Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Windows 7 will ship with a new version of the Windows Media Player. This is somewhat surprising, given Microsoft's complete neglect of the Media Player since Vista's release and its emphasis on the Zune PC software, which has its own playback and organizational features. But apparently Microsoft has realized that native playback of digital media within Windows is too important to force people to download an application separately. This is not the case with some other applications--for instance, Windows 7 will not come with Mail/Outlook Express, Photo Gallery, or Movie Maker--instead, users will have to download Windows Live versions of these applications. (Or PC makers will have to pre-bundle them.)"

It looks like there will be a lot of good things coming related to audio and video on Windows 7. Some of the highlights? Better Bluetooth support for speakers and headsets, a new version of Windows Media Player, native support (finally!) for h.264/MPEG video files and AAC audio files, improvements in networked music, intelligent routing of the right kind of audio to the right kind of device, and more. I think Vista is quite a capable operating system when it comes to media, but I'm definitely looking forward to the features in Windows 7 that will make the experience even better.

"Today at its Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft gave the public its first peek at the Windows client release that's supposed to make up for Vista. Based on our early tests of the new client, we're impressed with Seven's speed and polish."

The biggest news about Windows 7? Paint is getting an overhaul! I kid, I kid. Well, no, actually Paint is getting an overhaul and an Office 2007-style ribbon control - but I'm sure there's more to Windows 7 than that! Perhaps the most promising thing I've seen so far is that according to this New York Times article, Steven Sinofsky, the guy leading the development of Windows 7, is planning on showing Windows 7 at PDC 2008 on a low-priced Lenovo computer with only 1 GB of RAM and <cough> an Intel Atom CPU. If Windows 7 has been trimmed of that much fat and can run properly on such minimal hardware, then colour me impressed. About the only time I haven't liked Vista is when I've used it on a small devices like the Samsung Q1 Ultra, or on the HP Mini-Note 2133 netbook. Vista just sucks on those types of devices. On reasonably-equipped desktop PCs, even the $599 type, Vista runs quite well.

Aviary is yet another Web 2.0 company that I haven't heard of, but they have some very compelling browser-based image creation and manipulation tools. The first of these, called Pheonix, is an image editing program (pictured above). The biggest noteworthy feature is the support of layers, which are neccesary for the more complex photo manipulations. Next, they have a "Visual Laboratory" tool called Peacock. They have a colour palette tool called Toucan, and a vector program called Raven. The tools are all Flash-based, which when functioning in full-screen mode can be fairly CPU intensive.

Aviary is also trying to crack the tough problem of Web 2.0 companies making money: they have a pricing plan that involves access to their entire suite of applications. The two pricing plans are $79.90 USD per year and $149.90 USD per year. And here's the rub: if you're a consumer, you'll probably just use the free version, or use other free tools on the market. Or even commercial tools - if you buy a copy of Photoshop Elements 7, which has more features for photo editing, you pay $99 once and can use it for as long as you want. So what about graphics professionals? $149.90 is cheap for someone who does this for a living, but in industries focused around Photoshop and Illustrator, file compatibility is important. I wish the people at Aviary the best, but this is going to be an up-hill battle for them, and the products are going to have to not only match the offline tools, but exceed them in features, in order to gain traction.

If you're a Lightroom user like me, you'll be interested to know that Adobe has released the first update to Lightroom 2.0. The 2.1 release is a 64.3 MB download that I installed quite quickly and easily. What does it add? According to the pop-up that appeared in the software when I manually checked for new updates:

"Additional camera support for the Canon 50D, Canon 1000D(Digital Rebel XS/EOS Kiss F), Nikon D700, Nikon D90, Sony A900 and more. Includes several corrections for issues introduced by the Lightroom 2.0 release."

So, nothing too exciting - unless you happened to be the owner of one of those cameras and you've been unable to process your raw files.

TMPGEnc MovieStyle ($39.95 USD) is video encoding software created for device-specific encoding. It has a slick, user-friendly interface that's quite easy to use - once you get it working. TMPGEnc MovieStyle, like its more expensive big brother TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress, has an extremely irritating online activation security scheme. I won't repeat myself here - you can read about my dislike of this sort of software protection in my other TMPGEnc review - but I find myself especially irritated because I installed this software to test it while I was a passenger in a car driving back home after visiting some friends in the countryside, and I wasn't able to use the software because I didn't have Internet access. I thought maybe on this cheaper, consumer-focused video encoding product, they'd have a more relaxed approach. There's not even a graceful limited trial mode for the software when it can't be activated - it simply won't load until the license is activated online. These sort of heavy-handed, "treat your customers like thieves" tactics are frustrating to see. But let's get on with the review, shall we? Read more...

"Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a set of tools for photographers allowing them to perform various tasks with their images-including RAW captures. The current version enables you to quickly geotag your photos, edit metadata, and organize your images by leveraging the power of Microsoft Live Local."

I haven't used this tool yet, but it looks like it could be useful - the geotagging stuff is cool, especially if it works in batch mode. And hey, it's free! Anyone taken it for a spin yet?

I was synchronizing music over to my SanDisk Sansa Clip today, and I configured Windows Media Player 11 to transcode the music to 128 kbps WMA files from the original 256 to 320 kbps music files. 128 kbps WMA files still sound pretty good for rock/pop music, and at the gym sound fidelity isn't quite as critical as is it at home. What surprised me was how poorly the Windows Media Encoder used my multiple cores. It did better than some programs because it was using two cores to transcode a single MP3 file, but what it should have been doing is multi-threaded encoding, where one core is assigned the task of transcoding one file, and have all four CPU cores transcoding the audio. Just like using FTP to download a bunch of files, even if you have restricted bandwidth or CPU cycles, efficiencies can be gained by processing multiple files in parallel.

Product Category: Software

Manufacturer: TMPGEnc

Where to Buy: TMPGEnc Web site

Price: $99.95 USD

System Requirements: The software will work on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000. Since video encoding is a CPU-intensive task, the faster your CPU the faster the software will work.

Pros:

• A huge variety of video import and output formats;
• Makes great use of multi-core CPUs;
• Software is fast and responsive.

Cons:

• The cut/edit tools are confusing and limited;
• Seems to have trouble with certain AVI files, no support for KV files;
• Requires online product activation; EULA restricts you to one install (but see below).

Summary:If you're looking for the ultimate level of control when it comes to video encoding, TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress is one of the best tools on the market today. When you consider that you can purchase video editing programs such as Premiere Elements for $99, TMPGEnc seems fairly expensive at $99 - but if you're tired of the limited video encoding options that most consumer-level video editing programs offer, TMPGEnc is a breath of fresh air and well worth the investment. Read more...

"Although I use ACDSee Pro to manage my images and conduct key word search, etc., it doesn't allow for an easy way to view statistics on EXIF data accross all my images. I'm considering new lenses for my 5d, and anted to see how often I use certain focal lengths based on thousands of images on my hard drive. So....I found this nifty little FREE utility called Exposure Plot. It scans all your images (.jpg only) and creates all sorts of useful statistics based on EXIF data...So, what did I learn? The program anazlyed about 7,000 images (took about 2-3 minutes, fyi). I learned that over half of my shots were taken at 80mm (considering the 1.6x factor). That makes sense, since my 50mm 1.4 is used for so many portraits and kid shots. Overall, the vast majority of my shots were made at the 35mm equivalent of between 45mm and 144mm."

If you're curious about what sorts of exposures and focal lengths you use when taking photos, this program will transform the raw data into charts that will help you visualize the results.

I was posting about Pocket PC Thoughts' 8th anniversary today, and courtesy of Archive.org - I'm so grateful those guys do what they do - I saw this post I made back in October of 2000:

"Imagine a digital camera running Windows CE. Imagine snapping pictures and having them automatically emailed to you via a Bluetooth chip on the camera that talks to your cell phone on your hip. Storage becomes a thing of the past - the CF card in the camera is more of a buffer for your cell phone than anything else. Or imagine having a built-in FTP program that would automatically push your images up to a web site as you're shooting them - real-time photography and events coverage could usher in a new era of photo journalism. Raw, unedited, up to the second coverage. Imagine having Pocket Artist on your camera - you could crop, edit, and tweak your images before uploading/emailing them. The possibilities are so endless here - if anyone has any upper-management contacts with Kodak, Olymus, Nikon, or any other major digital camera OEM, tell them I want to speak to them."

I thought that was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, because eight years later, we still don't have cameras with rich operating systems supporting third-party software applications for - although we do have some cameras that can do WiFi directly off the camera itself, and of course we have hardware such as the Eye-Fi. We have some DSLRs with expensive add-ons to provide WiFi, but virtually no cameras that bridge into PDAs or smartphones. Read more...

It's been a while since I've had to do this, but my installation of Windows Vista Ultimate on my media editing computer was acting so funky it was time for a wipe and re-install. I've been watching it go down hill for a few months now, mostly around codec problems (which is a rant for another day) and random application crashes. This morning was the last straw though: I kept getting DEP (Data Execution Protection) errors when using Sure Thing label-making software. Crash crash crash. I was somehow wishing that Windows Vista was different in this regard, but Windows is still Windows: shared DLLs, shared codecs, sloppy third party development, and a tendendency towards instability over time. I've found Vista to be better XP - most of my installs last a good year - but it's still a frustrating problem to have. Read more...

