No version without problems!!!
Hi, I have been advised to use Media pro or one of its progenitors by some friend.
So I tried the trial versions of all 3 main releases: the old Iview mediapro 3, MS Expression media 2, and media pro 1.1 on my win7 pc and fiddled a bit with them.
Alas, it sounds crazy but each one has a glitch (a different one each!!!) that makes it almost unusable:
- Iview does not save the rendering settings you choose; in other words, you select bicubic rendering to see images well, it seems to work as it is applied to the image you have on the screen at the moment, but as soon as you move to the next or any other picture, rendering goes back to nearest neighbor (which is the worst rendering option, and frankly not worth considering). I have tried a hundred times, but I cannot find a way to make the program remember the setting. Notice that If I go back to the rendering settings dialog window, bicubic is on. If I turn it on again, it applies to the picture on screen and then reverts to the bloody nearest neighbour again!!! I tried to install different releases of quicktime, since I had read that iview behaviour was depending on it, but to no avail. Finally, I happened to discover that the problem was not present on older systems: my old win Xp PC keeps the bicubic for good. But I certainly cannot downgrade to a 2003 machine now..
- Expression media 2 has an even more amazing problem (small but stinging): it obstinately saves all jpeg pictures with the JPE extension instead of the common JPG!!!! And this also for already existing files that were .jpg before saving. EM2 just changes their extensions, not asking for your permission, and not even telling you. Of course this is disastrous, all other apps and catalogues that had registered that picture as JPG do not see them anymore. And the app batch renamer does not seem to be able to revert them back to JPG, since it does not work on extensions, only on filenames (any suggestion from experienced user here maybe?) How on earth could MS come up with this ugly idea???
- Phase one media pro fares no better either: while it seems to be just a clone of expression media with a dark GUI, it actually lacks the two useful functions in the image editor that offered some good, automatic but controllable enhancement for images. At first I could not believe it, and started and reinstalled the app again and again, bot no way: in the image editor, these 2 functions were the last in the list, and now there is simply an empty space! The window was not even resized to avoid blatantly showing the omission. I actually expected to find some improvements on these already good functions, for example a complete set of the options available on the Mac and on the PC versions (for unclear reasons these functions in Iview media were not exactly equal in mac and PC versions: the Mac had a slider that allowed to choose an intensity for any adjustment, while the PC version had more options, but no intensity adjustment).
So I ended up with a no win situation, at least for now, and I am asking any experienced user that may read this for advice, and in particular for any possible solution to one of the problems above. Thanks a lot!
So I tried the trial versions of all 3 main releases: the old Iview mediapro 3, MS Expression media 2, and media pro 1.1 on my win7 pc and fiddled a bit with them.
Alas, it sounds crazy but each one has a glitch (a different one each!!!) that makes it almost unusable:
- Iview does not save the rendering settings you choose; in other words, you select bicubic rendering to see images well, it seems to work as it is applied to the image you have on the screen at the moment, but as soon as you move to the next or any other picture, rendering goes back to nearest neighbor (which is the worst rendering option, and frankly not worth considering). I have tried a hundred times, but I cannot find a way to make the program remember the setting. Notice that If I go back to the rendering settings dialog window, bicubic is on. If I turn it on again, it applies to the picture on screen and then reverts to the bloody nearest neighbour again!!! I tried to install different releases of quicktime, since I had read that iview behaviour was depending on it, but to no avail. Finally, I happened to discover that the problem was not present on older systems: my old win Xp PC keeps the bicubic for good. But I certainly cannot downgrade to a 2003 machine now..
- Expression media 2 has an even more amazing problem (small but stinging): it obstinately saves all jpeg pictures with the JPE extension instead of the common JPG!!!! And this also for already existing files that were .jpg before saving. EM2 just changes their extensions, not asking for your permission, and not even telling you. Of course this is disastrous, all other apps and catalogues that had registered that picture as JPG do not see them anymore. And the app batch renamer does not seem to be able to revert them back to JPG, since it does not work on extensions, only on filenames (any suggestion from experienced user here maybe?) How on earth could MS come up with this ugly idea???
- Phase one media pro fares no better either: while it seems to be just a clone of expression media with a dark GUI, it actually lacks the two useful functions in the image editor that offered some good, automatic but controllable enhancement for images. At first I could not believe it, and started and reinstalled the app again and again, bot no way: in the image editor, these 2 functions were the last in the list, and now there is simply an empty space! The window was not even resized to avoid blatantly showing the omission. I actually expected to find some improvements on these already good functions, for example a complete set of the options available on the Mac and on the PC versions (for unclear reasons these functions in Iview media were not exactly equal in mac and PC versions: the Mac had a slider that allowed to choose an intensity for any adjustment, while the PC version had more options, but no intensity adjustment).
So I ended up with a no win situation, at least for now, and I am asking any experienced user that may read this for advice, and in particular for any possible solution to one of the problems above. Thanks a lot!
0
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Hello from France.
I didn't use iView as long as EM 2, so, I did not remember the problems you are talking about...
For EM 2, I never had any problem with .jpg files. I use only .jpg and EM 2 never saved these files with .jpe extension. Why EM 2 would do such a thing ? All my .jpg files were saved like : xxxxx.jpg. When I red your post, I was surprised and - forgive me - I had fun (just a little...)
For MP, I'm still on test with it. I must say that there are numerous problem but wait and see... I stay hopefull because, after testing many DAM - including IDimager, really too much hard to use and full of useless functions for me -, MP looks like the only one which is (or will be after debugging) a real DAM.
Regards.0 -
Thank you for your sympathy....
