iLife for Windows

I haven't been posting much to iLife for Windows recently, and I apologize for that.  Part of this comes from the fact that I've been playing around with Sony's Imagination Studio Suite 2 since the summer and I have to say I really like using this software.  It provides a lot of the content creation benefits of iLife, although not all, without having to purchase a Mac.

One of the first things that stood out for me when using iMovie vs. Sony's Vegas Movie Studio (part of the Imagination Suite) is that iMovie is pretty simple to use, and is similarly limited in its editing abilities.  And Vegas Movie Studio doesn't quite have all of the extraneous title and other video prettiers that iMovie has. That said, I don't actually miss it when I'm using Vegas.  Sometimes it feels like these are included to pimp up what might not be as solid content.  With Vegas Movie Studio, you get straight into the editing interface, which is different from iMovie.  It's not quite a fair comparison between these two programs, Vegas Movie Studio has more to compare with Final Cut Express than with iMovie, and it shows when editing your workflow.

That's just my quick take, I like both packages, but Vegas Movie Studio does have a little more of a "grown up" feel to it.

Snoochie Boochies!

Benson

I've been playing around with bits and pieces of Sony Software's new Imagination Studio Suite 2 for a little while now, and from what I've seen so far I like it. Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 appears to be an upgrade from 9, not just from the user experience (which I like as it's a little darker gray) but also because Sony Software's Facebook page is starting to host how-to videos for the different software packages. It's a nice touch.

For those of you who purchased the original Imagination Studio Suite and couldn't get the Cinescore plugin to work, I haven't heard back from Sony about that issue - I'll try to call them again and see what's up.

In the meantime, Sony Software has decided to just release various music clips that you can add directly to your video or audio piece instead of using Cinescore.  A lot of the songs (if not all of them) appear to be from the Cinescore theme packs, and each of the song packages (there are about 15 or so) have a variety of different clips to work from (from 15 to 180 seconds, usually 4-5 variations of each song) so in the end Sony claims you have 360 pieces of music to work from - technically true although I would beg to differ a little bit with them.

That said, so far I am impressed with the new Imagination Studio Suite 2's video package. I'll let you know if there are any changes in the audio packages soon.

Benson

Well, Sony Creative Software recently released their new Imagination Studio Suite 2, as well as Sony Vegas Studio, Sound Forge Audio Studio and ACID Studio updates.  I'm downloading the trials now and hope to have an updated review in the next few weeks.  If they are anything like the first Imagination Studio, I expect these reviews to be very positive!  But if you can't wait for the review (but really, why wouldn't you want to wait for my review ;) ) then if you check out Sony Software's Facebook page, they have discount codes for each of the above programs through the end of the month! Saving $50 on Imagination Studio Suite 2 would drop the price to under $135!

More soon!

Benson

So you've recorded your video, worked hard editing it in the iLife for PC program of your choice, and now your masterpiece is almost complete. But what about music? 

Awww who cares. I'll just rip something off of my favorite CD and that'll be that.

Well if you try to do that you'll probably find your video taken down shortly thereafter for copyright infringement. Besides, why would you want to do that when there are so many other ways to get royalty-free music that you can use in whatever project you're working on!

iLife for PC - Looking for Audio from Benson on Vimeo.

Update 2: Actually, it looks like Artbeats hadn't ended it's daily video downloads, the link had vanished for a few days, but it's back now! :) - Benson

Update: It looks like Artbeats has ended its daily Royalty Free Download offering - sorry y'all.

If you're working in iLife or "iLife for PC," you don't want to pass up this chance to get some sweet royalty free stock video footage, courtesy of Artbeats.  Artbeats currently has an offer for members, each day they will post a new piece of royalty free footage that members can download for free.

Free? You read me right.  Free stock footage.  Think about the library you could build in a year's time!

But, there's got to be a catch. Right? These are just low res clips, unusable by any but the most basic YouTuber, right?

Nope. No catches that I've found yet. The clips are available in HD, and in Standard Definition NTSC or PAL clips and are available by download.  These clips change every morning at 1 a.m. Mountain time. 

There are also clips available for $25, if you look to the right side of the free clip download screen. Check these often, as they change on a daily basis as well.

The only problem I've found with this deal is remembering to download my clips every day. :)  I highly recommend Artbeats (I have a bunch of NTSC clips from them that came free with my copy of Adobe Production Creative Suite CS3 a couple of years back)

So what are you waiting around here for, get over to Artbeats and start downloading!

