Review: Camtasia Studio 8 and Camtasia 2.5 for Mac

Tutorials, walk-throughs, instructional videos--all of these have been produced in a variety of ways for many years. As video technology changes, so do the methods and tools used to produce these programs. One area that has gotten noticeably better within the last few years is how we capture screens for video.

In the past, producers employed a variety of different screen recording methods. Professional productions may have utilized a video out from the source and recorded directly to tape. In a low-budget model, a camera was simply pointed at a monitor with an agreeable refresh rate.

While these methods got the job done, they’re no longer suitable for today’s viewer expectations of pristine HD-quality images. TechSmith’s Camtasia has been providing producers with quality screen capturing and editing tools since 2006. If you’ve ever needed to record a screen with full motion to illustrate a method or process, then Camtasia may fill that gap.

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Review: Adobe Lightroom 5 for DSLR Video Producers

At Adobe Max earlier this year, Adobe announced that it was completely dropping development for its Creative Suite software and moving all future users to the relatively new Creative Cloud. This decision has been met with praise, anger, and everything in between. How this move will shape the company and its market position remains to be seen over the next few years, but there are a few changes that are almost universally considered positive.

The Creative Cloud now includes Adobe Lightroom, a product that many video producers might not have considered necessary in the past. If moving to the Creative Cloud is in your future, take a look at some of the video processing found in Lightroom to see if it can fill a gap in your workflow.

If you’re new to Lightroom, you should first understand that it is a photo organizer and editor built with pro photographers with large libraries in mind. Since many still photographers are using DSLRs with HD video capabilities now, Lightroom can also handle these files. However with a product like Adobe Prelude available, is there a reason to consider using Lightroom? Let’s see.

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Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Review

Photoshop Elements 11 available now

Today, Adobe is announcing the newest version of their consumer imaging software, Adobe Elements 11.  With the new version comes the usual number of refreshed and all-new effects, guided edits, and workflow tweaks, but it also brings some major changes as well as a completely overhauled interface.  Read on to see what’s new as well as my opinion on the importance of this upgrade.

AirTurn BT-105 review

The AirTurn BT-105 hands-free page turning system

Earlier this year, I posted a review of AirTurn’s first hands-free page turning system, the AT-104. The 104 operated on RF technology to “turn” digital pages on a connected computer or tablet. AirTurn has now released the BT-105 which uses Bluetooth technology as the model name suggests. The company has taken an already inconspicuous and useful product and shrunk it down to make it even more appealing. You’ll find my review of the AT-104 at this link, and I’ll refer to that article for much of the duplicate information. Continue reading to find out how the BT-105 differs from its predecessor.

Hardware

The BT-105’s profile could hardly be any more svelte. Since your chosen device, be it tablet, laptop, or desktop, already has a Bluetooth radio transceiver inside, there is no need for the USB dongle required by the AT-104. The BT includes two custom-built pedals and the BT transmitter/battery assembly. I was skeptical of the custom pedals when I received the unit in the mail, but was quickly impressed by the build quality and performance. The pedals are made of an extremely durable plastic or resin material, which makes them light and flexible. They are flexible enough to bend and press under your foot, but strong enough to not crack. I can only imagine it would take an elephant with a tuba to damage these during normal use.

The brain of the unit, which includes a non-removable, rechargeable battery, is smaller than the pedals and fits between them. It is mounted securely to the pedals’ base with Velcro. There is a tri-color LED indicator light, two 3.5mm ports for pedal input, a mini USB port for charging, and a small multifunction button. The button acts as power, BT profile change, and pairing toggle all in one.

Function

The BT-105 simply works. It is as responsive and accurate as its predecessor, so there’s really no reason to elaborate on how it performs. The pedals are broad and extremely easy to depress. Finding them with your foot without having them in view is no problem. What’s changed with this model is more on the software and interface end than anything else.

Interface

Since the BT-105 does not have any software included like the AT-104 did, the software side is dependent on whatever application you use on your interfacing device. For my review I used an Apple iPad 2, which is AirTurn’s suggested device. I chose a supported app from the App Store, where there are many compatible options to choose from. After powering on both the iPad’s Bluetooth and the AirTurn device, I was paired and connected within seconds. The app that I downloaded included some public domain music files, so I was up and running with minimal setup.

The only trouble that I had with operating the BT was interpreting the LED indicator. As I said before, there are three colors, amber, red, and green. This makes the possible combinations of indications high. And the BT-105 uses quite a few of them. The manual lists several light patterns, but correlating them to the code that it gives you is every bit as difficult as you might imagine. One example is changing the Bluetooth profile. The BT-105 comes setup for iPad use, but it must be changed to one of the other three profiles to be used with alternate devices. I tried changing it from iPad to PC/Mac mode. The process is described in the manual this way:

“To change to the PC or MAC profile (Profile 1), turn off the BT-105. Then, holding down the foot switch plugged into Port 1-2 (the port closest to the red power switch), turn on the BT-105. Release the foot switch as soon as you see the LED blink. The LED will then blink red, then green, then red, indicating that the profile has been set.”

The process worked as described when I attempted it, but many musicians that aren’t so tech savvy may be intimidated by this process. If you are one that may frequently change devices, this could indeed become very tedious.

Battery

Another advantage that the BT-105 has over the AT-104 is the inclusion of a rechargeable lithium polymer battery. This allows for longer use time and reduces the maintenance cost of the device by not having to endlessly replace alkaline batteries. Despite my initial delight over the battery type, I was alarmed when I first read the following in the operating manual:

“Note: If you fail to charge your battery when it is blinking red, you risk running it down completely which will require a factory replacement.”

