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Consumers are shooting video and taking snapshots with a wide range of electronic devices. A lot of times, those images are often just emailed or burned to CD for viewing in their raw glory. It is not very often that regular folks take the time to create some cool projects with those video or image files. muvee autoProducer 6 hopes to change all that.
The software application, which has been around for several years, has been updated to help users to create even more interesting media with their existing photographs, videos, and music. What the software does is takes highlights of your video clips and turns them into cool videos. The capability to determine what you want and don't want ih the final muvee has been added to version 6 via the new magicMoments feature. We'll take a look at how the application works as well as some of the new features to this fun and easy to use consumer tool.
The autoProducer 6 workspace consists of an input bin for video and pictures at the top, the music and select style windows in the center, and the preview window to the left. At the bottom of the screen, you'll find the make muvee button and the burn/save button, which enables you to output the final movie for CD/DVD, email, Web, mobile phone, or disc.
Your first step is to select the video and/or images files that you wish to make your muvee with. You also add audio files as well. To do this, press the filmstrip icon and it will open up Windows Explorer, enabling you to locate the video and add it to the project. The same holds for pictures and audio files. If the movie or images are still on your camera, you can also download video or pictures from the camera using the Import Videos/picture button in the Video/Pictures toolbar as well. When you import directly from a camera, you can let the software auto enhance the image with red-eye removal and noise reduction capabilities built in.
After you've selected the media that you wish to be in your muvee, your next step is to select a style. The styles run the gamut, ranging from classic sepia, black and white, and modern, to extreme music video, over the top music video and sentimental. There are 24 styles that ship with version 6, of which eight have been dubbed SuperStyles with this release. The eight SuperStyles are called The Mesh, Sentimental, Modern, Multi-frame, Journal, Classic, Extreme Music Video, and Back in Time. What separates these styles from the rest, and probably the biggest new feature in version 6, is that they can be customized, or tweaked, using eight different tabs, including superStyle settings, Title, end credits, video pictures, audio, and duration.
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| A new feature with autoProducer 6 are the SuperStyles, which can be tweaked |
With SuperStyles, you can give your muvee a title and animate it with a fade in/out, typewriter style, or zoom in/out, or just a basic static style. The fonts can also be customized as well as the background color. You can even change the background to an image of your choosing. End credits are done in the same fashion.
The Video/Pictures tab enables you to customize the media sequence. You can have it set to default and let the software do its thing, or you can keep the shots in sequence or shuffle the shots, of which you can choose more shuffle or less shuffle, depending largely on the number of videos and pictures in your muvee project, or just your own style. This tab also enables you to tweak the face bias, video motion bias, and brightness bias via sliders as well.
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| Audio levels can be tweaked to highlight the most important aspect of the audio in the clip. |
The Audio tab enables you to customize your muvee when you have multiple tracks of music in your project. You can choose to use every track, transition between multiple tracks, and Sound Check, which causes the software to automatically adjust the playback volume of the audio files to the same level. The Duration tab enables you to fit the muvee to the audio file, Best fit for video and pictures, which adjusts if you have too little or too many video and still image elements, and user defined, which enables you to choose the time of the muvee. You can also adjust the individual audio for the muvee, so you can give preference to music, the video soundtrack, sound effects, or the voiceover narration.
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| magicSpot enables you to direct the motion. |
magicSpot affords you a bit more control of how you want the motion to affect your video or image. This is dependent on the style that you choose, but in a nutshell, you can manually apply motion to the picture or have it done automatically with the software.
magicMoments enables you to preview your video and make a determination of what you want to emphasize in the clip. When you play the video, you can give a section and thumbs up, thumbs sideways, or a thumbs down. Thumbs up and that portion of the clip will be in the muvee, thumbs down and the portion is eliminated and won't play in the final muvee.
When you go to make the final muvee, you have the chance to make a final change to the muvee via the tweak muvee window which is accessed via a button located next to the make muvee button. you can remove elements that you don't want in the final muvee or you can add new elements. This is also where you would add a narrative track.
Saving and sending your movie off
After you've made any tweaks to the final muvee, the final step is to share the muvee. autoproducer 6 enabl;es you to do this several ways. You can save the final movie to CD/DVD, for sending via email, for the Web, mobile device, and save to computer. Each of the different formats features different ways to save the muvee. If you choose CD/DVD, your format options include DVD, VCD, and SVCD. You can also avail of the more than 20 DVD themes for your muvee DVD, raning from action, corporate, adn frosty, to theater, steel, and sophistication. The CD/DVD selection also details the disc capactiy, capacity used, the available disc space and the total duration of the muvee. When you save for email, you have good, better and best options. The current settings information features the file format of the final file, the video and audio information, and the total output size. Save for Web streaming also features good better, and best settings as well as the file information that is dependent on the setting you choose. The Mobile Device setting enables you to save for a mobile phone or Pocket PC, while the save to computer setting enables you to save the file in the following formats; WMV, WMV-HD, MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI, and DV-AVI. These settings give you some flexibility in the event that you want to add the muvee to a bigger video editing project, PowerPoint, or other use.
First Impressions
autoProducer has always been a unique application for creating interesting and original video clips. There is no other product on the market that I know of that does what it does. Version 6 includes a lot of new functionality to keep it interesting, with new features such as the customizable styles and the 20+ DVD themes. A big plus to the application is the number and type of file formats that it can output. From CD and DVDs to streaming video clips, up to DV clips, there is a wide selection of file support enabling you to build muvees for immediate playback or perhaps to add to a larger video project. And, if you want to add more styles, you can purchase more from the muvee website. The list price for the application is reasonable at $129.95. autoProducer 6 creates unique videos quickly that would take hours to do with a regular video editing tool. Highly Recommended. For more information or to download a trial version, visit http://muvee.com.
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John Virata is senior editor of Digital Media Online. You can email him at jvirata@digitalmedianet.com
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