The Christmas season is quickly closing in on us.  While the current economic conditions might be forcing you to take a second look at what you might include on your present list, if you or someone who’s been nice this year are interested in creating your own podcasts or video pieces then you might want to check out something softer on the pocketbook – the Sony Imagination Studio.

A little while back I talked about Sony’s new Imagination Studio Suite, offered exclusively through Dell’s Web site.  Dell seems to be moving to the fore on providing PC consumers with a version of Apple’s iLife. First they offered something from Adobe that could be installed on certain XPS systems.  Now they are offering Sony’s answer to Apple’s popular suite.

Since writing that post, it has become the most viewed piece on this site, once again hinting to me that there are a lot of people out there interested in finding an answer to Mac fans love of iLife. Also, a lot of people have clicked through to check out the software on Dell’s site.  I don’t know if anyone purchased it, maybe Dell would have that info (probably not).

So I decided to give this suite of programs a brief run through.

I had my first run in with the program suite at the 2008 New Media Expo, while hanging out around the Sony Creative Software booth.  Voxana and DJ Papi Love from the AcidPlanet Web site were handing out demo copies of the the Imagination Studio Suite to the attendees.

(Me with Voxana and DJ Papi Love from AcidPlanet at the 2008 New Media Expo)

I brought some of the CDs back to ABQ and handed them out to my co-workers and family members.  While I don’t think any of my co-workers have picked up the programs yet, I’ve been able to give them a bit of a shakedown, as part of my ongoing search for a PC equivalent to Apple’s iLife package.  Sony’s Imagination Studio Suite offers many of the same PC programs as iLife, except for iWeb – but as I’ll point out here, between free blogging sites (such as WordPress or Blogger) and Facebook/MySpace, there is no need for iWeb.

And away we goooooooo…..

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum

Vegas Movie Studio is the video editing software included in the Imagination Studio Suite.  The layout of the editing suite is different from Apple’s iMovie – Vegas Movie Studio has a more traditional, linear video editing layout than iMovie does.  Vegas Movie Studio has also proven to be a more powerful video editing program than the built in Windows Movie Maker.

In Vegas Movie Studio, the user has separate tracks for multiple video and audio tracks.  You can have individual tracks dedicated to dialogue, background music, special effects in addition to multiple video files.

Importing the audio and video elements to a project were easier to import into Vegas than iMovie.  With iMovie I found that if I didn’t import just the right file, in just the right way, while hopping on one foot under a waxing moon and preparing a chicken blood sacrifice, the video file wouldn’t import correctly.  While with Vegas, a simple click on Project > Import Media opens up a menu showing the importable files.  For digital video capture, a quick click on the Capture Video button calls up Vegas’ capture menu.

I found Vegas to be very easy to edit with, I used it to trim and edit video footage of both Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s visit to campus.  After editing the video, I was able to export the final video directly to either YouTube, or Sony’s own AcidPlanet.com podcast/video cast/music site.  A pop-up screen asked for all of the necessary information to log into either service and input all of the necessary information for the video submission (login and PW, name, description, tags, etc.)

One of the things I had a problem with in Sony Vegas was locating the trimmer, so I could slice video files as necessary without bringing in multiple copies of the same file when adding cuts to the project. This could be user error in part, but I notice in Premiere Pro it’s part of the lower right hand menu, which makes it very easy and quick to make the necessary slices.

Cinescore Studio Plug-In

Vegas Movie Studio, in the Platinum Pack, Platinum Pro Pack and Imagination Studio Suite, comes loaded with the Cinescore Studio plug-in.  Cinescore is Sony Creative Software’s soundtrack creation software, and Cinescore Studio is a stripped down version of the program. It’s not an actual program in Imagination Studio, it’s a plug in with Vegas Movie Studio.  All you need to do is right click on one of the audio tracks and click “Insert Generated Music” to activate the plug in.

From this menu you can select the type of music you wish and a number of variations of the music you want to include in your project.  In the next screen you can select the length of your music file, the composition style and more.  Cinescore Studio will then insert it into your movie project.  This is a great way to get some quick background music for a podcast or movie scene.

When you are working with the audio section of your project, you can right click on any of these tracks and the “Edit Selection in Sound Forge Studio” appears.  Clicking on this allows you to edit the dialogue in Sony’s Sound Forge Studio.