Several AirTurn representatives reassured me that this is a warning to users who may neglect to charge the unit even when the LED indicator tells them the battery is almost dead. I was also told that most regular users charge their units weekly and have no trouble. They claim that 99% of units with dead batteries are recoverable when plugged into a wall socket to recharge, but the possibility of totally killing the battery is there.

Summary

With the introduction of the BT-105, AirTurn has delivered another powerful product that will help thrust music performance into the future. All of a musician’s digital sheet music can now be quickly accessed with the swipe of a finger, and it can be effortlessly played through with light taps of the feet. Being made in America, it is great to see a quality product that delivers as advertised while still maintaining a reasonable cost and excellent customer care.

Also posted here.

Adobe Elements 10 Review

The Adobe Elements 10 Organizer interface

Adobe Elements 10 is now available for Mac and PC.  With this tenth release comes a bevy of new features for hobbyist photographers and digi-scrappers to enjoy.  Having used and reviewed the Elements software since version six, I have an easy time telling whether a new version provides significant improvements over its successor or not. During the Elements 10 preview that Adobe presented, there were some definite “wow” moments.  With loads of new features to explore, I’ll allow you, the user, to experiment and find which ones are best for you. Following are some of my top features.

Easy type on paths

Typing on paths is super-simple in Elements 10.

Calling this “type on path” does not do justice to what you can do with text in Elements 10.  Drawing any shape or path can quickly be typed on by simply using the new text tool options available.  You can draw a custom shape, selection, or path. Any of these can then be “committed” onto your document and immediately typed on.  Didn’t get it right the first time?  No problem.  Simply use the appropriate tool again and adjust the points to just what you want.

Visual search

Adobe has answered a request that many people have been asking for to be able to easily locate images that contain more than just people.  The solutions are called“object search” and “visual similarity search.”  The names aren’t necessarily exciting, but the power behind them is.  Object search can be used to find anything included in images such as animals or visual landmarks like houses or monuments.  Once you select the object to be found, Adobe will rapidly search your library and bring up best matches for the item selected.

Setting up to do an "object search"

 

The object search results

Visual similarity search results

Visual similarity search can be used to locate images with similar colors or shapes.  A slider appears that you can adjust towards either color or shape depending on the subject matter.  For example, if you’re looking for sunset images to use for a background on a family Christmas letter, move the slider towards color to find those rich golden hues in other images.


Special effects

As usual, Adobe has added a few new special effects to their guided edits in the Elements editor. Picture Stack makes a popular effect easy by turning one image into a 4,8, or 12 image collage.  The pictures are given borders and canted and rotated to create a three-dimensional“stack” of photos.

Along the lines of the Lomo effect introduced in Elements 9,the Orton effect is now easy to apply. Michael Orton is known for his distinct style of photography involving three things: overexposure, soft focus, and camera motion.  The Orton effect quickly allows you to apply these filters to your image and tweak the results.

Bugs

As with any new release, there are some problems to contend with.  I’ve had one issue with images imported from my DSLR not showing up in the Organizer library.  I had a screen-sharing session withAdobe reps in California and India where I replicated the issue for them.  They were not aware of this issue, but are saying that it stems from the fact that my startup disk partition is different from the partition that I installed Elements on.

The other issue caused the Organizer to create out-of-date folders for images taken on the same day. The second issue is already acknowledged by Adobe, and a fix is in the works.  With time, hopefully Adobe will squash the bugs.

Version 10 of Photoshop Elements provides some very compelling reasons for users to upgrade or buy in for the first time.  If you’re using the software that came with your camera to edit and organizer your images, do yourself and favor and invest in this product.  The new features introduced are helpful especially for those looking to add a little more spice or distinction to their images.  As always, Elements provides easy paths for users to make their images look better than ever.

Adobe Carousel (Revel) Review (UPDATE: 1/12/12)

Memorophilia: the love of memories

Every once in a while a bit of ones and zeros come together to make a piece of software that strikes an unforgettable chord with a user.  Sometimes it makes a lasting impression that a person will look back on for the rest of his or her life.  One of those moments for me was the first time I played Super Mario Bros. I was at my cousin’s house, and everyone else remembers how I was so into the game that I would actually lift my arms spastically whenever I wanted Mario to jump.  I just remember the empowering experience of holding a plastic controller in my hand and causing the image of a man on a screen to do whatever I told him to do.  While Adobe Carousel doesn’t quite meetup to the high standard set by good ol’ Mario, it certainly has made a lasting impression and brings up quite a few questions as to what the future of photo storage and sharing will look like. Tech bloggers have long been heralding the demise of everything from the mouse to the desktop computer, but few have dared to become the literary harbinger of the death of the physical photo album.  Carousel may just be the shot heard ‘round the world in that story.

First off, a little background.  If you are not familiar with Carousel, let me summarize it for you.  Carousel is an app currently available for iOS and Mac OSX Lion.  It allows a subscriber to store an unlimited number of photos on Adobe’s cloud for in-app access on any of these platforms.  Users can create different Carousels(which are like albums),that allow them to share those photo groups with other Carousel users.  The length and breadth of Carousel’s feature set has already been documented here, so take a few minutes to review that article before continuing. Now for a small disclaimer - the first hands-on time that I got with Carousel was on the iPad 2. Coincidentally, this was the first time I’ve used any iPad or iOS device for that matter.  I tried to look beyond that to give an objective view of how the app stands alone, but sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between what is a plus or minus because of the app or the OS.  That being said, my review of Carousel is an attempt to look only at the app’s performance and is not meant to reflect in any way on the performance of iOS.  Since Carousel is also a desktop app, I ran it on my 15” Core i7 MacBook Pro.

You're first presented with this screen when you run Carousel on the iPad or OSX.

