Cakewalk MediaWorks
Digital media collection
$79, Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP
Requires CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW
www.cakewalk.com
Newcomers to the confusing world of CD and DVD data storage (not to mention computer music recording and digital-photo slide show creation) will be happy with this all-in-one toolkit for making a multimedia PC do its stuff.
It’s all there in one deftly integrated starting screen–tools to record music taken from CDs (called ripping); to take tracks from LP records and cassette tapes and make them into MP3 music files; to clean up sound problems like scratches and hisses; and to convert sound files from the popular MP3 format into Microsoft’s proprietary WMA type and WAVs.
This software really does make a cakewalk out of dealing with photos, video and data, with tools for organizing files and then transforming them into CDs or DVDs that can be played on most home DVD players and computers.
Creating a slide show requires picking a stack of photos or video files and moving them to a timeline display. Music or recorded narration then is moved to the same timeline. A simple “Match Beat” tool lets one click with a mouse to display a given photo at the best musical moment.
Coupled with Cakewalk’s well-known (in hobby circles) audio-tweaking tools, the soundtracks can be set for fade-ins and fade-outs, equalized, loudness-adjusted and put into a palette of special effects like reverbs, echoes, vibratos and many others.
In a test for this review, the software stood out by making it simple to burn the finished shows or music onto CDs and DVDs that worked as promised in music players, home DVD players and computers.
DESIGN SCIENCE
Magnetic toy a sure attraction
A 5-year-old finds this hot new toy called Strange Attractors Starter Kit a riveting experience. As with a past generation’s Tinker Toys, he builds figures out of plastic rods that connect by magnets. A post-doctoral specialist in genetics might make DNA models. A classical mathematician can create enormously complex 3-D geometrical configurations with color-coded sides to study infinite possibilities. The rest of us get an addictive fiddle-away-the-boredom toy as we snap the magnetic rods in primary plastic colors into whimsical forms or tottering houses of cards. At $40 from Design Science Toys (www .dstoys.com), this is like spending a weekend at R. Buckminster Fuller’s house.
MIXONIC
The gift of music as you picture it
San Francisco-based Mixonic Custom Media Inc., an Internet-oriented music-CD duplicating company, offers a holiday Web service to let you slap a family photo on a professionally printed CD along with 10 studio-produced seasonal music tracks to send to friends and relatives at $9.95 per disk. The U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots project (www.toysfortots.org) will get $1 for every disc sold, Mixonic executives promise, and, as they note in their pitch, it’s like virtual fruitcake for casual gifting. Details and samples of the 240 tunes at www.customchristmascds.com. Semper Fidelis.
