CYBERLINK MEDIASHOW 5

MEDIA MANAGER

CYBERLINK MEDIASHOW 5

Specifications

USD 49.95 (Approx Rs 2,350)

www.cyberlink.com

System Requirements

OS: Windows XP SP2 and above, DirectX 9; RAM: 1 GB, 2 GB for HD videos; Disk Space: 1 GB

Contact: CyberLink

Verdict: Considering the features, usability, performance and price, we’d say it’s a good bargain.

The recent release by CyberLink Corp, the CyberLink MediaShow 5 is an ideal management tool for photos and videos. It not only manages but also allows editing of media files and produces very good results in very little time. So if you want to convert videos, trim them, or make your own videos for your iPod, PSP/PS3 or other portable devices, this application has much to offer. Also if you’re a photography enthusiast, consider this application as a one-stop solution for managing your large collection. The special features include smart tagging, face recognition and media management. Users can easily and quickly categorize photos and videos with the simple yet attractive user-interface. The initial setup prompts a user to either scan the computer for media files or manually select the source. Once into the main interface, most of it is intuitive.

Features

The highlights start with tagging, where you can not only tag photos and add information, but also use the face recognition feature to tag faces inside photos. When you click on tag faces, the program scans the photo library, short-lists the photos that have faces and then prompts the user to tag them individually. When finished, choosing a particular tag will list all the photos having that tag.

There are other useful features such as creating slide shows and videos with transition effects, converting videos into various video formats, sharing media online on photo and video sharing sites such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and iTunes and so on.

The main interface

The program is fairly simple to use and looks good too. There are eight skins in all, the default one being black, which we think looks the best. Otherwise you can choose from Indigo, Copper, Teal, Gold, Green, Purple and Rose. The main panel is divided into two parts; the left-hand side pane has the library which contains albums, folders, tags and such. So you can browse through images according to either of these classifications. The right-hand side shows the content relevant to the category or folder that you select. The menu bar has options such as Import, Add Folder, Edit, Play Slide Show, Create Slide Show and so on. When in the 'Photos' mode, the last option on the menu bar is ‘To Videos’ which takes you to the video library. The procedure is same when switching to the ‘Photos’ mode. Right-clicking on individual photos offers various options such as edit, rename, add to album, add tag, separate folder here, upload to Flickr and so on. From this context menu, you can even check the EXIF information in the photos, and in videos you can check the resolution, aspect ratio, duration and audio and video format.

Image editing

The built-in editor has automatic and manual editing options. To avoid the intricacies of photo-editing, choose the wizard mode. Here, you can crop images, remove red-eye, straighten photos and adjust their brightness, contrast and white balance. Alternatively, you can fine tune and adjust these parameters manually. For adding effects, there are various options such as Black and white, Sepia, Soft Focus, Vignette and so on. In addition to leveraging multiple undo levels, users can review the changes before applying them to the original photo.

Video editing

Though there aren’t as many complex options for editing videos as there are for photos, the ones present would suffice for trimming videos and saving them in different formats, fixing shaky videos, fixing lighting automatically and reducing audio and video noise. Furthermore, you can also adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and white balance of the videos.

A good pick

Managing a large collection of multimedia, especially photos, can be a horrendous task. When you have an application that does it so seamlessly, there’s very good reason to opt for it, especially when it carries an attractive price tag of USD 49.95 (approximately Rs 2,350). 

– dushyant.khilnani@chip.in