Carousel for all current platforms (Windows and Android support are on the slate for early 2012) is available only in the Apple App Stores for iOS and OSX. Installation is simple and painless, removing the extra step of saving aDMG file and running the installer. If you have an Adobe ID like you would use for Photoshop.com or Photoshop Elements, you simply sign in with those credentials to get started.  Setting up a new account is as easy as getting a Gmail account.  You can choose to either start a 30 day trial or go ahead and pay for a subscription upfront.

iOS

Starting with the iPad, I activated my Carousel account 30-day trial with my existing Adobe ID. Aside from a few screenshots with basic instructions, there isn’t any detailed “getting started” guide offered. There isn’t a need for one. You are automatically setup with one Carousel.  From there, just start adding images.  I installed Dropbox on the iPad and starting bringing some photos that I had stored there into the iPad’s photo library.  After that, Carousel could import them in bulk.  At the bottom left corner, there’s a indicator light telling you if Carousel is online or offline and in sync or synchronizing. You can tap a “view status” button to see details on the activity currently in progress.

Getting the images uploaded is almost imperceptible.  The pictures are either there or not.  There’s no waiting for spinning icons or staring at fuzzy lo-res thumbnails telling you that the image isn’t actually there yet.  If you can see it in Carousel, it’s there, and you can start manipulating it.

Image Editing

Looking at "looks" on the iPad.

While Carousel is no Photoshop, it does share some similarities while still distinguishing itself from its older, more feature-rich brother.  Image modification is broken down into three basic categories: Looks, Adjustments,and Crop & Rotate.  “Looks”gives you a variety of predetermined filters and effects to choose from.  Selecting one gives your entire photo a quick overhaul.  Vignettes, color balance, and sharpness are a few of many different parameters shuffled around when you browse through the various buttons.

“Adjustments” is where the real magic happens, but here is where I find my first beef with Carousel. Under the adjustments panel, you’re presented with white balance,exposure, and contrast.  Unless you know to click the double arrows on each, you won’t realize that each of these three sliders also has three more adjustments underlying.  The icon should probably be traded out for something more familiar like a drop-down arrow.

In the style of consumer-oriented photo editors, there are obvious “auto” buttons that will allow the algorithms take the place of your eyes to try and figure out the best tweaks for your photograph.  Adjusting the sliders manually gives a very fast preview of how your image is affected.  With the iPad 2’s dual core chip, it was difficult to notice even the slightest lag in response. There’s also a handy “compare” button always available north of the adjustments,which allows you to quickly A/B between your original and the new version.  Once you’re happy with the results,click “apply” to save the changes and be sent back to your Carousel.

The "adjustments" screen on the Mac.

Sharing with Lion

After I was comfortable with the iOS version of Carousel, I installed the application on my laptop to compare.  Signing in with my Adobe ID on Lion immediately displayed my Carousel images.  Adobe has some sort of pixie dust working behind the scenes, because once you’re logged in, there is virtually no delay until you can start viewing and editing your images.  It seems that the images are fully stored in the cloud, but they can, almost like video, be immediately streamed to the device once an image is requested. It’s hard to explain, but it works really well in practice.

My wife and I then sat side-by-side on the same wi-fi connection.  I wielded the iPad while she handled the MacBook.  The first thing that we noticed was that all of my edits were visible on her interface, including photos I had starred as favorites.  She opened an image that I had modified and found that the adjustment sliders were in the same positions that I had set them to.  She could then manipulate the image further and save those changes. The updated image showed up on my side within seconds.  The beauty of always remembering the slider positions is that you never have to choose between saving a new version or overwriting your original.  You can simply reset the sliders to zero and undo any other changes very easily.  A button allowing all changes to be reset to zero would be very handy.  If you do want to keep different versions of a photo, you can choose to duplicate your image and try another look.  My wife and I went back and forth for awhile in a game of photo manipulation pinball until we finally caused Carousel to blink.

Sample of my Carousels on the Mac.

I made a cropping adjustment to a particular photo, and it would not refresh on her end.  I even tried cropping it again with no result.  Then I tried editing other images and they refreshed as expected.  That one image stubbornly refused to update.  Finally, she opened it and made her own cropping change.  Then it updated my iPad version to look like hers.  We then pushed it even further by trying to edit the same image at once.  I was told in a pre-release briefing by Adobe that if this happened, the users would be presented with a choice.  They would be shown both edited images and be asked to choose which one they wanted to go with.  We couldn’t get this feature to work,so it seems that whoever hits the  “apply” button last wins.  This could be a real thorn in the side for large groups that are working within the same Carousel at once.

Unification

For the most part, the iOS version and OSX version are very similar.  There were only two significant differences I noticed. One was that some buttons are arranged a little differently between the two versions.  The other was the icon for entering the adjustment mode. The iOS version says “develop,” while the OSX version has an“adjustment” icon similar to Adobe’s other products: a plus and minus with a triangle on it.  Still, I’ll give them an A for keeping the two versions extremely similar in look, feel, and function.

While the Lion version of Carousel is supposed to support it’s all-important multi-touch gestures, I could get none of them to work in my testing.  The iOS version supports pinch-to-zoom as well as any other program, but the desktop version simply would not respond.  It seems that three-finger rotation is not supported in either version.

The future’s gonna cost

With Adobe being first to market with software that accomplishes all of these features, they have the advantage of getting first crack at trying to set a trend for how the business model will work.  A 30-day trial is offered to anyone who wants to give Carousel a spin before committing.  However, after January 31, 2012, those same users and any new arrivals will be forking over $99.99 for each year that they want their photos stored on Carousel’s servers. Perspective compels us to remember that the cost doesn’t just pay for cloud storage of a photo library. It’s also including the software used to edit and share the images.  Plus, each Carousel can be shared with up to five others.  In reality,that $100 per year can get you a lot of functionality and allows you to even consider sharing the financial load with other family members that may want to participate in your Carousels. While $8.25 per month isn’t a bank-breaker for most, it’s also not an amount that would fall within many people’s “mad money” expenditure.  The challenge will be whether Adobe can get consumers to see this convenience as a necessity and not just a luxury.