DVD Architect Studio

Sony’s DVD Architect Studio is the company’s DVD Menu creation software.  Since most people will be uploading videos to Web sites such as your blog, YouTube or AcidPlanet, unless you are creating DVDs for a film project, DVD present, etc. there is a minimal need to use this software.

Should you need DVDs for any reason (family gatherings, etc), DVD Architect Studio is a good choice to create your DVDs.  There are many different DVD menu themes for you to pick from, and more are available from the Sony Creative Software Web site.

Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio

One of the programs in iLife that I find to be very beneficial is Garageband, Apple’s audio editing, looping and podcast creation program.  Trying to put so many things together in one program can lead to a bit of clutter on the screen, and trying to edit interviews in Garageband leaves these weird bubbles of text in the file that you have to remember to pull back together for a coherent podcast or audio file.

However, Garageband does have a specific setting when you want to record a podcast, with tracks set up for voices, jingles, additional recording, and a window for you to drop and drag artwork for your podcast.  And the Garageband browsers are great when it comes to locating files not only by name, but type of file as well.  This probably comes from providing so many loops for your specific software package (such as Apple does).

Sony’s got two programs that fill this need for PC users.  The first of these programs is Sony’s Sound Forge Audio Studio.

I’ve primarily been using Sound Forge Audio Studio to edit podcasts at the university, and clean up audio in some of the video pieces I’ve been working on.  Editing files in this program are as easy as highlighting a bit of text and deleting it, or cutting and pasting the file, or adding various effects to your heart’s content.  The best way to figure out which effects you want to use with this powerful program would be to play around with a test audio file and the included effects.

As with Vegas Movie Studio, you can publish your files to the Web, using Sony’s AcidPlanet Web site.

The other half of this tandem of programs is…

Sony ACID Music Studio

ACID Music Studio is the stripped down version of Sony ACID, Sony’s industry-standard music looping software.  Loops are just short music files that sound like one continuous piece of music if they are repeated.  When you start combining multiple loops, such as a drum beat, a couple of guitar loops, you can create your own music.

Some of these loops are available on CDs or download from various locations, from many musician stores to Amazon.com (where you will find some pretty good deals) to Apple (if you have Garageband) and Sony Creative Software (which, as expected, work well with ACID).  ACID Music Studio comes with a large library of loops at your fingertips after you install it. If you are interested in music loops, a Google search for “Music Loops” will give you many more answers than I can give you right now.

I haven’t spent as much time working with ACID as I have been with Vegas and Sound Forge studios.  But I like what I have tried so far with the program.  Adding loops is as simple as drag and drop and then using a “brush”-like tool to repeat the loops in each track.  I’ll add another update once I have more practice with ACID, and possibly a couple of completed songs on the site.

Photo Go

Photo Go is a cool little program that allows you to keep track of your digital images and do some basic editing to them.

(Awwwww, I always told her she’d be in pictures)

You can color correct images, crop, rotate, remove red-eye, and correct brightness and contrast among the editing features.  You can’t sharpen your images, but this is something that can be taken care of using Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa 3.

One thing that would be nice would be a way to export your pictures to Flickr or Google’s Picasa.  There are simple ways to work around this.  Flickr Uploadr allows you to drag and drop pictures to upload to your Flickr account.  Or, should you prefer using Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can upload your pictures to Flickr as well.

And then there’s iWeb

I’ve checked out iWeb on the Mac.  It’s a cute program that gives you quite a few pre-built templates for various needs for beginners or those not interested in Web site creation.  Honestly, it’s easier if you go to WordPress.com, Posterous.com, Tumblr.com or Blogger.com and create a blog for your basic web needs.  You can use your blog as your web page, kind of a “Grand Central You” for your content creation and social media needs. (More on this at my Social Media and PR Blog)

From your blog page you can link to your Flickr account, YouTube account, upload your podcasts, etc.  This serves as a better replacement for your probable web content needs than iWeb.  And should you need a Web page presence, you can always check out the templates at Open Source Web Design.

What about help?

One of the things I like about Sony’s content creation software is that at startup you can allow the “Show Me How” menu of tutorials to pop up, in case you have any questions or want to learn more about what you can do with the software.

These tutorials will take you step-by-step through how to do each of the tasks, with a window going from one part of the screen to the next, highlighting each task and showing you exactly where to click and what to do next.  The lessons are quick to follow, not taking more than a few minutes each.  I’ve found them invaluable when working with the software.

All in All?

