to object properties boxes, which you can assign to each object type. In addition, AimTech's successful implementation of ODBC connectivity in IconAuthor outshines the attempts of other products.
One broad complaint also applies to other competent products, such as Macromedia's Authorware. The days of paying nearly $5,000 for an effective authoring tool should really be over. Oracle's $495 Media Objects proves it.
It should come as little surprise that the seemingly ubiquitous Macromedia Director ($1,195) walks off with our Editors' Choice for interactive title development. Though its database support falls below the level that creators of training tools need, Director deserves acclaim on a number of counts: Not only is it the only application reviewed here that offers binary compatibility between Windows and Macintosh multimedia creation files, but it also handles animation routines and scene creation better than any other tool we saw. And with Shockwave, its Internet tool, Macromedia is pushing the envelope in Web authoring, too.
How We Create PC Magazine CD
By Peter McKie
PC Magazine CD is a quarterly on-disk magazine that overlays our product reviews with multimedia components to give readers a richer experience with those products.
VOICE-OVER: We develop our editorial content using a variety of multimedia authoring tools. For example, when we review a new piece of software, we use a tool such as Lotus ScreenCam, which records screen images and voices simultaneously. Reviewers can walk readers through a product as they discuss its attributes, and readers come away feeling as though they were standing over the reviewers' shoulders. ScreenCam produces royalty-free .EXE files that we link to a hot-spot icon on the CD's electronic page.
USER-DEFINED: We provide tools that let you manipulate benchmark test data. Our interactive Price/Performance Viewer, for example, lets you narrow in on a product's attributes. We have custom-programmed each of these tools in Visual Basic for PC Magazine CD.
BURN IT: Once we've developed all the content, we burn the alpha, beta, and finally the gold master disks--and perform quality-control testing after each generation. The master disk then goes to our reproduction facility, Cinram.
TALKING HEADS: Some product categories, most often hardware, require other content solutions because they don't lend themselves to screen-image recordings. Still, we want readers to "experience" each product, so we take a more conventional route to content development: full-motion videos. We write a script that describes the product's pluses and minuses, and our video crew then shoots from that script. We edit the raw footage, digitized and captured as an .AVI file, on an AVID video-editing machine. Then we link the file to a hot-spot icon on the CD's electronic page that plays through Microsoft Video for Windows.
ON THE SHELF: Meanwhile, we design the CD-ROM packaging, which includes newsstand and subscriber boxes.
PAGE BUILDER: We design highlight screens and objects like buttons in Adobe Photoshop. We add all the functionality later.
We use MediaVerse as the database shell for the CD; it holds all of the CD's data in individual bins (say, a bin for text files, one for graphics files, one for videos, and so on). We then use a customized C++ program code to call individual files from within the bins and display them in appropriate positions on the CD's electronic page.
INTERACTION: We build interactive scenes with Macromedia Director. This allows end users to make selections during the course of the presentation and supports branching to other topics.
THE FINISHED PRODUCT: Our printing/manufacturing facility, AGI, assembles all the elements and inserts the disks into our packages, which are then boxed and shipped to our distributors.
Glossary: Understanding Multimedia
Branch
Any one of the paths an application can take after it evaluates a specific condition.
CBT (computer-based training)
A method usually used in corporations and academia to help nonprogrammers generate applications.
Debugging
Executing a program, one statement at a time, to identify and fix errors.
Event handler
A special type of function that executes automatically when a particular user-enabled, system-enabled, or code-generated event occurs.
Execution flow
The section of code that the application executes, depending on branching decisions.
Function
An instruction to the application that performs operations or returns a value, or both.
Hot spots
Buttons or other programmable objects that can activate objects or linked events.
Kiosk
A center of standalone interactive information or content.
Loop
A set of statements in a program executed repeatedly, either a fixed number of times or until a specified condition is true or false.
MCI (Media Control Interface)
A standard control interface for multimedia devices and media files, including a command-message interface and a command-string interface.