Conclusion

During pre-release screenings and hands-on testing, Carousel has left an indelible impact on me several times.  The speed and invisibility of the sync process evoked some audible “wows” from me.  Adobe has combined their powerful algorithm arsenal with their ability to simplify image editing, creating another piece of technology that can entice a broad audience of consumers.  The warning signs that stand out to me have to do mostly with dilution of their brand.  Adobe was wise to leave the name“Photoshop” out of Carousel completely. With multiple versions of Photoshop already available for desktops,mobile phones, and tablets, another namesake would probably have caused overload for people looking for the right software solution.  The question remains, though, how people that already use Photoshop.com for cloud storage in Elements will accept to this new and familiar challenger.

My prediction is that by this time next year, we’ll see Adobe clearly favoring one of these solutions or the other based on the successor failure of Carousel.  I love the idea of having my entire photo library accessible anywhere at anytime, provided have my device of choice with me, but it may be worth the wait to see who challenges Adobe’s pole position and starts the pricing war.

UPDATE

Adobe announced yesterday that they are renaming Carousel to Adobe Revel.  I'm still a bit on the fence with the new name, but to me it describes the product even less than the original name.  Either way, Revel is here to stay.

Adobe Carousel First Look

Adobe Carousel Icon

Today, at their annual Photoshop World conference in Las Vegas, Adobe is announcing a new consumer-facing software product called Carousel.  Carousel, a photo library management app, is one part cloud storage, one part photo sharing, and one part photo editor.  Read on to find out what it does and what sets it apart.

Grado SR125i headphones review

Grado SR125i in the box

If you looked at the photo of the Grado SR125s on the left and thought, “Who in their right mind would buy those ugly things?!” you’re not alone.  And if you looked at the photo and thought, “Those headphones look like they’re from the 1960s,” you’re not far from the truth.  When I first spotted a set of Grado cans online, those were thoughts that went through my head.  The first ones that I laid eyes on were the PS1000s which retail for somewhere north of $1,500.  I don’t know about you, but when I see a product that has little or no visual appeal or heavy marketing, yet commands a steep price, I take notice.  After I began researching Grado Labs, I quickly learned why they are priced the way they are.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Review

Photoshop Elements

Adobe began shipping Photoshop and Premiere Elements 9 in September of this year for both Mac and PC, and Amazon is running a great deal on it through the Christmas holiday.

What’s new on the Mac side of things? For one, the addition of the Elements Organizer.

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop Elements, there have been two components to the PC version: the Elements Editor and the Elements Organizer. The editor handles the obvious “Photoshop” capabilities expected in a product by that name, while the Organizer handles the importing, cataloguing, and sorting of the user’s library. If you’re thinking, “That sounds like iPhoto,” then you’re getting very warm.

The Editor has been given some nice new features, primarily in the area of special effects. Two standout new features are the “Lomo camera” effect and “Out of Bounds.” The Lomo feature allows you to recreate the look of the iconic Lomo cameras. Wikipedia has this to say about “Lomography”: “Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, ‘happy accidents,’ and alternative film processing are often considered part of the ‘Lomographic Technique.” In the tradition of this photography style, you can add cross-processing to the color and a darkened vignette to the corners.

The “Out of Bounds” effect allows you to select a portion of the image and make it pop out of the frame. Some careful selecting and creative perspective can give your average image a 3D look. You can see my two samples of these features below.  Greater layer effect control, matching photo styles across multiple images, and easy optimizing for and uploading to Facebook are also new additions to PSE 9. The power and versatility of Photoshop Elements continues to amaze and surprise me, even as a long-time user of the full version of Photoshop. Its resourcefulness constantly makes me question who, outside of professional power users, really needs Photoshop when Elements has so many of the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost.

The Lomo effect is displayed in the image on the right.

The "Out of Bounds" effect gives your 2D images a 3D look.

The real splash that Elements 9 makes is the addition of the Organizer to OS X.  Previously, Mac users were left out in the cold of iPhoto for their photo organization and tagging. Several years ago I transitioned from PC to Mac. One of my top three missed programs in moving to OS X was the Elements Organizer. You can see my review of Elements 8 Organizer for PC here. To say that I was happy to hear about Adobe adding the Organizer to the Mac version of Elements this year would be a gross understatement.  For years I’ve been plagued by the woeful inadequacy of iPhoto in almost every area.  Face tagging is terribly inaccurate, painfully slow, and the most quintessential element of the software, organization, is severely lacking.

Upon receiving PSE 9, I immediately installed it and used a very straightforward “import iPhoto library” option in the menu. It worked flawlessly and quickly, maintaining my keywords, face tags, and converting iPhoto “events” into Elements “albums.” I then let Elements have a go at finding faces, and found that the redesigned face-finding portion is even quicker and easier than before. The biggest fault in most face-finding algorithms is that they struggle with infants and young children. No matter how cute and unique your kid looks, chances are a mathematical formula can’t really tell the difference between yours and your sister’s kid. I’ve faced this problem with both Elements and iPhoto and expected to see the same issue in this version. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see noticeable improvements in this area. It did a remarkable job discerning our 18-month old’s photos from our 3-year old’s baby pictures. In the past, I’ve found that young faces seemed to get mixed in together very easily. Now we can only hope that Adobe works on an algorithm for family pet faces.