It's that time of year again: too many gizmos and gadgets in my office, and it's time to get rid of some of them. So it's giveaway time! I have here a copy of Roxio Back On Track 3 Suite, software that I was sent but I never installed it. Want it? Post a message in this thread telling me what your favourite colour is, and I'll randomly pick one winner tomorrow afternoon (3 PM mountain time). And see that white box propping up the software? That's another goodie I'll be giving away tomorrow. Check back!

UPDATE: And the winner is...Kursplat. Congrats! I've contacted the winner by private forum message, and they'll have 14 days to respond and claim their prize before I re-draw for another winner. Thanks for entering everyone!

"ACD Systems International Inc. today today unveiled ACDSee Photo Manager 2009, the latest version of its powerful digital organization and photo sharing software designed especially for avid amateur photographers, scrapbookers and crafters. Improved features combine to make ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 the quickest, most flexible and affordably priced organization software available for at-home use. Users enjoy real-time viewing, management and editing of multiple image files, whether they be treasured family photos or digital design elements for creative projects."

It seems like ACDSee 10 was just released, but here we have a new version of the venerable image management program - and it looks like calling it ACDSee 11 wasn't in the cards, so meet ACDSee Photo Manager 2009. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but it's a more descriptive name for a very useful product. I use the Pro version of the software (now at version 2.5) but the core functionality is very similar: I use ACDSee every day to view, edit, and resize images. In the time it takes Photoshop Elements 6 to start up, I can open, resize, and save an image using ACDSee. The batch tools are also invaluable when it comes to re-naming groups of files, altering metadata informaton, and many other functions. This is definitely very useful software, and well worth the $49.99 USD asking price.

"Nero 9 is the next generation of the world's most trusted integrated digital media and home entertainment software suite. It features new cutting-edge functionality that makes enjoying digital media content simple. This easy-to-use yet powerful multimedia suite, gives you the freedom to create, rip, copy, burn, edit, share, and upload online. Whatever you want - music, video, photo, and data - enjoy and share with family and friends anytime, anywhere."

Nero 9 is out, and it consists of an amazing 22 different applications. Wow. I'm all for "value for the dollar", but that seems to be getting a touch out of hand. Worse, I can't seem to find anything from Nero on exactly what's new and improved about Nero 9. I've tended to prefer Nero over Roxio in the past, but I'm honestly quite weary of these "mega suites" and all of the files and codecs they vomit all over my system. I have to write up a rant about codec rot this week, because my main media editing computer is in a funked-up state with codecs, and I think I'm going to have to wipe it out and roll it back to a squeaky-clean state in order to get things working again - and let me tell you, I'm not looking forward to that.

I tend to use Nero only for CD/DVD burning - most of the other apps they bundle with it aren't best-of-breed - so I think I could get by with a pure CD/DVD burning program. Any suggestions? If Windows Vista burned ISO files, I probably be able to get by with nothing at all.

"The RIAA and music labels gained a bit more notoriety when one of its associates, Sony BMG's head of litigation Jennifer Pariser, remarked during a case, "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'." Now the MPAA, which typically follows closely in the RIAA's footsteps, is suing software maker RealNetworks and making similar remarks. In a similar mentality, which some say punishes the paying customer, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, the Walt Disney Company and Sony have all filed suit against the company, which claims it only wants to provide content owners with a means of backing up their DVDs."

This isn't surprising to me, and hopefully it's not surprising to RealNetworks either, because I want them to mount a vigorous defense. If RealNetworks has the fortitude to pursue this all the way, this could be the type of case we've been waiting for: something that would set the legal precedent needed to allow the legal proliferation of DVD copying tools. I haven't purchased RealDVD myself, but by all accounts they seem to have followed all the rules necessary for maintaining the copyright protection on the DVDs - they're just taking the encrypted bits from the plastic platter we call a DVD and moving those bits to a hard drive. As if on orchestrated cue, the movie industry reacts like the ignorant buffons they are, launching a lawsuit against RealNetworks. I hope RealNetworks fights this to the very end!

Adobe, the 800-pound gorilla in the graphics world, has released a new version of their flagship product, Photoshop. I have to admit that since I haven't used Photoshop since version 6.0, I'm not particularly excited about this - but there are a lot of new features, and if you're a Photoshop junkie, this release will probably get you excited. The "content aware scaling" feature looks really cool - this is the commercialized version of some work I saw a year or so ago.

