Over the past few years we’ve bought a lot of specialized software for photo manipulation, video editing, music capture and CD/DVD burning. The boxes sit in our home office library. The software ends up sitting on our hard drive until we upgrade to a new computer. They are probably real good at doing the job but frankly we’re not really interested in making movies for a living or creating music for the world to share. And our kids seem to jump from one project to another so anything that takes time to learn and use just doesn’t seem to interest them.

The idea of having a software suite that fits with our kids fast paced digital lifestyle and a product that would let us meet all of our family’s digital content needs seemed to be exactly what we were looking for.

Introduced by NTI (NewTech Infosystems) the Media Maker 8 package has just about everything you need to capture, edit, burn and enjoy music, photos and videos. We enjoyed using the company’s CD & DVD Maker which has been one of the most reliable, versatile disc burning packages we’ve found, so getting the more robust suite seemed like a sure thing.  read more »

Many people settle for mediocrity, while others demand “the best”. We have always tried to help guide our readers toward unique products or services that help them attain the best things in life.

Doubtless, everyone reading this article has a computer monitor or two, and most likely one or two HDTV sets in their homes. It is a well-known fact that neither monitors, nor televisions, leave the factory properly calibrated--- especially televisions. With so many new flat-panel sets on the market (the average Best Buy store alone now displays approximately 140 sets on the floor on any given day) manufacturers try to do whatever they can to make their particular products attract the eyes of buyers. To do this they often crank up the brightness and color way beyond normal, accurate levels--- because in a brilliantly lit showroom situation, the brightest TV usually catches the customer’s eye first.

Many people take these expensive sets home and never realize that they're missing half the potential picture quality. The picture on a well-adjusted big-screen set (or even computer monitor) after calibration, is strikingly better than when it first comes out of the box.  read more »

In the last article, I explained what online photo sites can do for you, and why you might want to use them. It's time now to get down to business: choosing the one that's right for you. What specific features should you look for? And which are most appropriate for your personal level of technical sophistication?

By and large, every one of the online photo sites accomplishes the same goal. Each lets you upload a collection of digital photos, and they make it easy (or at least it's supposed to be easy) to share them with other people. They also let you (that is, encourage you) to order prints of your photographs, and perhaps other customized items.

But, naturally, few sites stop there. Each site has its own unique features to make you choose that company instead of one of the other dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- available. Sometimes, the "extras" are the special attention they invest in making the process easy for computing novices, or maybe they're fancy tools to add bubbles or comic-book style captions to the photos. Other times, the site has unique capabilities to link your photos to other sites and to help you participate in a public community.  read more »

The number one consumer video editing software, Pinnacle Studio has been enhanced with a new range of features and capabilities to meet the needs of first time and advanced videographers. The new Pinnacle Studio 12 includes more than 25 new features and more than a dozen capabilities requested by present users. The new version includes Pinnacle Montage, an innovative tool that puts high-end compositing and animation effects in the hands of consumers. It also includes more titles, DVD menus and templates as well as professional audio/video controls and a complete high definition workflow capabilities with Blu-ray authoring in the advanced versions of Studio 12.

Certified for Windows Vista, the Pinnacle Studio version 12 family consists of three affordably priced versions to meet the needs of consumers ranging from novices to dedicated video enthusiasts. In addition to Pinnacle Studio, the basic version, Pinnacle offers Studio Plus and Studio Ultimate with more advanced audio and video tools, including a complete HD workflow.

“The video editing market isn’t just growing vertically, it’s growing horizontally,” said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a leading market research firm based in Tiburon, Calif. “New markets have emerged led by casual and younger users who simply want to quickly edit their videos and post them to the Web, women who have become the designated memory keepers in the family, and the growing number of folks over 50 who are becoming video hobbyists. The people in these new markets don’t want to deal with a complicated application; they just want the fun of quickly creating videos that are entertaining. Clearly, Pinnacle Systems’ customer-driven approach has helped it unlock opportunities in these emerging markets.”  read more »