I have few complaints about the Organizer’s functionality on the Mac. Diehard Apple fans will still have a hard time pulling away from iPhoto for their digital photography editing and organization. The integration and synchronizing with iOS devices is hard to beat, but Adobe’s Photoshop.com can allow mobile users to enjoy their cloud-stored photos and videos on a range of devices via mobiles apps for Android and iOS. Other device users can gain the same access via their web browser. Each purchase of Elements comes with 2GB of free storage on Photoshop.com, and “plus members” can purchase 20GB of storage for $49.99/yr.

Other complaints would include the fact that scrolling through the library and enlarging photos to full-screen is not as smooth as I expected. I also had a problem importing images from my camera. The images were downloaded and put into folders on the hard drive, but failed to show up in the library even after closing and re-opening the program.  I eventually had success by manually importing them from the folders on the hard drive.  This is an issue that should be resolved in software updates. The slideshows are also a bit clunky, but I’m not a big fan or user of slideshows anyway.

Mac users, rejoice! The bonds of iPhoto have been torn asunder! There is a new choice for you to organize and tag photos in OS X. Since iLife ships with all Mac purchases, Adobe’s Elements requires a greater financial investment than iPhoto, but the features included in the software make the $99.99 investment well worth it. PC users have quite a few new features to look forward to even if they’re only running version 8 as version 9 offers lots of improvements and additional features to appeal. Any way you slice it, Photoshop Elements 9 truly is a great upgrade.

AirTurn AT-104 hands-free page turner review

AirTurn AT-104

Boulder, Colorado based AirTurn, Inc. has introduced a USB powered hands-free page-turning device especially for musicians who wish to use digital sheet music.  The AT-104 is a two-part hardware system that enables you to move forward and backward in an electronic document one page at a time.  Part one is the USB transmitter, which is connected to a pair of pedals of your choice.  Part two is a simple USB dongle that acts as the receiver when connected

The AT-104 receiver

to your computer.  AirTurn’s “Professional package” which sells for $198.95 comes with the AirTurn transmission hardware, the MusicReader and MusicConverter software, as well as a pair of BOSS FS-5U pedals.

Hardware

The AT-104 hardware is small and inconspicuous - as it should be for a musician wanting to use it for performances.  The USB receiver is about the size of a typical flash memory stick, and the transmitter is only about as big as your palm.  Glossy black plastic shells help to conceal the hardware even more.  I tested the AT-104 with my both my home piano and the one I play at church.  I found that the only reason people noticed the pedals and transmitter was because they observed the computer sitting atop the piano and wondered what I was doing.

The BOSS FS-5U pedals and AirTurn's transmitter

Although AirTurn does not manufacture the BOSS pedals, they are the brand included in their “Pro pack” and deserve mention.  The FS-5U pedals are second to none.  An attractive and rugged all-metal construction and rubberized bottom to prevent sliding make for an impressive product.  The sides of each pedal are “tongue and groove” enabling you to lock together an unlimited number.  The pedal mechanism gives a good, strong resistance.  As good as these pedals are, I would still like to see a broader surface area to keep from missing the pedal.

Function

The technology behind the AT-104 is relatively simple.  Whenever a pedal is depressed, the transmitter sends either a “page up” or “page down” command to the receiver.  Of course, this command will then display the next or previous screen in your document.  The kit did everything it was supposed to do when I set it up.  The USB receiver was plug and play on my MacBook Pro and in Windows XP.  I also opened up some Microsoft Word documents and PDF files to see how the pedals moved pages in different software.  These programs were able to understand the commands as well and would perform a “next screen” type of “page up/down” action.  In other words, they would not necessarily skip to the next whole page but would rather show the next screen of type wherever the bottom of the monitor had cut off the text.

Using the AT-104 takes some getting used to.  It’s a bit disconcerting to have the music instantly change pages when you’re used to naturally compensating for the delay and motion of a page turn.  I also found it a little confusing during certain measures trying to operate the piano pedals and tapping the BOSS pedal together.  After practicing for about fifteen minutes, I noticed improvement, so I’m sure it wouldn’t take long to re-train my technique.

I did not experiment with how far the transmitter and the receiver could communicate, but I was able to operate it from across a room.  That’s probably far enough for most applications.  The response is very quick with no noticeable lag.  There is a delay adjustment in the MusicReader software that you can tweak to prevent double page turns when the pedals are depressed more than once in quick succession.

Software

If there is a weak link in AirTurn’s AT-104, it is the MusicReader software.  Since AirTurn doesn’t develop the software themselves, I can’t fault them directly for many of the complaints I have.  The interface is probably best described as “clunky.”  It appears almost identical in Windows and OS X, and seemed pretty “buggy” when I used it.  I initially tried using the software in a limited user account on OS X, but it gave me errors wherever I turned.  It seemed to run fine under an administrator account, but I opted to try Windows XP instead.  Even in Windows, it crashed several times and failed to convert files properly and consistently.

The MusicReader software interface

MusicReader uses a MRS file extension, which requires using the included MusicConverter software to turn PDFs, JPEGs, or other files into the MRS format.  According to Hugh Sung of AirTurn, there are several reasons for the proprietary format’s use.  There are some image filters applied to documents, algorithms recognize white space between staves to help intelligently determine resizing and half-pages, and it adds an annotation layer to mark on.  Still, since PDF is such a broad standard, being able to use PDFs in MusicReader without conversion would be welcomed.  One PDF that I tried to convert in multiple ways was simply refused.  I ended up having to export JPEGs of each page and convert them individually with MusicConverter.  I then had to piece the music back together to export as a MRS. Not exactly intuitive or user-friendly.

