Product Review: Page (1) of 1 - 05/14/04

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I am a digital media junkie. I have all manner of digital images, audio, and digital video files scattered all over my hard drives, on DVD, and CD. It is really quite unwieldy, and sadly, unorganized. I've got gigs of images that span to the late 1990s, when I got my first digital camera, a 2.1 megapixel camera. Today, I've got a 6 megapixel Canon Digital Rebel and 512MB worth of compact flash storage, and let me tell you, the drives are filling up fast with no organization in site. I've got a bad habit of dragging all my digital images onto any new hard drive that I add to my systems, be they Mac or Windows. So I've got gigs and gigs of duplicated files.  I've got a folder on my desktop called "images to sort", and in there are a whole bunch of folders named 106CANON, 107CANON, and it keeps going.

By looking at the folders, I have no idea what is in them, because the file names IMG_0701, IMG_0702, are as obscure as the folder. This is where a media management and cataloging tool comes in. IViewMediaPro 2.5 is one such tool. iView MediaPro 2.5 is a creative media file management tool that enables you to better manage, save, label, share, and display all of your media flies, be they image, video, audio, fonts or illustrations. The tool, though, is only as good as its ability to sort out and manage your media, and that is all based on how you organize and tag your media files. Keep in mind that any media management and cataloging tool is only as good as the data that you input to correspond with each of the files in your catalog. If you don't give the files some identifying criteria, you'll be hard pressed for any software to do it for you. The application is designed to help you get a better organizational handle of the media files that are on your hard drives. Within the scope of this First Look, we'll take a look at some of the new features to this release.

Dragging and Dropping
When you first launch iViewMediaPro 2.5, a window pops up that says "drop media files, folders, or disks here or choose Import Items to add media items to this catalog. When you drag a folder into the I-View catalog, the software takes all files in that folder, including files in subfolders, and creates thumbnail versions of each file in the folder and subfolders. Any subfolders that may be in the main folder are eliminated in the catalog. After you drop the folders on the catalog window, you can view the data files in those folders three different ways.

Main interface in Thumbnail mode

Format Support

Any creative media file management tool is going to have to support the widest variety of file formats for import and export. iViewMedia Pro 2.5 can import the following file formats:

• Image file: JPEG, JPEG-2000, TIFF, TIFF-FAX, PNG, Photoshop 3.x and higher, BMP, Targa, SGI, Amiga IFF, Mac Picture Clippings, Startup Screens PICT, FlashPix, Photo Mechanic/AP Viewer, Kodak PhotoCD.
  Supported digital camera RAW formats include Nikon (NEF), Canon (CRW), Kodak, Olympus (ORF) and Fuji
• Preview only formats included: Canvas, Fractal Design Painter, Live Picture, AppleWorks, Seattle Filmworks
• Supported Audio formats include MP3, System Sounds, AIFF, Windows Wave, AU, Sound Designer II, General MIDI, Karaoke MIDI
• Supported Animation/Video formats include GIF, QuickTime, Windows AVI, FLC, MPEG, MPEG-4, VR Movies, Flash, Electric Image
• Supported  Vector/Illustration formats include EPS, Windows MetaFile WMF, Macromedia FreeHand, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, PowerCADD
• Supported Fonts include Bitmap, TrueType
• Supported Text and electronic publishing formats include Adobe InDesign, PageMaker 6.0 & 6.5, Text Files (Mac/PC), Clippings, AppleWorks, MultiAd Creator, HTML, and PDF with GhostScript

iViewMedia Pro 2.5 can export out to the following formats:

• Still Image: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, Photoshop, BMP, SGI, PICT, MacPaint, QuickTime image
• Audio: System Sounds, AIFF, Windows Wave, uLaw
• Animation/Video: QuickTime movies, Windows AVI, FLC, DV Stream, Image Sequence
• Not currently on the list for Export capabilities are MP3, MPEG-2, and GIF.

The Tools
The tools in iViewMediaPro offer you the capability to further catalog and add metadata to each file for a more refined approach to cataloging your data. The Info Panel is where all the pertinent information related to that file is stored. By default, iViewMediaPro catalogs all the pertinent data info that is provided by the digital device, in this case a digital camera. The information includes the file type, encoding method, file size, orientation, dimensions, resolution, color depth, compression, color space, color profile, pages, creation date, modified date, archived date, annotated info, thumbnail size, annotations size, recording size, camera maker, and camera model.

The Organize tool helps you to make sense of the catalogs as well as the content that is in those catalogs. You can tag specific images, sets of images, and even entire catalogs with the Organize tool. The subset of tools include labels, whereby you attach a colored label to your catalog for specific references, and Catalog sets, which create catalogs based on keywords. SO if you have a collection of 300 media files with the keyword "beach shots",  iViewMediaPro will automatically create a catalog of those files. Click on the keyword based catalog and the images in it will appear in the main window; Date Finder will locate all data files created on a specific date of the year; File Type will locate all files of a particular file type. This is especially helpful if you were looking to free up disk space and you want to target a specific file type that is a disk space hog, such as AVI or MOV; Event will locate all files that feature the same event name when you cataloged those files; Author will catalog all files related to that author; location will catalog all files based on the location; people will catalog files based on the people; and keyword will catalog all files based on the keyword. Essentially all the parameters that you give to a file can be cataloged based on what you fill into the Information window. 

