muvee Autoproducer
Dave Whittle said, "muvee Autoproducer is one of the most exciting finds I was able to discover at the last COMDEX. One of the user group officers pulled me aside and said you’ve got to go see this muvee stuff, ‘cause what they are doing is really exciting.

"How many have taken pictures with a camcorder? How many have actually shown those pictures to anyone else? How many have put those onto a computer? How many have created a video that they really proud to share with others? I’ve got the product for everyone who raised their hand at the beginning but didn’t towards the end.

"muvee Autoproducer is the state of the art in being able to take raw footage and turn them into a DVD or VCD that you would actually be proud to share with family and friends. The muvee web site is a great resource. Many creative tips and tricks are available online.

"muvee Autoproducer is released in two versions: the DVD edition and the Standard edition. The DVD edition allows the user to work with MPEG-2 files. There are several major formats of video files. The first is AVI (uncompressed, heavy system load), then MPG and MPG2, then streaming formats WMV and RealVideo. muvee Autoproducer can work with all these types. (QuickTime is popular with Apple but because of its proprietary nature, it sees little use on the PC.)

"The first step, of course, is to capture the video from the recording device onto the computer. There are a few hardware considerations but the store that sold you the camera should be able to help you get it connected to the computer.

"But once you have the various video clips on the hard drive, muvee Autoproducer will automatically sequence them and give you the ability to add background music. The entire production can be enhanced according any one of a number of styles: acid, chaplin-esque, cinema, 50’s TV, etc. After a few more settings and style parameters have been specified, muvee Autoproducer will then do its magic.

"Because of the quickness in assembling a production, users can try several different themes. Note that Autoproducer means exactly that – much of the tedious time-intensive decisions and manipulation of assets have been relegated to the automation within muvee. No more discouragement due to the long learning times needed for most other video editing packages.

"The automation, in general, will do the censoring for you. If there are bad frames or scenes – black spots, jerky motion, or any scene destined for the cutting room floor – muvee will automatically trim away those parts.

"Now that the video file has been created, there are several things you can do: burn it to a CD in any format or burn as an MPEG-2 to a DVD (using the appropriate burning software)."

Pentium 550, 16MB of video RAM, fast hard drive.

$59.95 (+ $19.95 DVD Upgrade)

3D-Album
"As muvee is for video, 3D-Album is for still pictures. In essence, it is a slideshow program. It’s a great way to share your pictures with other people.

"Select the folders and/or individual images for the slideshow, then select any of the styles available. You can also add background music to the slideshow. Essentially, you can control just about anything you want.

"The images are placed in 3D settings: albums, wall art in a gallery, etc. The pace of the slideshow can be adjusted as well.

"3D-Album can create stand-alone, self-executing packages. A folder is created containing all the assets necessary. Using your favorite CD burning software, the folder contents are put on the CD. The recipient can play the presentation (the CD starts automatically if Auto Insert Notification is not disabled) without the need for any third-party video codecs (special drivers that play movies). You can also build the presentation as a screensaver, a web page, or as a zip file."

(Even though the source for 3D-Album is still images, the output is a movie. The file type is proprietary and requires several executable components.)

"Every week or two, Micro Research Institute puts recently created styles on their Web site. The 3D-Album software can automatically search for and download any new styles posted."

Pentium 200, Windows 98, 3D video card with 16MB RAM supporting OpenGL, sound card, CD-ROM drive.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking v7
Don Wilde said, "I am going to give you a brief overview of the software and upgrades. Then Pat Mattis, my associate, will do a short demonstration showing the power of the software. Pat has only been training for a couple of days so you will get a good idea of how fast someone can learn and train the program.

"Some new features and highlights include that v7.0, just released, is up to 15% more accurate that the previous version. You can dictate continuously and naturally up to 160 words per minute getting very close to 100% accuracy. It integrates fully with Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and Corel Word-perfect. Actually, you can use it with virtually any Windows-based application.

"Another new feature is that v7 will add natural punctuation such as commas and periods. Training version 7 can be accomplished in as little as 5 to 15 minutes for superior accuracy. Of course, any additional training increases that accuracy. DNS Preferred comes with a vocabulary of over 250,000 words – the standard library and a collection of common business terms. It is very easy to add new words.

"Boilerplating is enhanced: a single word or phrase will insert complete text structures and/or images. Using a digital recorder, one can dictate away from the office. When the recorder’s file is uploaded to the computer, DNS will process the sound file automatically.

"DNS can also speak textual material. ScanSoft’s RealSpeak text-to-speech technology is included in DNS and will read back what you dictated in a human-sounding voice. (You can also have DNS play back what it recorded from your dictation.)

"DNS comes with a ‘Vocabulary Optimizer’ that improves accuracy by examining your documents for sentence structure and word-use frequency then adjusts the recognition engine to match those writing patterns.

"I’m now going to have Pat do a short presentation. He will show you how it works in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Internet Explorer."

Pat Mattis says, "Allow me to say something that’s very important. I know all those statistics, features and capabilities Don has discussed are very impressive, but I want to really impress upon you why you need to buy this program. I’ve only recently started working with Don and if you don’t increase his sales figures, he’s going to beat me up. So, I’d appreciate it if you would help me out here.

"In many of the applications DNS integrates with, a small microphone appears in the top left corner. Initially, the microphone is ‘asleep’ but if I say ‘Wake up,’ the microphone icon pops up and whatever you say from that point on is interpreted by DNS."

The presentation continued with Pat speaking several paragraphs and control functions. The performance was impressive.