Despite its shortcomings, the bundled software basically does what it’s supposed to do.  It moves the pages forward and backward on command.  There are some nice features that help me overlook some of its quirks.  The ability to annotate on the music is especially nice.  This essentially gives you text, drawing, and highlighting capabilities for making notes or marks on the music.  It’s non-destructive, so the marks that you make stay in MusicReader and don’t affect your original file.  MusicConverter also enables you to setup repeat points in a piece.  This keeps you from having to rapidly tap your foot to get back to a previous page.  You can simply re-arrange or duplicate pages needed for the repeat in a piece to allow you to keep tapping forward through the music.

Summary

While the AirTurn AT-104 fills a gap for today’s music performers, there are certainly some improvements to be made for future revisions.  Native support for PDF and possibly Finale’s MUS format would be very helpful.  However, for those musicians with a vast digital music library, being able to use their music without having to print everything on paper is invaluable.  Like many things, sheet music is moving increasingly into the digital realm and being purchased online, making devices like the AT-104 more vital than ever.

AirTurn has promised a Bluetooth version around the end of the year. This will enable support for more devices such as the Apple iPad and other tablets that lack USB ports.  Hopefully that version will bring with it a simplified and cleaner app that will appear more at home on modern operating systems and make it easier for musicians to adopt a new technology over a very old technique.

For more information on AirTurn, go to www.airturn.com.

Adobe CS5 new feature walk through video

Want to see some of Creative Suite 5's new features in action?  Watch this video to see how Rotobrush, RED support, and camera lens correction works.

Adobe CS5 First Look

CS5

Today, Adobe is announcing a refresh to its Creative Suite products, putting the software package at number five.  CS5 offers significant improvements to performance through a variety of updates, not the least of which is a new engine called “Mercury.”  Tim and I have been working with the beta version of the Master Collection suite for several weeks, giving us time to explore the new features and functionality of the programs included.  For our purposes, we’ve constrained our comments to the Production Premium package.

“The need for speed”

CS5 is a milestone update for Adobe because the company has now optimized the suite for 64-bit.  The complete departure from 32-bit for Premiere Pro and After Effects will leave users with older operating systems out in the cold, but will provide noticeable performance gains and more compact file sizes to adopters.  Mac users won’t experience so many woes as Apple’s OS has been 64-bit for some time.  Adobe recommends Windows 7 64-bit as the ideal PC operating system for CS5.  Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and InDesign have all been tweaked to take special advantage of the 64-bit architecture.  Preliminary informal tests have shown that renders in Premiere Pro and encodes in Media Encoder are noticeably faster, however specific benchmarks have not been performed due to the beta status of our software.

Adobe has also developed a playback engine for Premiere Pro and After Effects called “Mercury” which leverages the 64-bit architecture and GPU for especially efficient and powerful.  In a pre-release demo, Adobe demonstrated Premiere Pro playing back seven simultaneous HD streams with live effects without GPU support.  Nine or more were possible with the GPU.

Although Photoshop has been 64-bit since CS4, even it seems to have gotten a little bit of grease in the joints.  There is now a preferences pane for GPU settings, allowing you to tweak the preferences to your desire.  Alternatively, you can use a GPU auto-calibration, which runs a number of tests on a pair of images to determine which settings work best for your system.  I was particularly impressed by a new zoom option called “Scrubby Zoom.”  When this feature is enabled for the zoom tool, moving the mouse left or right while holding down the left mouse button causes the image to zoom in or out rapidly.  This may not sound very exciting, but it is wild to watch.  Not only does the image zoom as quickly as you move, but the resolution auto-scales in real time as well.  The result is going from 50% zoom to 1,200% zoom keeps the image sharp from start to finish.  No more waiting for the software to redraw the screen when zooming in large steps.

Pre-production and production

In the fall of 2009, Adobe introduced a new online/offline application called Story.  Story is a collaborative screenwriting tool that can be used as a web app or offline through their Air run-time.  You can read our review of it here.  During a pre-release tele-conference, Adobe reps claimed that they are not trying to break into the screenwriting software game, but that they are simply trying to fill a niche market and round out their software package.  The biggest advantage to Story, which is included with the Production Premium suite, is its ability to integrate with other programs within CS5.

OnLocation, which is largely unchanged from CS4, can import a shot list from a Story script, making recording with OnLocation a bit simpler.  The transcription feature that was introduced in CS4 can also now reference the Story script to better analyze the speech contained in clips.  We found this new feature to be lacking greatly in our review of CS4, so this modification will hopefully greatly improve the accuracy of transcriptions.

Post-production

Premiere Pro got a very mild interface update.  The “tools” panel has been moved from the bottom right “vertical” version to a “horizontal” version at the top left.  This was a welcome change to me as I generally find myself only selecting tools by keyboard shortcut anyhow, negating the need to have the tools readily clickable.  The move also affords more valuable real estate where it’s needed next to the sequence panel.

The file-based editing templates have been updated.  Native support for the RED camera’s R3D raw file format has been added and performs adequately.  Although RED users are not normally using the R3D files to edit with, that capability is now included.  We tested this feature with some 4k footage generously provided by Matthew Rogers of Macville Productions.  The screenshots provided are taken from a short film called “Larry vs. the Aliens.”

After Effects maintains its spot as the top motion graphics editor with a new tool called the “Rotobrush.”  This paintbrush works similarly to some of the smart tools found in Adobe Elements software.  You select the foreground for rotoscoping with a standard left click and use the option click to select the background.  A quick swipe over the areas gives After Effects enough information to guess what part of the image you want to select.  You can then zoom in to fine-tune your selection.  Once again, smart algorithms may help save motion picture effects artists from retinal failure related to long-term pixel-level editing.

Soundbooth and Media Encoder both offer minor updates.  Adobe now offers loads of scores for free direct download through the Resource Central panel in the program.  Media Encoder now has an option in the preferences pane that allows for auto-start of encoding queues.  The default time is two minutes after a file has been added to the queue, but the countdown can be tailored to the user’s taste.  This helps to eliminate the time spent waiting for large Premiere Pro sequences to load in the queue just to click “start.”

