After Effects 7.0 review
Adobe hasn’t taken its foot off the pedal for AE’s seventh major release. High-end users working on digital intermediate (DI) and digital film projects will love the expanded colour space, with support for HDR 32-bit media.
Reviews
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DualHead2Go review
The DualHead2Go adds multi-display output to laptops – allowing you to connect two monitors to the laptop’s VGA output port.
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Liquid 7.0 review
Liquid is like the gift in a lengthy game of pass-the-parcel. First it was developed by Fast, then purchased by Pinnacle. Now that the latter has in turn been consumed by Avid, Liquid is in its third pair of hands, but the music has stopped for the time being.
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FlexScan S2110W review
Every creative wants a widescreen monitor. Palette-laden applications – DTP tools such as InDesign and QuarkXPress, and editing software such as Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro – are less cluttered and easier to use with a 16:10 aspect ratio, rather than a conventional 4:3 display.
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MediaStudio Pro 8 review
The newly-released version 8 of Media Studio Pro adds features in an attempt to take on its old adversaries such as Premiere Pro, but it’s still happier with the needs of home users.
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GY-HD100E review
The HD100 is the first HDV camera to offer interchangable lenses. It’s smaller than it looks, but otherwise it’s just what you’d expect from JVC Pro. It’s available in two versions: the HDV/DV out-only HD100 and the HDV/DV in/out-capable HD101.
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Edius Pro 3 review
Edius has been an also-ran in the NLE market but Canopus hopes, with the emergence of HDV, the company’s expertise with codecs will give the software a boost. Pinnacle’s Edition was the first tool to include native HDV support, but ...
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HDR-FX1 review
Sony’s HDR-FX1E is the first HDV camcorder to record in 1080i, the interlaced variant of HDV that records at 1,440-x-1,080 with a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. This means that 1080i picture has 70 per cent more pixels than the 1,280-x-720 720p format used by ...
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Continuum Complete 3.0 review
Continnum 3.0 is a massive set of video plug-ins. The collection runs with Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, or After Effects, and there’s a Continuum AVX version for Avid Xpress. Over 40 plug-ins have been brought into the mix since version 2.0, which brings the total number of plug-ins to around 150.
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Liquid Edition 6 review
Liquid Edition is one of those pieces of software that ‘coulda been a contender’. A few years ago, when Premiere 6.5 seemed on its last legs, Pinnacle bought what would become Liquid Edition and its developer, FAST, to try to wrest the market from Adobe.
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Imaginate 2.0 review
Rostrum camera work can be quite fiddly using most standard timeline editing tools. Imaginate is a single-purpose program specifically designed to make animating still images quicker, easier, and more effective.
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Encore DVD 1.5 review
The previous version of Encore DVD was great in terms of its integration with Adobe’s other video applications, but it suffered from narrow file support and a fiddly approach. However, on firing up version 1.5, the interface improvements are immediately evident, and QuickTime is now supported as an asset. This brings Encore up to speed with DVD Studio Pro.
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Premiere Pro 1.5 review
Version 1.5 of Premiere Pro 1.5 isn’t as fully featured an upgrade as After Effects 6.5, but there are some great new creative effects and some efficient workflow enhancements. The feature that received the most attention when Premiere Pro 1.5 was announced at the NAB show in Las Vegas was the addition of support for the wunderkind format 24P. This sounds great, but here in old Blighty ...
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After Effects 6.5 review
Of the three updates to Adobe’s Video Collection, After Effects has got the most out of the point-five upgrade. Plus, it costs £70 plus VAT whether you’re upgrading the Standard Edition or the Professional Edition, which is very reasonable. AE 6.5 claims more than 60 new effects, most of which have been bought from Cycore – the creators of the popular Final Effects plug-in set. Most of these are solid, one-shot effects, though effects such as ...
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Magic Bullet Editors review
Magic Bullet Editors is a NLE plug-in version of the film stock-mimicking tool Magic Bullet. Whilst previously Magic Bullet lived alongside After Effects, the ‘Editor’ version runs within an NLE – Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, or Sony Vegas 5
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DVD Architect 2 (from Vegas+DVD 5) review
Against rivals such as Adobe’s Encore DVD, Apple’s DVD Studio and Ulead’s DVD Workshop, DVD Architect is unusual in that it’s available only as part of Sony’s Vegas+DVD bundle (Vegas 5 is reviewed here). Looking at version 2.0, this makes perfect sense – as while its interface and integration will appeal to Vegas users, its toolset isn’t up to the competition.
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Vegas 5 review
Vegas is the permanent underdog of the video-editing world. The NLE has a small but fanatical following in the US, but has probably slipped under the radar of most editors – although it’s a tool you’d know about if you always wanted to make music videos. It's available 'straight' or bundled with the DVD Architect 2.0 authoring package (reviewed here) as Vegas+DVD.
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Edius 2.0 review
When first launched in summer 2003, Edius seemed like a saviour for users of Canopus’s capture and effects hardware. Tied to Adobe’s ailing Premiere 6.5, Edius offered a more professional and efficient editing environment for the discerning editor. However, Edius turned out to be about as well finished as a PoundStretcher tea-set ...
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DVD Workshop 2 review
There seems to be a plethora of mid-range DVD authoring tools on the Windows platform at the moment, including Adobe’s Encore DVD. In terms of ease-of-use however, DVD Workshop 2 actually resembles Apple’s iDVD – offering a similar approach, motion menus, and drag-&-drop functionality.
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Matrox RT.X100 Xtreme Pro review
Until this autumn, Matrox’s line of DV-editing hardware looked to be in trouble. Tied to an ailing piece of editing software – Premiere 6.5 – the systems were facing redundancy, made obsolete by software-only NLEs and the power of host machines.