"As you may recall, Bill Gates himself mentioned a little ways back that Windows 7 could possibly be arriving as soon as next year, which prompted some quick backtracking on Microsoft's part, but that earlier-than-expected date has now cropped up yet again, this time supposedly in Microsoft's internal calendar. According to InternetNews.com, that calendar pegs the planned release date as June 3rd, 2009, which is a good deal sooner than the "early 2010" date we've been hearing all along, and quite a significant cut into Vista's planned three-year lifespan. What's more, the site also says that Microsoft will take advantage of its Professional Developer's Conference on October 27th to launch the first public beta of Windows 7, although that doesn't quite match up with earlier word that it'd only be revealing some "in-depth technical information" about the OS."

There's not a lot to go on here, but this Internetnews.com article that Engadget has linked to has a fairly logical trail of bread crumbs that leads to the June 2009 launch date. There's a certain amount of logic in Microsoft pushing hard to get Windows 7 out the door faster than they'd originally planned: they get a chance to fix the issues with Windows Vista, they get to re-position the product with new marketing campaigns, and they force Apple to re-shoot all their smart-ass commercials. ;-) I just hope Microsoft is working on a configuration of Windows 7 that's optimized for small and light devices such as UMPCs and netbooks. Vista is just too big and heavy for small devices.

I'm exceedingly disappointed to see the word "Ultimate" in the above screen shots. I really hope Microsoft doesn't repeat the same mistake they made with Windows Vista by having four different versions available at retail. I distinctly remember having rather heated discussions with Microsoft people about how bad it was going to be that they were fragmenting the product line and making it more confusing for users, but those complaints fell on deaf ears. I was cautiously optimistic about Windows Vista Ultimate when I first heard about it, but seeing as how the "Ultimate Extras" turned out to be a huge disappointment, the words "Windows Vista Ultimate" are now synonymous with wasted money.

"Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has everything you need to create stunning photos. The integrated Learning Center and a selection of one-click photo-fixing tools make it easy to correct common photo flaws such as red eye, color and sharpness. Unique makeover tools let you whiten teeth, remove blemishes and paint on a tan, so you can make everyone look their best before printing or posting photos online. As your skills and confidence grow, you can harness the power of professional-quality features such as HDR Photo Merge, Histogram, Curves and Levels Adjustment tools to make precision edits. You can even get creative with artistic effects and filters to turn your favorite photos into fun projects to share with family and friends."

Hot on the heels of the VideoStudio Pro X2 announcement, Corel has an update to the venerable Paint Shop Pro product line: the Photo X2 Ultimate version. I haven't used Paint Shop Pro in years, but just the fact that it does HDR photos was enough to catch my attention - my current version of Photoshop Elemenst (6.0) doesn't to HDR photos and it's something I've been wanting to experiment with. Paint Shop Pro also supports over 250 different digital camera raw formats, so if you don't feel like dishing out the $299 for Adobe Lightroom, this might be a good solution (though clearly it won't have the same type of workflow). There's a nice bundle that Corel is offering which gives you both Paint Shop Pro Ultimate Photo X2 and VideoStudio Pro X2 for $149. The full press release is after the break. Read more...

"While some of the new things in 2.0 are tweaks that you'd expect in a second-revision product, Lightroom also supports some significant additions that aim to raise the feature bar for RAW image processing. The much-touted localized adjustments feature, which attempts to bring some Photoshop-level control to RAW image processing, is headlining this release's feature set. Lossless RAW image editing is a bit of a holy grail for digital image processing, so the more granular control we're given over RAW images, the closer we'll be to that digital imaging grail. But Lightroom 2.0 isn't just about localized edits-there are a lot of other additions that warrant a closer look."

Ars Technica wasted no time in getting their review of Lightroom 2 out the door - I'm waiting for my copy to arrive from Adobe, then I'll be taking it for a spin. If there are three words to describe the changes in 2.0, it seems "more like Photoshop" would be a good fit. They've adding masking tools to allow you to make selections, then alter those selections. So if you're processing a RAW file and you want to boost the exposure only in the sky, you can do that. That has some powerful possibilities, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with the new version of Lightroom. I'm also looking forward to (hopefully) the bug fixes they put into 2.0. Version 1.4.1 still has bugs around something as simple as deleting an image. Let's hope 2.0 can do what 1.x hasn't managed to do: not frustrate me every five minutes. Call me an optimist, but I have high hopes!

"A little over two years ago, we launched Picasa Web Albums to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world. Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others."

I honestly thought that Picasa was an abandoned product - Google hadn't released a significant update in so long I was sure it was a dead product walking. I'm so glad I was wrong! Picasa 3.0 is currently in beta and available for download. Although I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, the features in it look really exciting: the text tool (pictured above), the collage tool, the heal tool, and the movie making tool all look like great additions. After the break, there are two walk-through videos that highlight some of these new features. Read more...