Adobe says that shipping versions of CS5 should be available in the US in about a month.  Once we get our hands on release versions of the software, we’ll be posting a more in-depth hands-on review with at least one real-world project.

Here's Adobe's press release about the Production Premium suite.

Adobe Elements 8 Organizer Review

On September 23 Adobe announced the debut of Elements 8.  Tim and I posted a pre-release review that highlighted the new features that Adobe incorporated into the “hobbyist” level Premiere/Photoshop combo.  You can find that article here. I’ve had some time to work with the Organizer and Premiere on my PC and to see how well the new features worked.  Tim will follow up with a hands-on review of Photoshop on the Mac, which incorporates Bridge CS4 as an organizer.

Photoshop.com

One cannot use Elements 8 without noticing the pervasive presence of Adobe’s Photoshop.com.  The software is heavily integrated with web components.  Each purchase of Elements 8 comes with a free 2 GB of storage with the option to purchase a “Plus” account with 20 gigs.  The welcome screen that launches when you run either Photoshop or Premiere prompts you to log in with your credentials to display some of your account info and helpful tips from the web as seen here.

Auto-Analyzer

The new Auto-Analyzer that’s been introduced in Elements 8 pretty much does what one would expect it to do.  It can be set up to automatically run whenever new media is imported in the Organizer.  It utilizes the files’ embedded metadata along with algorithms to determine Smart Tags to apply to each photo, document, or video.  Common examples are high contrast, blurred, shaky, and motion.  I imported almost 500 photos and videos into Organizer and let the Auto-Analyzer run on all of the files.  It performed quite well, but there were a few understandable hiccups.  One photo was a close up of a hand on the end of a guitar fret.  It was taken with a long telephoto lens, and there was a lot of background in the image that was out of focus due to the depth of field.  The analyzer tagged this as blurred even though the subject was sharp as a tack.

Facial Recognition

Mac users that are familiar with iPhoto will be interested in Adobe’s attempt at face recognition.  Functioning similarly to its Apple competitor, Organizer endeavors to locate people’s faces in images and videos.  The user must go through the images, name the individuals, and delete any extraneous face boxes that the Auto-Analyzer mistakes for people.  As people are named, the software builds a database of characteristics present in the faces.  After it “learns” what someone looks like, it will automatically suggest and fill in names of people that it thinks it knows.  This sounds great in theory, but in practice it falls short of perfection.

“Portrait” style photos where the subjects are looking towards the camera are easy for the face finder.  It didn’t have any trouble finding all of the individuals in my photos.  If faces were not upright in the frame, the analyzer didn’t seem to recognize them as a face at all.  It also had trouble with people not looking directly at or near the lens.  Faces that were partially obscured due to looking different directions were sometimes discovered and sometimes not.  There were a few photos that tricked the analyzer into putting faces where there were none.  For some reason, it seemed to single out several hands in different photos, thinking they were faces.

Whenever the software finds a “face” that isn’t really a face, you need simply to click the “x” on the box to remove it.  However when you click the “x” it always asks for confirmation to remove it saying that, “this person will be excluded from people recognition.”  This wouldn’t be so bad if you could disable this dialog screen, but for now you can’t.  This can really slow down your progress when the algorithm finds lots of “non-faces” in some of your images.  Having to click twice each time you want to remove a box is very frustrating.

The “learning” of individuals worked fairly well.  It recognized most of my family members quickly and began suggesting their names with their faces within three or four photos.  It even found the face of my son in a portrait hanging on a wall.

Tagging and Editing made easy

Keyword and face tagging as well as performing basic photo enhancements have been taken to a new level of efficiency in the new Organizer.  When browsing your library in full screen mode, you are faced with several panels around the screen.  At the bottom is a pop-up panel with the main controls.  Here you can toggle the other panels, move up and down throughout your library, and exit the full screen mode.  On the left are two panels: one for making quick edits of your images, the other for keyword tagging.  At the right is an optional filmstrip view allowing you to quickly jump to any photo or video in your library.

The quick edits are everything you would find in the regular quick edit portion of Organizer, but using these commands in this display allows you to view your changes at maximum size, letting you better scrutinize your changes.  You’re also given the ability to mark for printing and to rate a photo.

The tagging panel shows a familiar “cloud” display popular on many websites and blogs.  All of the available keywords are displayed with the most popular being larger in size.  Not only does this make it easy to spot your most used keywords in the list, but it simply makes it easier to click on them since they become larger “icons.”  The tagging panel also displays any albums that you’ve created and allows you to add images to those as well.

In my opinion, the Organizer portion of Elements is what makes it stand above the competitive products available, even more than the editor and Premiere.  Most of the editing functions of Photoshop and Premiere can be had in software from other manufacturers, and some can even be found in freeware applications such as Gimp and Picasa.  Although Adobe specializes in making these very “amateur-friendly,” they’re not offering a completely unique product.  When it comes to a day-in, day-out piece of software like Elements, I look for something that will make the mundane task of importing, repairing, and organizing my personal photos and videos as easy and straightforward as possible.  The Elements Organizer has always met my expectations, and version 8 raises the bar in ease of use making it worthy of your consideration.

Adobe Elements 8

ADOBE ELEMENTS 8
Adobe today announced the availability of its Adobe Elements 8 packages, both Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8. Windows versions are available for both Elements, while Mac users will have to settle for the Photoshop Element only.

Adobe says the products fit in the "hobbyist" area of Adobe's mass-market push, the opposite end of a continuum that includes Photoshop CS4 on the high end and Elements at the low end. Still, with previous versions of Elements that we've reviewed, the hobbyist versions hold their own on basic tasks.

