Seeing is believing - Putting photo editing products through their paces
Posted by Kathleen Maher on August 6th 2009 | Discuss
Categories:
Software Review
Tags:
apple
microsoft
google
avi
mov
wmv
roxio
quicktime
Roxio Photoshow is easy and fun. There’s something nice about having just a few options and getting something done quickly. Luckily, the templates, styles, and music, are pleasant and not too childish or silly as is so often the case in similar programs.
Remember this: nothing is easy on a computer unless you stay within your boundaries. You like the Mac, stay there, you like Windows, stay there. Things might work out okay if you stay in your own backyard but then again they might not. What was a simple test of free online software can turn into a maddening exercise in exploring the limits of file compatibility. For example, staying within the confines of Windows should be pretty simple but Apple has increasingly made its way into consumer video cameras and so you may find yourself stuck with .MOV files. Quicktime, what could be simpler, just convert to AVI, WMF, or whatever. But OMG there are few easy ways to convert .MOV files to AVI and even the programs I have bought turned their noses up at .MOV. Not even Adobe Premiere CS4 shows much enthusiasm for the format. There are free programs that claim to convert MOV to AVI but I didn’t find one that really worked. I won’t list them here because it’s very likely I didn’t slow down and read the instructions but it is a subject I will return to. The most painless way to go is to simply roll over and pay Apple for the Quicktime Pro Upgrade. It’s $30 and much simpler than wasting a nice morning downloading, trying, and failing with a bunch of different free programs.
However, let me just add, Apple people, Quicktime is not much of an advertisement for Apple’s vaunted ease of use. Going Pro so that you can convert files from .MOV to something in a Windows format means you select one file at a time and convert it. It’s tedious. You can do some light editing, but it is the most basic of processes—move your sliders to what you want to cut or keep and snip. It gets the job done and you get what you pay for.
Okay, so that’s probably enough whining. I looked at two free photo/video editing products.
First up: Roxio PhotoShow
The free online tool for PhotoShow is slick and satisfying. With just a few clicks it’s easy to create a passable slide show by combining the available templates and music. You have several choices of music and transitions and you can add captions, stickers, comic-style talk bubbles, and it’s all pretty cute but then what? Without upgrading to the paid service the online file will expire in 30 days. You can’t download it, you can’t export it to video, you can just invite everyone you know to come look at it within 30 days and if everyone loves it? Well too bad guess you better hurry up and buy the upgrade.
If you do buy the upgrade for $39.95 you can add your own music and also add videos to the photos. Also you’re able to download a version of the software to use on your computer. The online version and the offline versions work pretty much the same and the process of putting something together is very fast and easy. Combining 42 photos and John Coltrane’s Impressions resulted in a nice video that played through the photos and ended with a fadeout on the music—couldn’t be nicer. I could wish that I had the ability to vary the transitions. The ability to work with video files is also severely limited. It’s almost as if Roxio, after having offered users a wealth of features—some of which worked well and others which didn’t work so well—swung to the opposite side of the fence with the barest of video tools. When I added videos they came in with their sound track up and the music I chose for the soundtrack faded in the background. It would have been nice to have options—fade the video clip audio in, suppress it entirely, fade it lower than the music track. I realize to add too much is to miss the point of making it easy but no control at all makes video almost pointless unless you’ve edited it beforehand and again, what’s the point of that? If you enjoyed doing that, edit the whole damn thing in a video editing program and to hell with it.
Once I did get something I liked—without video in this case—I uploaded it and online I was able to invite others to come see my video and Roxio has added a new feature—the ability to save the PhotoShow as an MP4 that can go to the iPhone. In that case, I just pushed the button and PhotoShow told me It was busy making my video—it might take a while so I would be sent an email when it was done. Thank you very much. I didn’t want to sit around watching a time stripe. (However, I’m still waiting for that email.)
In contrast, saving files from the desktop client happens right in front of you so that you’re aware of how long it really does take. Saving to WMV takes quite a while. The test was performed on an admittedly modest HP Workstation and output took a long, tedious 30 minutes.
So, to add it all up, the online version is fine as a way to save a collection of photos. It’s fast and easy and the templates are okay but that 30 day limitation really is a deal breaker. Why go to the work to create a video slide show if it’s just going to disappear in 30 days? Most people will find the whole deal too much of a compromise when there is so much they can do elsewhere for free.
Like Google.
As I was editing the photos to get them ready for PhotoShow, I noticed the filmstrip at the bottom of the Picasa page. Ohhh, I forgot, I can make photo videos in Picasa. Select a bunch of pictures, add a sound track and tell it to go. The Picasa tool also lets you clip videos so you have a little bit more control over the video you use in your photo slide show. Like Roxio, the video’s sound track comes up in the video but Picasa doesn’t turn the noise up quite so loud. It balances it with the background audio you’ve chosen. It seems to work a little better. Picasa, like PhotoShow, takes a while to make a movie, or it does if you’re working on a single processor. In fact, creating a project with 47 images and an MP3 audio clip took 45 minutes on one try and about 20 minutes on another. At the moment I have absolutely no idea what the difference in time might be but I’m usually sure I’ve done something silly in this case, I probably didn’t make sure there were not background processes going on. Remember, you don’t want to have anything else going on while you’re making your movie. In one sloppy attempt to add a soundtrack to a slide show while I also kept searching the internet and probably searching my hard drive, the finished video looked pretty good but the audio stuttered. I knew better, and I’m sure you know better but remember—video and multitasking simply do not mix.
The nice thing about Picasa is that you’re in one environment so you can fix up your images, clip your videos, arrange the files in the order you want, and start making your movie. Both Roxio and Google let you edit work after you’ve created it so there’s no reason not to try out a few variations. Both programs save to WMV.
So, to get back to my original point—doing this review was an eye opener just for the sheer irritation quotient. No matter what I wanted to do outside the bounds of my original plan to make a simple little move such as convert a WMA file to an MP3, convert an MOV to a WMF shorten a video clip, and edit an image, caused me to stop what I was doing and fiddle around sometimes for as much as an hour. You’ll note that Microsoft’s Movie Maker isn’t even in this review. That program is simple but it doesn’t accept much of any type of video except AVI. Microsoft is moving Movie Maker online and it seems clear that online is the future for simple tasks like this. You won’t have much control, you take what you get, but you have something to share within a few minutes. Sometimes that’s all you want.
Verdict
Roxio PhotoShow—it needs work but the great thing about online applications is that they work. Features can be added and rough spots smoothed out. The ability to save to MP4 is one example. It would be nice to have a little more control over the video as well as the still pictures, but other than that there’s not much to complain about in the subscription version. The point is getting a little show done quickly so those vacation memories don’t completely disappear.
Picasa Movie Maker—When it comes to editing and organizing photos Picasa gives the low-end products a run for their money. It’s Movie Maker function is a little more primitive and limited. On the other hand, it works smoothly and its nice to be able to edit photos, clip videos, and put it all together in the same environment. Picasa begs the question. Why pay money if you can do it all for free?
