November 8, 2006, 2006

Movies on CD & DVD 4 (Magix, $39.99) is an excellent value, especially considering it’s many features. The program offers a simple three-step process (capture, edit, burn) to preserve your videos on CDs or DVDs. Here’s what you do:

Capture: Capture analogue video from your analogue camcorder or a VHS player. You’ll need an analogue capture device for this, but some display adapter cards have that capability built in. If yours doesn’t, you’ll need a capture card to put in your computer, or easier yet, use one of the affordable USB external capture devices such as the DVD Express DX2 from ADS Tech. If you have a digital camcorder, use the cable that came with the device to connect to your computer for the capture. In either instance, the program will use one of two methods to automatically detect scenes and display a set of thumbnails usign the first frame of each scene.

Edit: Here’s where the real fun and creativity begins. From the set of thumbnails representing the scenes of your video, just drag and drop the scenes you want, in the order you want, onto the story board. Rearrange as needed. Here you’ll be able to trim your scenes and add transitions between scenes. The new 3D power effects transitions allows 3D objects or photos to float over the scenes or reshape scenes into boxes, snowmen and more. Really wild effects. But a word of warning: don’t overdo. Let your audience enjoy the original material too.

The four track time line mode, which is a separate display, permits more detailed editing of the media content and effects. Add titles and text using the new Title Editor, which allows for scrolling or rotating text and makes it easy to apply one of the 30 templates. Use these templates to create funny distortions and deformations and much more. If you want to add sound, you can do this in a variety of formats, such as MP3, WAV and the like. This feature lets you use your favorite music and/or record your own music or narrations to best fit your video. Set the sound volume to any desired level and set fades as needed, and balance this against the video sound for the best effect. If you’re burning to a DVD, you can use the DVD menu editor sporting new 3D images and fun animations to create a fun-filled menu.

A special feature of the editor is the ability to enhance your videos by using a number of filters to change brightness, sharpness, color saturation and more. The audio can also be enhanced by using reverb or delays, equalization or by applying noise filters.

Burn: The final step is to burn your video to CD or DVD, which can be played on your computer and most newer DVD players. A special feature for you TV buffs is a virtual TV remote and program timer so you can record your favorite movies, serials and the like from TV (even if you’re not there) and afterward edit out commercials and station breaks. For this you’ll need either a TV card in your computer or a video capture card connected to your TV output.

A special feature of Movies on CD & DVD 4 is automatic VHS copying. With your VHS player connected to a video card that has analogue capture capabilities or to a USB external analogue capture device, capture away--the program will automatically burn the video onto a disc.

From Magix, Minimum configuration: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP with Pentium II 400MHz, $39.99, also available for download at www.magix.com, $34.99.

Spelling Made Easy, Grammar Made Easy, and Punctuation Made Easy each offer a light-hearted but comprehensive look at three important skills everyone needs. Each set of skills is separated into sections about each area of learning. An animated character, Mike McGee, introduces each section, explains that area of learning, then introduces four or five questions that test your knowledge of the selected topic. Once you’ve completed the quizzes, Mike further explains the topic and offers examples that demonstrate the learning involved. Users then complete another set of questions or problems, and then Mike reviews each.

Users can click on any section or subsection to go directly to that section, skip or repeat any section, and complete sections in order or randomly. If you log in, the program can track your answers so you can see how you’re doing and how many sections you’ve completed. There’s also a password protected teacher section that creates reports and reviews progress for students. Help is available in a section included with each disk.

In Punctuation Made Easy, the areas of learning include apostrophes, commas, hyphens, dashes and brackets, quotation marks, question and exclamation marks, and capital letters and periods.

Spelling Made Easy includes sections on words ending in s or es, prefies and suffixes, words ending in o, f and fe, double letters, plurals and more.

Grammar Made Easy includes sections on nouns, verbs and tenses, adjectives and adverbs, pronouns and prepositions, sentences, and more.

These programs truly do make it easy to learn the subjects covered. The explanations are clear, there are good examples of each of the topics, and the exercises help users to see if they understand the learning. And, you can’t beat finding this much help at this price.

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