For the price, anywhere from $150-$200 depending on the current discount available at Dell.com, the Imagination Studio Suite fares very favorably when compared to Apple’s iLife suite.  Having used both (I have a Mac laptop at work) I find that I actually prefer using Sony’s software.  That might be because I’m more used to a Windows set up.  This suite of programs give you all but one of the options of iLife, and as I’ve pointed out here, you don’t really need iWeb.

For years PC users have heard Mac users talk about iLife and how there’s nothing on the PC side that can compare with it and how beautifully integrated the programs are, and how iLife is one major reason for people to switch to Mac from PC.  There’s a little bit of arrogance behind those statements, but for a while it was hard to locate a simple suite of programs that worked together in an integrated fashion for the PC side.  These programs were available separately from Sony Creative Software, but individually they would have cost more than the suite.

If you’re a fledgling podcaster, or YouTuber, or movie maker – or even not so fledgling – you’ll find these programs useful to your endeavors, for the price.  It’s the first step before you move on to either the Adobe Production Premium Creative Suite (another set of programs I really recommend when you want to take the next step to more professional tools) or Sony’s professional level tools – Vegas, Sound Forge and ACID Pro (which I haven’t tried).

Rating: 5 bullets out of 5.

About a year ago, I wrote a post about the iLife suite for Mac (which to be honest, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – I tried to use it at work and Garageband is the best, and only decent, program in the suite) and that some companies should try to come up with a PC version of the iLife suite, if Steve-O Jobs didn’t want to release his beloved suite.  I even put together some bundles of PC software from Sony, Adobe and Open Source/Windows built in software to show how these could work together.

It turns out, Sony was listening. Not only that, but they also appeared to take quite a bit of my advice. 

Now I don’t know if they were reading this blog per se, but since I had been writing about it, and the biggest hits on here by far are my iLife for PC posts, and that I’ve got just enough of an ego to think I had an impact,  I’m gonna say the crew at Sony Creative Software (great people by the way, I met them at the New Media Expo – more on that later) and Sony picked up on the need for a content creataion studio for PC vibe and created a new suite that includes the software I mentioned before (Vegas Studio, ACID Studio, Photo Go, and Sound Forge) with an addition I hadn’t thought of – Cinescore Studio, so soundtrack music is quickly available for any length of video you wish to create.

This new suite of software is only available from Dell, another interesting move since Dell was also offering a small studio from Adobe that was Dell only.  A big move for Dell, getting a nice suite of software to compete with iLife that you (might be able to) get on preloaded on a Dell.

So ladies and gentlemen, let me present you with Sony’s new content creation studio – the Sony Imagination Studio Suite.

Sony’s Imagination Studio includes all of the tools you need, sans iWeb, to create content and get it up on YouTube or Sony’s own AcidPlanet (what?  you expected them to export to the nightmare that is Mobile Me?).

So what is in this new iLife for PC possibility?  Let’s take a look at the tools!

For Video Editing, there is Sony’s really well done Vegas Movie Studio software.  I’ve been tooling around with the free trial version (what, you think I can afford to drop $179 (ED: $199, the price already changed on me!) on Imagination Studio right now?  Unlike the iCabal, I work for a living.  ) and I really like it.  There is a lot you can do to include music pieces from Cinescore (which I’ll talk about in a little bit) that DJ Papi Love, from the AcidPlanet Waveform podcast showed us at the New Media Expo.  And unlike iMovie, it gives you tracks to work with, unlike the one track that you can drag along in iMovie.  And DVD Architect Studio serves the same purpose as iDVD, only in a grown up fashion.

For Audio Editing and Loops, there’s Sound Forge Studio (audio editing) and ACID Music Studio (loop creation, management and some audio editing).  I’d like to see a combination of the two programs eventually, like you get with GarageBand (which, by the way, is an excellent program and the jewel of the iLife suite), and one thing I haven’t found yet in Sound Forge is the ability to use images for enhanced podcasts, like you get with GarageBand, and the ability to move loops around in the same file, although I like the ability to move around between ACID and Sound Forge.

An added bonus to the Imagination Studio is Sony’s Cinescore Studio.  Built off of Sony’s soundtrack software, complete with additional music to quickly create any kind of royalty-free soundtrack your podcast/movie/masterpiece.  This is another piece I haven’t played with yet, but am looking forward to in the near future.  From what I saw at NME, there are a lot of scores to work with, and a lot of variation of those scores you can use as well.

