The trouble with Hitchcock

Article Abstract:

Digital media purports to empower users to create new media with new purposes, but the tools are expensive and inaccessible to many. There is nothing to fill the niche between Adobe Premiere and a high-end proprietary system, although the technology exists to create a package that has Premiere's flexibility, along with the proprietary system's power and speed. Aldus' CoSA (formerly Company of Science and Art) division had begun to target this sector. CoSA's philosophy was to listen to users, and develop practical and cost-effective tools. CoSA's Hitchcock was meant to be a desktop solution for everyday editing. It was hardware-independent, and delivered fast performance at a reasonable price. However, after Aldus merged with Adobe, Hitchcock's development was discontinued because it was seen as a competitor to Adobe's Premiere product. Premiere however, does not address all the needs of the lower spectrum of the market.

Marketing, Company marketing practices, Desktop video software, Hitchcock (Desktop video software)

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Director 6 hits all the right buttons

Article Abstract:

Macromedia's Director 6.0 is an outstanding multimedia authoring application that is a very useful upgrade. It provides Internet enhancements, and performance and productivity improvements compared to earlier releases. The firm is offering nearly identical Mac and Windows versions of Director 6.0, which provides the ability to create files and play them on either version. A big boon for Windows users is that version 6.0 offers significantly improved playback speed due to Intel's MMX processor. Another big enhancement is the addition of a new Score window interface, which makes Director 6.0 very appealing to both novice and experienced users. The amount of Sprite channels has been boosted to 120 compared to 48 in the past, and users now have the ability to narrow or widen frames ranging from six to 1,600%. This improves navigation, and the interface is also easier to utilize on smaller monitors.

Software single product review, Multimedia authoring software, Macromedia Director 6.0 (Multimedia authoring software)

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Image is everything

Article Abstract:

Adobe Systems' $895 Adobe Photoshop 4.0 image processing software remains the essential and most robust offering of the four reviewed applications. Its excellent new feature called Adjustment Layers allows users to change an original image without permanently modifying it. Version 4.0 also includes digital watermarks as a standard internal Photoshop feature. While Life Picture's $995 Live Picture 2.5.1 software's procedural brushes are not fully developed, it does provides quick composite, rotate, position, resize and adjusting of large images. Fractal Design's $549 Painter 4.0 package is a good choice for artistic creation tasks. It allows collaborating over the Internet, but it does not perform as well on intensive image-process tasks such as resize, CMYK conversion and rotate. Macromedia's $699 xRes 2.0 offers an Open Architecture that supports Xtras and third-party plug-ins.

Software multiproduct review, Image processing software, Paint software, Fractal Design Corp., FRAC, Fractal Design Painter 4.0 (Paint software), xRes 2.0 (Paint software), Live Picture Inc., Live Picture 2.5.1 (Image processing software), Adobe Photoshop 4.0 (Image processing software)

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