Batch Rename allows you to rename groups of files and give them certain identical parameters such as add labels and author names and copyright information. To do this, go to the Action Menu, select the images that you want to batch rename, and under use String, give a name to the files you want to batch rename, and the software will do the rest. When you rename the files in iViewMediaPro, the original files are also renamed. This helps to solve my IMG_0701, IMG_0702 issues with the Canon Digital Rebel and all other digital cameras. The Search tools have been improved. You can also assign keywords to batches of media files as well. This is achieved by simply selecting the images in a catalog, or all the images and adding the keyword in the Info Panel. The software will prompt you, asking if you wish to apply the change to just the first image in the catalog or all the images in the catalog.

You can search for specific instances in a file in any catalog that you have created. The search function is not case sensitive. For instance, you can search for files that were created with a specific digital camera, file type, or any criteria located in the Info Panel. If you have a collection of images from a certain author, you can find them by simply typing in that author's name in the Find field.

Contact Sheets

You can also create contact sheets that contain thumbnails of images, just like you would in a traditional darkroom. You can also save Contact Sheets in formats such as Adobe Photshop and Illustrator, making it easier to edit them after you have created them. The Contact Sheet options enable you to select the size of the contact sheet that you wish to create, as well as the resolution and the file format of which you want the sheet saved in. Supported formats include SGI, BMP, PSD, JPEG, PICT, PNG, MacPaint, TIFF, TGA, and QuickTime Image. The Settings button within Contact Sheet Options enables you to tweak the settings of the file format based on your specific needs, such as how the contact sheet will be viewed or edited, or if you have a target size in mind for certain delvery mediums such as the Web or CD. Examples settings include best depth, gray scale and color, image quality and target size for the JPEG file format, to Color depth (256 colors, 256 grays, millions of colors, etc), for the Photoshop format.

Creative Tools
IViewMediaPro 2.5 also features tools to create slideshows and movies with your cataloged images. This is achieved with the run slideshow feature. When you select a set of images in a catalog, and select run slideshow, it will run a slideshow of those images. You can also tweak the slideshow a bit to your liking by selecting Slideshow Options. This opens a window where you can adjust the duration of the images in the slideshow, the background color, add transitions, scale the media, adjust stage grid (for example, this puts up one, two, four, half portrait, half landscape, or 16 images at a time), adjust playback order (interactive, continuous, random), and add options such as voice annotation, sound, and show controller. You can also turn the slideshow presentations into QuickTime Movies in varying levels of quality.

The software can convert to a variety of video formats, including QuickTime and AVI

You can create a QuickTime Movies of your slideshows in the following formats: Presentation 160x120, 240x180, 320x240; Screen 512x384, 640x480, 800x600, 832x624, 1024x768; TV Quarter 360x240, 360x288, 384x288; and TV 720x480, 720x576, and 768x576. You can adjust output quality to normal, better, and best, and include a chapter track. For the QuickTime player, you can specify if you want to show the controller, auto-start the movie, continuous play, and full screen mode. You can also create HTML web pages using the applications theme based HTML templates. iViewMediaPro 2.5 features a primitive image editor that enables you to apply basic editing functions to an image in a catalog. These functions include Crop, Resize, Rotate, Sharpen Edges, Remove Grain, Remove Red eye, Convert to Duotone, adjust saturation, adjust brightness and Contrast, Invert Photo negative, auto enhancement, and preset enhancement. Most of these functions are similar to the tools found in other image editors.

System Requirements
IViewMediaPro 2.5 is a cross platform Windows/Macintosh application. To run on a Mac, it requires the following:

? PowerPC or newer, such as iMac G3, G4
? Mac OS 9.x or Mac OS X
? CarbonLib 1.5
? QuickTime 6
? 8 MB of RAM (OS 9 allocation)
? Monitor set to Thousands or Millions
? 3 MB of hard disk space for installation

To run on Windows, you need a minimum:
? Pentium II, III or higher [or equivalent]
? Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP
? DirectX 7.0 or higher
? QuickTime 6
? Internet Explorer 5.5 (6.x)
? 128 MB of RAM
? 640 x 480 display with 256 colors
(1024 x 768 display with 16-bit color)
? 5 MB of hard disk space for installation

I tested the application on a dual Power Mac G4 450MHz with 1GB RAM running OS X, as well as a 2GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM running Windows XP Professional. The application ran flawlessly, and the time it took to create thumbnails of all the digital media in the first Catalog that I created on both systems was really insignificant, as the thumbnails generated very quickly.

First Impressions
iViewMedia Pro 2.5 is a very intuitive media management tool at a competitive price. The application features quite a lot of tools to catalog, sort and organize your digital media. It adds a bit of creative functionality as well with its image editing tools, slide show creation (with transitions), and QuickTime video creation capabilities. The interface is well laid out, and the method of adding metadata couldn't be easier. There is a lot of functionality built into this application. The capability to convert images, video, and audio files to other formats is really a bonus in an application that has a main focus of cataloging and managing media files, as is the capability to create a PDF from within the application. For more information, or to download a trial copy of iViewMediaPro 2.5, visit http://www.iview-multimedia.com.

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