MPEG
A digital video standard developed by the Motion Pictures Experts Group.
ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) support
Access to the database programming interface from Microsoft Corp. ODBC provides a common language for Windows applications to interact with various databases, locally and on a network.
Palette
A table of available simultaneous colors that paints pixels on the screen.
Score
A sequence, either time-based or frame-based, that determines the timing of a presentation and the synchronization of its objects.
Sequence
A combination of events executed in a predetermined order.
Sprite
An independent graphic object that moves freely across the screen.
Time line
A graphical representation of a span of time and the chronological relationship of events.
Variable
A named container that holds values, either numeric or text.
A Brief Look into the Near Future
By Linda and Erick Von Schweber
A number of authoring products were not shipping at review time but are interesting enough to warrant sneak previews.
Three major changes greet the developer in the upcoming release of Global Information Systems Technology's (800-327-0565, 217-352-1165) TIE (Training Icon Environment) Authoring System, Version 5.0 ($3,500 list price): Object Oriented Tutor, a new architecture that coexists with the old; "Strategies," or templates, for TIE applications; and HyperWindows, a TIE Strategy that eases multimedia incorporation.
First, TIE's Object Oriented Tutor might not be what you'd expect. The architecture most closely resembles the "blackboard" systems that perform speech recognition. With Object Oriented Tutor, objects send messages not to one another, as in a true object-oriented language, but to a blackboard, called the message queue.
"Strategies," templates shipped with TIE, shield the developer from the complexities just discussed. The documentation we saw presents three templates. The Strategy for drag-and-drop seems complete but limited: The developer can provide the end user with no more than three attempts to figure out the right answer.
The HyperWindows Strategy eases the use of multimedia. Past versions of TIE required MCI to invoke media. One or more Hyperwindows can be launched from the main TIE application. Each Hyperwindow can show text, animation, or a bitmap, or it can play digital audio, video, or a videodisk.
Are you in the market for a tool with entry-level ease, a visual punch beyond that of the best presentation program, the flexibility of a high-end authoring environment, and the power of 32-bit, multithreaded programming? Strata's (800-787-2823, 801-628-5218) new entry in the field, MediaForge ($1,495 list), which should be shipping by the time you read this, looks to be all this and more.
MediaForge is essentially a visual front end to Strata's MediaBasic, an extension of Basic for multimedia. It's amazing, however, because Strata's built-in functionality requires no explicit coding. Some examples include transitions and effects beyond those of any other products; easy use of pick, drag, and drop as a selection method; video "keying"; and a sprite engine that selects the correct images for an animated character to move in any of nine directions.
How about placing a task on its own thread of execution so it can run asynchronously? MediaForge, a 32-bit application for Windows 95/NT, makes this a simple, dialog-box pick. Want to author for the Web? Strata will include a Netscape plug-in enabling MediaForge to act as a Web authoring tool. Need database connectivity? MediaForge's ODBC sounds promising.
Don't let mFactory's little m fool you--this is big news. The January introduction of mTropolis for the Macintosh ($4,495 list), with a 32-bit Windows 95/NT version to ship in May, is a major event for multimedia producers. mFactory (415-548-0600) is pushing the envelope toward developing the premier multimedia application. With mFactory products, you don't create applications: You build 2-D worlds, populate them with objects that know how to behave, and institute world properties (such as gravity and collision detection).
We examined the initial release of mTropolis on a PowerMac. In one demo, a fish swims back and forth in its tank. We were able to grab the fish and pull it out of the tank, at which point it began to gasp and its eyes bulged. When we released it, the fish fell back into the tank and returned to its swimming. Such sophisticated behavior would normally take a huge effort, even in the high-end authoring environments we reviewed, but in mTropolis, it's just another day's work.