- The problem with ivew media 3, as I said, did not exist under Win XP.... so some help could only come from someone that is still using it and has successfully migrated it under Windows 7 (I do not know about Vista)
- The dancing extension in EM2 is unfortunately there for me ALWAYS.... ANY file that I save in jpeg format comes up with the JPE extension. Maybe this as well is a problem of compatibility with Windows 7. What Operating system do you have?
- the omissions on Media pro are of course amendable, and maybe in the future such functions will be replaced by something much better.... but right now I have no use for the app as it is, on average I would like to use the enhancements for every one in 3 pictures, so without them... maybe they were omitted just because they worked differently on PC and MAc and they did not decide which one to put into the program.
Bye and thanks again,0 -
[quote="NNN634559095483115580" wrote:
Thank you for your sympathy....
You're welcome...[quote="NNN634559095483115580" wrote:
- The problem with ivew media 3, as I said, did not exist under Win XP.... so some help could only come from someone that is still using it and has successfully migrated it under Windows 7 (I do not know about Vista)
I used iView during a short time and it was under XP.[quote="NNN634559095483115580" wrote:
- The dancing extension in EM2 is unfortunately there for me ALWAYS.... ANY file that I save in jpeg format comes up with the JPE extension. Maybe this as well is a problem of compatibility with Windows 7. What Operating system do you have?
I used EM 2 with XP then with W7 without any problem, except some crashes (that's why users of EM 2 often backup the catalog while working !)[quote="NNN634559095483115580" wrote:
- the omissions on Media pro are of course amendable, and maybe in the future such functions will be replaced by something much better.... but right now I have no use for the app as it is, on average I would like to use the enhancements for every one in 3 pictures, so without them... maybe they were omitted just because they worked differently on PC and MAc and they did not decide which one to put into the program.
Maybe... I must say that I use MP only for cataloging.
Hope you will find a solution...0 -
Gosh this is really strange.... you have used EM2 on win7 and had no problem with changing extension??
In the meantime I searched this forum and I bumped into another person with the same problem:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8916
(It's in French but I suppose that's not a problem for you)
In a way this is a consolation, since it means I am not the only one on earth.... maybe some obscure win7 setting could affect this???0 -
[quote="NNN634559095483115580" wrote:
Gosh this is really strange.... you have used EM2 on win7 and had no problem with changing extension??
In the meantime I searched this forum and I bumped into another person with the same problem:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8916
(It's in French but I suppose that's not a problem for you)
In a way this is a consolation, since it means I am not the only one on earth.... maybe some obscure win7 setting could affect this???
I can only speak for myself and in my situation (EM2 on Win7 32bit and Win 7 64 bit) a never had any problems with changing extensions on JPG files. Before, on Vista and XP i also never had any problems...
One of my catalogs with JPG's + opened windows explorer (Win 7 64bit + EM2):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25580003/JPG%20in%20EM2.jpg
Roelof0 -
Thank for the info, but unfortunately in the meantime I realized the problem is much worse: for some obscure reasons, if the image file has a name longer than the conventional 8-characters limit of old DOS age, when modified in the EM2 image editor and then saved the whole name changes and shortens to 8 characters (I hadn't realized this before since my image files are normally exactly 8-character long).
For example, a file named "IMGP24117a.JPG" is turned into a "IMGP24~1.JPE". It's as if EM2 thought to be working under good old DOS when in fact it's nothing less than WIN7!!!
To add more mistery, if you tell EM2 to save a copy of the original elsewhere before saving, the name of the copy does not change.
In this light, the JPE extension problem is a minor nuisance. Changing all file names in such a way means turning everything into a big mess..... WHAT the hell is WRONG here????0 -
Well, I update myself while hoping for someone who could help... I paid a visit to the expression media forums, and discovered that there were problems with Quicktime transforming file names into 8.3 versions. In the forums it was told that this happened with newer versions of QT, later than 7.4, and that reverting to previous version avoided the problem; however this was discussed concerning EM1, not EM2 that was still to come at the time of the comments above.
So I tried everything: about 5 different versions of Quicktime from 7.1 to 7.5, but with EM2 the 8.3 renaming was always there. Then I tried to install EM1, and Eureka! file names were left alone...... but this version was just a rebranding of old Iview media 3.1, and in fact exhibited the same problem about the forgotten bicubic rendering setting... arghh.
However, about this last problem I found out that if i navigated between images with the arrows of the vertical scroll bar, the bicubic rendering did not go away.... this happens only if i navigate using keys, either pgdn+pgup or the arrows. Moreover, when the rendering is corrupted, if I press enter twice quickly, switching from single picture view to preview and back, the bicubic is there.
So, in the end, the funny thing is that I'll try and use the oldest of the 3 versions of the software...after all it's the one with the smallest problem for me. A wow for software development I should say, and I am sorry for Phaseone people: I would have been glad to be a paying client, but with Media Pro they succeeded in killing a feature of previous software releases that was important for me. Even if future developments could make me change my mind of course.
Any further help or trick will be appreciated anyway...0 -
Hi everybody,
i still have an update: yesterday I discovered that I was using an EM2 copy that was from the initial release, while no less than 2 fixpacks were later released. Such fixpacks are not available anymore on Microsoft websites (it's funny that EM1 fixpack still is instead, go figure), but this time Phase one was there (thanks for that) and the EM2 fixpacks were both available from a corner of their website.
After installing both (i did not bother to check it fixpack 1 alone was enough) Eureka! the 8.3 file renaming problems I had with EM2 were no more! And since EM2does not have the forgetting rendering setup problem, I was glad to switch to it from Iview (actually, rendering in EM2 is good and seems to be always the same, whatever rendering setting you choose - you do not notice the obvious differences that resulted in Iview. So i suspect the setting was simply disabled. To say the truth, EM2 rendering is good, but very slightly less good than bicubic in Iview - let's say it middle of the way between quadratic and bicubic, the 2 medium and best levels in Iview).
That's all for today,0
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