Info about Photostory 2015 etc. Don't know where to put this

I'm looking into alternatives for creating slide presentations with voiceover for the web. I have been thinking about Powerpoint, but I see that Magix is introducing Photostory and Movie Edit and I'm wondering if anyone has used those?

Would the interface be familiar if I already use Photo & Graphic Designer? How would those things work? Can you record a presentation along with slides? Do you create the slides using the Magix software, or import the slides from somewhere else?

Are they easy to use for a newbie? The "8 freely configurable tracks" feature makes me nervous. I figure if I could use one track I'd be doing good.

Any thoughts?

I don't know kathleen but I'll see what I can find out for you. My brother uses Photostory but it wasn't the Magix one, anyway I thought it was neat. What he did was a slide show and the camera would lock on to a specific (person) and if I remember correctly zoom in a little so there was no doubt who the featured (person) was.

EDIT: the effect was the image seemed animated.

Thanks, Larry. At first I thought it was a separate company, but then I saw that Xara is a Magix company, so I wondered if it would be easier to use something of theirs if the interface was familiar. Otherwise, I'd probably end up with Camtasia to do editing, etc.

Wish Xara had at least a live chat for pre-sales questions.

I have been poking around to get a look at the interface but so far no luck.

Oh, well. Don't know why I didn't think of it before, but I tried the pre-sales support at Magix. All their lines are busy and they want me to call back later :-) so maybe I'll try them next week. Possibly everyone is gone for the day... Thanks for checking around!

Hi,

I use Magix PhotoStory 2013, Movie Edit Pro 2015 and Video Pro X6 (redundant). I suggest that you review the differences on the Magix.com site and you can look at comments in the Magix Forum. Look under Q&A and do a search and also look under Discussions tab and the PhotoStory subject.

PhotoStory is a stripped down version of Movie Edit Pro, which is a stripped down version of Video Pro X. The current offerings for MEP and VPX6 are 64bit programs. PhotoStory 2015 appears to be 32bit. It now has 8 tracks to work with as users found that 4 tracks got used up quickly by music, narration, images, titles and effects. All of these programs handle video, photos, other images and audio files and you can record audio. There are audio cleaning tools with MEP.

I suggest that you look at MEP2015 Plus or Premium if you want some neat additional effects at a low price.

These are editing programs, not drawing programs. I create images in Xara, export to jpeg or png, as well as animations, and then import into MEP. There is even a feature to create masks in MEP that opens Xara, if installed, and allows you to create an animation (there is a bug between MEP2015 and Xara X10 that I have pointed out in the MEP forum) and then brings it back directly into MEP.

Just so you know, a slideshow is really a video. The compiled project must be exported to a suitable video format, like wmv or mp4, to be run on almost any computer using Windows Media Player or another player. Slideshows are not projected from within the programs anymore than you would show finished images directly from Xara. Users often

@browj2 Thanks for that information. Sounds like the MEP2015 would replace Camtasia. The features list doesn't include recording narration, just music soundtracks, but you mention it, so it can do that, right? Really appreciate your help.

Hi,

Yes, you can record audio directly onto a track in MEP from a microphone plugged into the mic port on the computer or you can get an audio mixer like M-Audio M-Track that uses a USB interface and an Asio driver to reduce latency, and a good or pro mic plugged into the mixer. The sound is much better. You can also record using a web cam or through the audio card from an external source, like a tape deck, CD play, radio, amplifier, phonograph (that has a pre-amp), etc. Although the recordings show up on a track, they are all saved by the program to external audio or AV files.

Some of the other audio features in MEP include audio cleaning, effects, mixing and mastering tools.

Thanks again! Sounds like something I need to look into.