How, you may ask? mFactory has created a tool that really exploits the strengths of object orientation. The fish in the example above is an animation object produced in mFactory's cell-based animation module, mToon. mFactory places the mToon fish on a path with cell ranges tied to parts of the path, and collision detection begins to activate when the fish object encounters the tank wall object.
The object types supported today include text, audio, video, and animation. By the time mTropolis for Windows ships, there will be 3-D support using Microsoft's Reality Lab, very sophisticated text searching, hyperlinking, formatting, and the ability to create applications in which multiple users across the Web share a common world.
The Demonstrators
By Lance Ulanoff
What if you're reading these reviews and thinking, "But all I really wanted to do was create a simple software demo or tutorial?" Good news: A small collection of relatively simple products do just that. In addition to their obvious commercial uses, these products are particularly useful when demonstrating a corporate application or teaching an extended sales force how to use a package in a specific way.
Dan Bricklin's demo-it! 2.0, $299, from Lifeboat Publishing (800-445-7899, 908-389-8950) is more like a modified presentation software program. Oriented mostly toward screen capturing, it captures full screens in Windows 3.x or Windows 95, builds slides from scratch, or animates simple objects on top of them.
Lotus ScreenCam, Version 2.1, $99, from Lotus Development Corp. (800-343-5414, 617-557-8500), may be the best known and easiest to use of all. A small interface allows you to record all on-screen activity and record a voice-over, either at the same time or later. You can also use ScreenCam's new captioning feature to reduce the file size. Though the product can record in up to 256-color mode, Lotus recommends 16 colors for optimal performance. Lotus ScreenCam can record Windows 95 sessions; it can play back Windows 3.1 demos on the newer platform.
DemoShield 4 for Windows, $495, comes from InstallShield Corp. (800-250-2191, 847-240-9111), makers of the popular InstallShield (which, you may notice, appears when you load the company's new software). Designed specifically to create new product demonstrations, DemoShield 4 is the most powerful of the four demo products examined here. It lets you choose between using frame-based capture and the bundled Lotus ScreenCam. DemoShield also includes a time-line editor and supports user interactivity--a real plus if you're creating tutorials.
CameraMan, Version 2.0.4, $69, from Motion Works Groups (415-541-9333), is a Windows 3.1 application that, with some subtle coaxing, will work under Windows 95--although when you first run the application, it doesn't appear on the screen until you use Windows 95's Cascade Windows command. Unlike Lotus's ScreenCam, CameraMan actually creates a frame-based animation file as it captures screen activity (at about 8 frames per second). Playback is smooth as long as you stick to the default 320-by-240 capture and playback window. This capture window follows your mouse around with a 320-by-240 pixel frame.
Clip-Media Shortcuts
By Arie Moller
Once you decide to populate your multimedia application with media, you can take one of two directions: the easy way or the hard way. If you go ahead and create all your content from scratch, you've gone down the rocky road. The most efficient approach is to use one of the following products, nearly all of which provide easily importable, prepackaged content. Whether it's images, sound, or video, any of these media collections can add pizzazz to your multimedia. And if you're looking to organize your clips, see the multimedia manager products that bring up the rear.
Sonic Waves 3000, from Innovative Media Corp.
This $99.99 two-CD-ROM set, from Innovative Media Corp. (217-544-4614), has over 1.2GB worth of 16-bit .WAV files, including such sounds as multiple-person applause and machine-gun fire. IMC's sound editor, Sound Forge Apprentice, lets you easily produce just the right sound effect.
Authoring Multimedia with Visual Basic
By Dan Smith
Supposedly you can build anything with the programming tool, Microsoft Visual Basic (VB), even multimedia applications--and VB does include some multimedia controls. The capabilities of these controls, however, are pretty basic and rather limited. Ultimately, those bent on making VB their authoring environment will probably need one of two tools to help them along: Lenel System's Lenel Gallery VBX or Motion Works' MediaShop. These are two 16-bit VB controls that extend the multimedia capabilities of VB.
