Showmaker Feedback?
14 messages in this thread
Has anyone actually test driven Gold Disk's new multimedia program called
"Showmaker?" I've seen the ads in Amiga World and one of the sales people
at Creative Computers in L.A. spoke highly of it? I'd particularly like to
know its strengths and weaknesses compared to AmigaVision, Scala and the
others. How many transitions effects does it have? Does the built-in video
titler produced anti-aliased fonts? Is this the one everyone has been
waiting for, or is it simply another approach among many?
How about getting a thread started on this subject! The field is changing
so rapidly it is really hard to keep up and make intelligent purchase
decisions. Getting and learning a good multimedia package is becoming as
serious a decision as choosing a database or word processor. It's a
marriage of sorts and must be taken seriously!
S.P. from Tokyo.
I too am interested in Showmaker, but more to the point, would like it
compared with Gold Disk's Mediashow. I got this program free recently
bundled with an A2000HD. My hunch is that it's a stripped down version of
Showmaker, but maybe they're entirely different. Interface looks similar.
Thanks for your input. Perhaps you can get the ball rolling by describing
the Gold Disk program a little to give people an idea of its contents.
MediaShow creates presentations consisting of still pix, animations,
music, sound effects and text. It "uses patented technology to load data
files from disk at just the right time while continuing the presentation,"
according to the manual. Everything is disk-based. It uses a "time-line"
display to set up events and "tracks" to separate types of events: video
track, SFX track, etc. It doesn't create any images or sounds, merely
imports 'em from other programs that use IFF files. There is a scene window
and an event window. It handles loops, wipes and various modes to bring
windows in (e.g., sliding). I really haven't played with it much. Slick
interface, but looks less capable than, say, TV Show 2.0.
A friend of mine thinks ShowMaker will be a VERY important Amiga program.
If you have a big enough hard drive, he says, you won't need expensive
single frame recorders to make professional animations. I see his point–if
it works.
Jim…
That's interesting. How does Showmaker accomplish this? (The ability to do
away with single frame recorders if you have a large enough hard disk). I'd
be interested to hear all about that feature.
I think he just meant that it ties video and sound together. Just put your
anim on disk and get a genlock and record it. You won't have to lose a
generation for every copy you make. Something like that. I haven't done
much with video, so I couldn't follow exactly.
I am also very interested in the results obtained from ShowMaker.
Anything that saves the price of a single-frame recorder has certainly got
great potential – if it works!
How could ShowMaker create animations without a single frame controller.
Can it string together 800K frames?
I haven't seen any info on this product, could You enlighten us?
I haven't seen it either. But the ads say it can synch sound and graphics.
It even has a patent on how its done. I hope there will be full reviews
soon.
It sounds like you're talking about two different things. Showmaker synchs
sound to animation and that's swell. What seems to be getting this thread
excited, though, is playing huge anims direct from disk in real time.
Quite another matter. — Art
Well, why can't showmaker do that assuming a big drive? It has the ability
to load a pic while showing another. It may not be fast enough for some
things, but it might work for others. I do not know how fast it is. I
believe it is at least faster than anything we have now.
I have 2 megs of chip ram on my A3000. If it can use all of it
efficiently, what are Th en the contstrains?
Showmaker may well spool out mondo anims in real time. I have no personal
knowledge. I was just pointing out y'all seemed to be talking about two
different things. — Art
I too have seen the Showmaker ads in Amiga World and it seems to have
everything that I need. It looks to be a very versatile and powerful
package. I have only been in the Amiga scene for about a month now and the
first package that i used was Deluxe Video 3 which is a very good package
except when scolling text it's very jerky. I am now using Broadcast Titler
2 which has better text scrolling and more wipes, the only problem is that
i miss the DV3 video script. The Showmakers sequencer seems to be the
answer, hopefully a PAL version will be available soon in the UK.