muvee autoProducer 6

Introduction
About muvee autoProducer 6
Download and Installation
Working with muvee autoProducer 6
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

We admit we had a tough time creating our first movie on the computer. It wasn't too difficult to do the DV capture, but getting to grips with new terminology and coping with unfamiliar interfaces in video editing programs wasn't too intuitive. It's precisely for this reason that many people just use a camcorder and don't venture to the next logical step of editing their videos, and the video editing applications bundled with most camcorders or video cards are not very friendly either.

Things have changed in the last few years. Both Movie Maker on Windows XP/Vista and iMovie on Mac OS X are easy-to-use applications. But again, they are very basic and you'll still end up working inside them for hours before creating your own VCD or DVD.

If you can identify with this situation, you should check out muvee.

About muvee autoProducer 6

muvee autoProducer 6 is from Muvee Technologies, a Singapore-based company that's made a business of creating easy movie tools. You can learn more about their products and download the free trial copy of muvee autoProducer from their site.

So, what is muvee? muvee, pronounced "mew-wee" is a wizard-style video application that's amazingly easy to use and the results are nothing short of outstanding. The software does everything for you from capturing your video input to creating a DVD. If it did just that, it would be just another movie editor. So muvee goes further, and it does the entire editing for you from choosing the exact scenes, adding pictures, doing the video mixing with some background music based on a variety of preset styles. You can literally feed muvee with movie clips, and burn a DVD!

To make matters a little confusing, the movies that muvee outputs are also called muvees! muvee also works with still pictures. So, you can use a combination of still pictures and movie clips, or even use only still pictures to make an interesting slideshow style muvee.

Muvee autoProducer 6 includes powerful new personalization features that let you control style and muvee-making settings, and specific program features like magicMoments and magicSpot. In addition, you can tweak muvees, add captions and voiceovers, etc.

My contact at muvee for this review was Tania Chew. Thank you, Tania.

Download and Installation

Download the installer, run the setup routine, and follow the instructions. You'll end up with a muvee autoProducer 6 program group in your Windows Start menu, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: muvee autoProducer 6 Start menu Group

Working with muvee autoProducer 6

Here are a few quick steps for creating professional-looking muvees that can be shared easily.

1. Go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | muvee autoProducer 6 | muvee autoProducer 6, as shown in Figure 1, above.
2. Doing so opens muvee autoProducer 6 interface, as shown in Figure 2, below.
3. 
   Figure 2: muvee autoProducer 6 Interface
4. The interface is explained below:

A. Media Panel

5. This is where all the inserted movies and pictures can be found. You'll also find three other options:
1. magicMoments opens a new window with the selected movie clip. This allows you to highlight the most important sections of the movie so that you can make sure these are included in the final production. You can also exclude unwanted sections. In addition, you can even add text captions to the highlighted segments of the selected movie clip.
2. magicSpot works with still pictures only and controls the pan/zoom motions. It also allows you to add text captions to the selected picture.
3. Rotate pictures rotates selected pictures clockwise within the media panel.

B. Insert buttons

6. These buttons allows you to add video/pictures from your computer, or import them directly into muvee autoProducer from another device like a DV camcorder, digital camera, etc.

C. Preview window

7. Displays the selected video, changes after applying preset styles, and the final video.

D. Add Music

8. Allows you to insert a music clip.

E. Select Style

9. Enables you to apply and change between muvee's preset styles. You can also purchase additional styles from the muvee website.

F. Navigation

10. These are conventional navigation options such as stop, play, etc. The other options are:
1. Snapshot tool which takes a snapshot of a frame in your video and saves it as a picture.
2. Source Segment locates a picture or a section of video in your source material. This launches either the 'magicSpot' or 'magicMoments' feature respectively. If clicked while previewing title/credits, this launches the 'Personalize' feature
3. Full-screen mode allows you to preview the muvees in full screen. Please note that your muvees may be displayed in lower quality during the preview. This will not affect the quality of the final muvees that you save/render.
4. Audio mix controls set the volume levels for your music, video soundtrack, style-related sound effects, and voice-overs.

G. Personalize

11. As shown in Figure 3, below, this option enables you to customize the behavior of selected styles, add titles, options for video, picture, audio, and change other muvee settings.
12. 
    Figure 3: Personalize

H. Click the big

13. make muvee button to make and preview the muvee. The other two options are
1. Tweak muvee make quick touch-ups to the muvee before saving it like replacing pictures or sections of video, and add a voiceover.
2. Save and share your muvee in your preferred format.
3. When you're satisfied with your muvee, click on the muveeShare button to select a format to save your muvee in, as shown in Figure 4, below.
4. 
   Figure 4: muveeShare
5. Here, you will find different options like save the muvee for web streaming, save for e-mail, save for mobile device, burn to disc, and save to computer. Choose the format as required.
4. This will start saving the muvee with selected properties, as shown in Figure 5, below, this could take some time.
5. 
   Figure 5: Saving

Pricing and Support

muvee autoProducer 6 costs US$129.95.

Support option includes e-mail support and an online FAQ.

Conclusion

For what it does, muvee autoProducer does it exceedingly well. It allows you to make your video captures more entertaining and interesting. It also provides you with a logical assortment of editing, tweaking, and sharing options. Nothing could be easier.