The combination of VB and MediaShop, $299.95 from Motion Works Groups (415-541-9333), offers developers and programmers a rich set of tools to create high-quality multimedia titles, kiosks, and presentations without the steep learning curve that accompanies the more expensive multimedia authoring packages. MediaShop comes bundled with five multimedia VBX (Visual Basic Extension) controls, as well as four standalone interactive multimedia editors.
MediaShop's multimedia VBX controls let users create and integrate media with VB by providing links between the authoring environment (VB) and MediaShop's standalone multimedia editors. Lenel Gallery VBX lets developers integrate thumbnail galleries and multimedia features directly into VB.
To help you get started, MediaShop provides an interactive picture tool. This bitmap editor is used to create named hot-spot objects on a single bitmapped image. You can manipulate these hot-spot objects in VB using interactive picture control through code. MediaShop supports .BMP, .DIB, and .RLE bitmap extensions. The interactive picture control also gives users a real-time view of their bitmaps on the VB form.
With the interactive video tool's object editor, you can create video hot-spot objects, which can be any rectangular area in the video frame. You can then save them as an Audio Visual Interleaved (.IVD) file, MediaShop's proprietary file extension, for use later in the VB application. Beware, though: No Video start, stop, or play controls exist. These features are available only through code, because the video control tool is a standalone application that is not integrated into VB.
The Interactive Animation Tool allows users to create, edit, and maneuver objects within an animation. With the paint component, you can create animated actors (foreground objects) and props (background objects), and superimpose two drawings. Components for motion include the cel sequencer (which coordinates the actors cels with the frames in the animation), a media controller for playing animations, and a time-line window to view all of the objects and animation frames. Finally, the sound component provides a wave editor to modify sounds.
If you want to manipulate an animation in VB, you must load the interactive animation control with the AnimFileName property set to the path and animation filename. With the sound annotation tool editor, you can use text and digitized speech to create spoken text. Other features include the ability to group words to produce a sentence and a sound annotation test dialog that allows users to test individual words and phrases. Finally, the picture button control lets users include bitmaps as buttons, which users typically use to simulate a push button's up and down states.
On the downside, MediaShop lacks integration between VB and the interactive tools. To create hot spots, animation, video, and sound, users must leave VB and load each interactive tool separately. Although this may tire and frustrate users, it should not discourage anyone from using MediaShop for high-quality multimedia applications.
Lenel Gallery VBX, $99 from Lenel Systems International (800-225-3635, 716-248-9720), is really a single custom control for VB that allows users to view a variety of bitmap graphics including JPEG, Photo CD, and icons inside a VB application. Gallery VBX supports drag-and-drop, so users can simply grab the files they need and drop them into the application, but you do need a control frame for each object that you drop. In addition, Lenel offers two other multimedia development tools sold individually, MCI Drivers Kit ($199) and MediaDeveloper VBX ($299).
Both MediaShop and Lenel Gallery VBX provide users with extensive multimedia control of their VB applications. MediaShop's wide range of features, however, rivals the ones found in more expensive multimedia authoring packages. If you know Visual Basic and want to create multimedia applications in that environment, you will want to take a good look at these two tools.
This collection of royalty-free photographs ($19.95) from Expert Software (800-759-2562, 305-567-9990) runs on both Windows- and Macintosh-based systems. The images, organized into 25 categories, range from animals to technology. You'll easily find the image you're looking for with Expert's ClickSearch keyword system, and you can export all images to your favorite multimedia program in .PCX, TIFF, or .WMF formats.
To quote the catalog from PhotoDisc (800-528-3472, 206-441-9355), the Object Series ($149 per disk) gives you "entire categories of, well, things." The "things" range in subject from fruits and vegetables to retro relics. The search engine, licensed from Ulead Systems, lets you define a search not only by keyword but also by criteria such as file size and image date. PhotoDisc also markets the Signature series, a collection of photographic studies.