For image editing, a la iPhoto, there is Sony’s Photo Go.  I’ve use this a little bit as well, and it’s decent, much like iPhoto or Google’s Picasa. I prefer Windows Live Photo Editor or even Photoshop/Paint.Net for basic photo editing.  Then you can add your photos to your Flickr account via Flickr Uploadr or Google Account via Picasa.

There’s no way around it, iWeb is a joke.  With some nice, built in templates to work with to add your basic content.  Microsoft has the Visual Web Developer Express Edition, which is free but not as easy to work with.  But you can use this software in tandem with some of the excellent templates at the Open Source Web Design site, or other sites (they are mentioned on my previous post here) to create your own nice Web sites.  And the added benefit to these sites… you can host them where you want!

So Sony gets a tentative “A” for the Imagination Studio, until I get a chance to really dig into it and see how it work, and once again Dell get’s big ups for reaching out to software creators for these tools.  But y’all already know that I’m a big fan of what Dell’s been doing. 

A few months back I wrote a couple of pieces about the problem my old Dell laptop was having.  Well, it wasn’t as much of a story as it was me bitching about the problems I was having with it.

And to my surprise and delight, one of Dell’s consumer advocates left a comment and asked me to email him.  I did this and he has helped me out several times with my old laptop and with problems with my current laptop as well.

Following up on all of my posts about iLife for the PC (which I know you can’t possibly be tired of yet  ), I was looking at the Dell site a couple of weeks ago and I found this!  Adobe Elements Studio, offered only from Dell and only for a few of its products, the new XPS One desktop (Dell’s answer to the iMac single form factor computer) and the XPS 420 desktop. 

Now I don’t want to say that Dell got the idea from my previous post about how to bundle Adobe software to produce an iLife clone for PC. (But I’m cocky enough to do it anyway  )  But it’s a good idea to have this kind of a bundle for PC users as well.  Another bundle I’ve found that would work as a PC iLife replacement is Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 10.  It’s another bundle, focused more on video, audio and basic image editing.  One thing I’ve been finding is that these bundles don’t focus as much on basic Web site design, which I think is a mistake since many people are interested in putting their pictures and video on their own Web site, but don’t have the know how to design a site from scratch.  Then they end up putting their stuff on MySpace.. ugh!  I’ll keep looking for a package that includes web templates, or at least some decent web templates you can use (I’ve already found some at Open Source Web Design)

I’m a huge fan of movies. Not just watching them, but planning them out, creating the content (aka shooting videos), editing them and more! For years I had been told that you had to have a Mac in order to really work with audio and video. “It’s just so easy.” “There’s no replacement for iLife on the PC.”

Blah blah blah. I disagreed. I love opening up the world of creating cool stuff for more than just “I’m a Mac” peeps out there.

So I decided to start looking for iLife replacements for Windows, because why pay a huge Apple tax in order to use what turned out to be stripped down, entry level versions of some of Apple’s content creation software? (I use “content creation” when I talk about making videos, audio podcasts, blog posts, all sorts of creative endeavors) At first I looked at what was available on Windows – which does come with a decent photo editor in Windows Live Photo Editor and a great blog editor in Windows Live Writer (and if you’re using iWeb instead of a free blog platform and Live Writer, you my friend need some help). But despite what the fans say, Windows Movie Maker left me less than impressed, and there was no real audio recording/editing programs.

So the search started in earnest. And I’ve included the links to my blog posts below.  By far the two best packages I’ve found are Sony’s Imagination Studio Suite, offered by Sony Creative Software but available only through Dell’s Web site (although if you can do without one or two programs – which you can – you can purchase Sony’s Vegas Studio Platinum Pro Pack cheaper and still get the same great video/audio programs) and Adobe’s Creative Suite – Production Premium (which goes very much beyond the iLife-level and is a strong competitor with Apple’s Final Cut Pro package, and is priced like it as well.  $$$$).

I haven’t tried  the new Pinnacle Studio Suite due to cash flow issues currently (but I look forward to eventually, since Pinnacle is owned by AVID, the gold-standard in professional video editing)

By the way, I do have a Mac now, loaded with iLife ‘09 and Final Cut Express, but still find myself coming back to my PC to do most of my audio and video work because of the Imagination Studio Suite, especially in the last year or so, and the added horsepower PCs provide for less money. As I’ve found, much to the chagrin of Apple users, it turns out you don’t need the Mac to be creative.

(And if you are looking for a good free photo editor? Might I recommend the free Paint.NET? Kicks the hell out of iPhoto or Photo Go and did I mention it’s free?)