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The process of saving and editing of your “digital memories” – the little family movies and photos can have very serious consequences regarding the quality if proper software tools are not used. Canopus Imaginate comes as an extremely professional tool, specialized in creating in movie-slideshows with custom of theme-based soundtracks.

  

Right from the start, I was glad to discover that the application integrates seamlessly with the Windows Vista Aero interface (even if it's not really new) and it also offers you tips and tricks as soon as you start adding your favorite images. You can even customize the scene templates according to your needs. The Imaginate Scene Wizard along with Storyboard mode will help you create compositions within minutes.

  

The intuitive interface has a real-time preview and a detailed key-framing option for tweaking any animated sequence. Canopus Imaginate projects can include music or can be combined with other Imaginate projects and can be exported to many video formats that are ready for video editing or VideoCD/DVD authoring.

 

The image processor keeps a very high quality and sharp image, with accurate details. The wizards can help you in the fast deployment of your projects. The Key-framable Blur filter enables realistic camera effects while the Anchor and Spline controls ensure precise camera positioning for intricate motion sequences.

 

The software comes with a CD-ROM and a manual. As hardware minimum requirements, you will need a 1GHz CPU (at least) or faster, 256 RAM memory, 80MB disc space and Windows 2000, XP SP2 or Vista.

Applicability: This program can create high-quality slideshow-movies with very nice soundtracks and it supports the following image formats: Bitmap (.bmp), JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg), Targa (.tga), Photoshop (.psd), JPEG Network Graphic (.jng), Portable Network Graphics (.png), Tagged Image File Format (.tif, .tiff), Amiga IFF Format (.iff, lbm), Multiple Network Graphic (.mng), Kodak PhotoCD (.pcd), PCX Bitmap Format (.pcx). As supported audio/video formats when importing you can choose from the Wave (.wav), MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), Windows Media Video (.wmv), AIFF (.aif, .aiff), AVI (.avi), MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg, .mpa), MPEG-2 (.m2p, .mp2) and ASF (.asf) formats. The exported files can be movies files like uncompressed RGB AVI (PAL/NTSC, 16:9/4:3), Microsoft DV (PAL/NTSC, 16:9/4:3) or just any DirectShow AVI codec-encoded video.

Pro(s): I really enjoyed working with Canopus Imaginate and I liked how fast I learned new methods on how to take advantage of the real value of the software. The interface is sleek and most of the projects can be finished in a very short time if you have the files for import ready.

Con(S): The only thing that is rather tricky is the price of the software – you do get quite a valuable piece here, but in my opinion the price should go down a bit.

Official Website

Buy: $199

Demo (you need to register before downloading)