If you're a nature lover and want to show it, Terra Incognita ($99.95), from Texture Farm (415-284-6180), might be just what you've been looking for. It contains 100 digitally manipulated images of natural textures and abstracts, from abalone shells to rhino hide. You can display all the images in Photo CD or Pict format.
PhotoSphere Software (800-665-1496, 604-876-3206) has constructed a five-disk CD-ROM PhotoSphere Library ($250 per disk) that offers multiple perspectives of single-perspective images. Each object is photographed from various angles in both vertical and horizontal formats, and each disk contains 100 royalty-free images.
Magellan Geographix (800-929-4627, 805-685-3100) provides accurate, customizable digital maps for publication and presentation use. The MGDigitalAtlas library database contains over 1,000 digital maps. In addition to MGDigitalAtlas, Magellan Geographix markets MGDigitalEarth, a library of satellite maps. Prices for MGDigitalAtlas maps range from $25 to $400; for MGDigitalEarth maps, from $50 to $200.
DigiClips Special Edition ($24.95), from Tri-Digital Software (800-206-2547, 206-286-9402), takes the "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" approach to clip media. The CD offers 75 royalty-free Indeo video clips, 50 voice clips, 50 bitmapped photos, 25 music clips, and 10 animation clips. By the time you read this, a new addition to the DigiClips series, DigiClips 95, will be shipping.
For a amazing collection of multimedia-based clip media, point your World Wide Web browser to http://www.publishersdepot.com. The Publishers Depot (800-764-7427, 703-312-6210), through licensing agreements with some 50 clip-media providers, offers more than 350,000 images and sounds for direct sale. Even greater expansion is in the works, too: By the time you read this, Publishers Depot will be providing online video footage as well. Typical licensing fees cost at least $30 for a 300K image file.
In their approach to digital imagery, the folks at MetaTools (805-566-6200), formally HSC Software, have emphasized quality rather than quantity. KPT Power Photos I ($199) contains 500 images, and Power Photos II ($199) follows with 375 more. Both volumes have been color-corrected and contain built-in channels for easy layering of objects. As we went to press, MetaTools shipped the third in the Power Photos series, a five-disk CD-ROM set with 375 images.
Cyber Interactive (800-692-9237, 206-869-1414) wants to help you organize the mess of clip media that clutters up your machine. The company's multimedia manager, CyberManager 95 ($69.95), can handle 23 media formats ranging from .BMP files to Autodesk, .FLC, and .FLI files. Special features include on-screen volume control, full-screen video playback, and on-the-fly directory creation.
The five-disk CD-ROM Transportation Set ($99 per disk, $399 for the complete set), from Four Palms (800-747-2567, 703-834-0200), contains extensive video clips (airplanes flying, boats gliding, trains chugging). Each CD-ROM in the set contains over 80 Indeo video sequences which you can play in either a window. And you can search for just the right clip through keyword searches or thumbnail previews.
Media Commander ($129.95), the media database application from MediaPaq (800-554-0857, 602-813-3200), uses the familiar thumbnail method for presenting your media collection, be it sound, images, or video. Some of the more advanced functions you'll find in Media Commander include sound and notes attachment to images, on-the-fly compression of image files using either a JPEG or LZH compression algorithm, and an e-mail attachment function.
This eight-disk CD-ROM video-clip series ($29.95 per disk), from Firstlight Productions (206-869-6600), covers subjects such as the environment, recreation, and world locations. Each title contains 120 full-motion video scenes, complete with remastered soundtracks. You can export the clips in either of two formats: 160 by 120 pixels or 320 by 240 pixels.
CompassPoint, a networkable image management system ($495 for a single user), from Northpoint Software (810-643-0200), can store up to 100,000 images per database. CompassPoint offers users such advanced features as database security, usage history, and on-the-fly compression of images in various formats.
Copyright (c) 1996
Ziff-Davis Publishing Company