During a pre-release conference call, an Adobe spokesperson mentioned that Elements is, essentially, a balance of ease of use with power or "headroom."

"We continuously hear from focus groups that they want software that's straightforward and easy to use," he said, "but they don't want us to limit the software in case the user wants to do more complex edits."

We'll highlight a few key features in each program, demonstrated during the pre-release conference call, and then we'll follow up with a hands-on review. There's also an online component, which we won't address here, other than to note that online albums support video now, as well as photos.

ORGANIZER
Adobe has spent quite a bit of time updating Elements Organizer, its "Ultimate Media Management Hub." Organizer has been part of Photoshop Elements since version 3, but the company is now shipping Organizer with Premiere Elements 8 for Windows, or as part of the bundle of both Elements.

Adobe's rationale for expanding Organizer is that user capture devices are capturing both photos and videos. This blurring of the lines between photo and video capture devices means management of those two types in the same place is important.

Auto Analyzer
Organizer has an auto-analyzer tool that tags shots and videos for quality and interest, as well as other key tagging examples Adobe gleaned from user focus groups.

Smart Tags will filter down to particular types of content (one face, two faces, small group, etc) and auto-classify the content. Additionally, in terms of quality, the auto-analyze function can find images that are too dark or too bright or other quality characteristics. Scores based on high or low quality, such as blurriness, contrast, provide a subjective quality basis so that images can be rapidly filtered or eliminated.

This analysis also includes "people recognition" as a way to eliminate the need to manually add tags when a person appears within a video scene or a still image. This
people finder works on the principle of finding a face, then prompting for name of person. As the name is entered, Organizer begins to build up information about the person, offering an auto-complete function for names, then moving on to giving suggestions from a list of names.

In one example during the conference call, Adobe demonstrated that the manual cataloging of five shots apiece for two people was all it took before the auto-analyzer began to suggest one name from a list of possible names whenever that person appeared in a shot. The system then moves on to a more definitive suggestion, asking "is this . . . ?"

Keyword tagging for video is a bit more complex, and Adobe acknowledges that tagging isn't always based on the first frame of video.

"Tagging is based on content," the spokesperson said, "so keywords can be added at any time while watching the video. Tags are applied to on a scene-by-scene basis rather than the entire video."

Organizer also contains a full-screen preview, much like iPhoto on the Mac. Users can use full-screen to expand images to a much larger size, making the choice of images or video playback much easier in full-screen mode. To quickly edit particular images a quick edit panel pops up to deal with one-click issues such as rotation or auto-color adjustments. Video tagging can also be performed in the full-screen mode.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS
Photoshop Elements 8 has three primary new features: Photomerge Exposure, Recompose and Quick fix previews.

Photomerge Exposure offers the user the ability to make extensive light and dark adjustments to specific areas of an image. For example, let's say you have an image of your wife standing in front of the Eiffel Tower at night with the tower lit and fill flash on your wife. Chance are good that the either the tower is too dark, or your wife is too bright. Not that having an overly bright wife is a bad thing. The exposure tool will allow you to adjust brightness on either the tower or your wife to improve the image quality. Photomerge differs from Photoshop's HDR capabilities by only fine-tuning exposure in a single image as opposed to merging multiple copies of the same image taken at different exposures.

Recompose borrows an algorithm from Photoshop CS4 called Content Aware Scaling. This tool allows you to scale an image without distorting the content. If you have two or more people in a scene that aren't close enough together for your liking, this tool will allow you to "squeeze" them together without making them look squished. It also works vertically which can be useful for eliminating unwanted backgrounds. You can specify the areas that you want the algorithm to keep or discard by using a green or red brush and "painting" over parts of the image.

PREMIERE ELEMENTS
Premiere Elements 8 has a series of "smart" features, including Smart Fix, Smart Trim, and Smart Mix. It has also added motion tracking and newer "instant movie themes," effects, and transitions.

Smart Tools
Smart Fix in Premiere Elements performs essentially the same image adjustments to video clips as it does to still images in Photoshop Elements. It performs a quick evaluation of the video content and adjusts characteristics such as brightness and contrast to improve troublesome clips or simply to make an already good clip look even better.

Smart Trim is a particularly innovative new tool in Premiere Elements 8. This tool analyzes a video clip and identifies suggested cut points inside of the clip. One of the ways the algorithm accomplishes this is by looking for motion. Let's say you have a clip of Tiger Woods lining up a 25 foot putt. He may remain stationary for 30 seconds before he finally putts the ball. Smart Trim will look past all of the heightening drama before the putt and suggest an "in" point just before he swings his club.

Smart Mix can also be called an auto-ducking feature for audio. It will find the points in a dialogue audio track that voices are heard. It can then automatically mix the other audio tracks, such as music or sound effects, down so the dialogue stands out loud and clear.

ECONOMICAL MOTION TRACKING
This new version of Premiere Elements ships with a feature usually only found in professional level post-production software, motion tracking. In the Adobe demo that we viewed, this feature performed very accurately and quickly. The tracker can be set to follow a point of interest in a clip; then an object can be assigned to "follow" the parent. Other video clips, titles, animated clip art, or images can all be assigned to follow an object on the screen.

BONUS FEATURES
Adobe now offers additional options for output of completed videos. The ability to directly upload to YouTube is a feature included under the "Share" tab. This export option will automatically format your finished masterpiece for optimal viewing on the popular video-sharing site. Also Podbean is a new partner of Adobe allowing users to directly upload vodcasts to their account.

Any purchase of Elements 8 includes 2GB of storage on Photoshop.com. Although the Mac version does not include the Organizer, it does include Adobe Bridge CS4 which can be used in place of another organizer such as iPhoto. Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 are available immediately as a bundle for Windows computers for $149.99. Photoshop Elements for the Mac retails for $99.99.