MovieWorks is a niche "jack-of-all-trades" for multi-media, and, interestingly enough, its biggest competition is from Apple Computers—more on that later. Probably the greatest strength of MovieWorks is that instead of just creating a slide show with music, or just creating a movie with music, one can create a collection of such files and have interactive controls for all of the effects.

MovieWorks is more than just a single application; in fact, there are five:

• MovieWorks Deluxe: From here, one interacts with all the others, and most of the work is done from this program. On the left side of the image below is shown the Application/Tool Palette. As one clicks on these icons, either tools become available or one of the (above) sub-applications are started.

• The top icon is an Eyedropper to "grab colors." It can only grab colors in the MW window, not anywhere else on your desktop.
• The Color Selector brings up the Apple Color Selector or shows you the result of what the eyedropper collected.
• The Sequencer lets you coordinate the length of each item (image, sound, or movie) in your movie, when it starts, ends, and any overlap for a transition.
• The Video Application, discussed below.
• The Text Tool provides limited text capability with some text movement similar to what you can obtain with PowerPoint.
• Paint Application, discussed below.
• Sound Application, discussed below.
• Animate Application, discussed below.

• Video Application: This lets you record video from a video source such as a Digital Video Camera. Unless you have one connected, this application will not properly load. When you do have a DVR connected, a window pops up informing you to press Command-r to record. So you do. At least, I did. What I found out after about ten minutes of playing/recording video into the computer was that the screen showing a 160 x 120 image was not for convenience, that was the recording screen size. After playing around some I discovered that I could also save the image in a variety of sizes which went up to 512 x 384 for Screen and 720 x 576 for NTSC or PAL. You can also create your own custom sizes as well. But there was more: there was also a plethora of Video Settings which included all the potential settings seen on the right. If ever an application could be helped by a wizard, this is it.
• Paint Application: Sort of like MacPaint, or the stronger SuperPaint, the Paint Application provides basic painting tools. This means that what you draw are nothing but pixels and are not vector objects. Below are the four palettes for Paint showing Coordinates, Patterns, the Tools, and a most welcome Tool Tip palette. I should point out that on a very icon-heavy program, there are no singular Tool Tips that popup as your mouse crosses over an icon, with the exception of the Paint program. Curiously, the tip shown seems to not be wholly accurate as I was unable to find any mechanism to erase or draw with the magnifying tool. Also note that one can select tools via the keyboard; but, be forewarned that the key commands are not the common ones used by, say, Photoshop or Painter. With those programs, the magnification is initiated by "z" (for zoom) instead of "m" for magnify, and the very, very common Option key is not used for zooming out, but rather the Shift key. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but if you use a lot of graphic programs, this is a bummer.

• Sound: You can either record your own sounds or play with AIFF sounds. While you can place MID and MOV sound files in a MovieMaker file, you can't play with them in the Sound Application. As you can see below, you can do a few "effects" with Sound. Interestingly, the graphic representation of a sound file is the splatter chart, not the more conventional wave form display.

• Animator provides limited ability to assemble component pieces into animated images. If you have several prepared images ready for assembly, this works very well. If you try to use their limited drawing tools to create an animated movie, please be very patient.

MovieWorks ships with a fairly good tutorial that takes you through all the various parameters this program can do. One aspect of many programs that is often overlooked is not the beta testing of the application, but beta testing the tutorials. I'm finding MovieWorks a very solid program that performs wonderfully. However, there are times when I was working through the tutorial where I was going "Huh? They want me to do what with what? Well, where is it?" Extra screen shots and a more complete explanation of what to do would have served me very well. All the information was there and it was correct—it was a bit of a struggle to find it all nonetheless.

But this is just the one "main" tutorial. If you go to their website, you will find the proverbial plethora of tutorials there. MovieWorks also comes with a PDF that breaks down most of each menu item in each application, but that's as close to a manual as the program supplies. Most of your learning is dependant upon the tutorials.

MovieWorks ships with a free application called "Player" that can play any multimedia files you create. This means you can create a CD with all your digital images, movies, and sound files from your last vacation and a central control panel and the recipient can click on your buttons to play the slides, movies, or songs. Player is provided as both a Mac and a PC application, so your creation can easily be played on either Mac or PC.

Also on the CD is a large collection of free media files (309.6 MB). This includes digital images, movies, and songs. These are excellent for practice and playing with the program, but the likelihood of anyone using this material is fairly remote.

I feel it is noteworthy that the OS X version of MovieWorks is a MacKiev creation. For those who don't know, MacKiev is a software company in Kiev Ukraine, formally in the Soviet Union. They are most known for transferring Windows programs to the Mac format and are also known (now) for transferring programs from OS 9 (or less) to the OS X format. That by itself is no mark against MovieWorks nor a mark positive or negative of MacKiev. What it is saying is that version 6 is almost entirely version 5, but ported over to OS X.

While it is great that MovieWorks is an OS X program, the sad reality is that the program really needs to be re-written from scratch only because it needs to be updated. Just like some websites need an update, or a kitchen is looking too 60s-ish, programs also start to look their age. As one program starts to push the bar, other programs need to as well. As mentioned, the Video Application would be well served by a Wizard. All the applications could use popup tool tips. And, the addition of vector images would be welcome.

However, please do not disregard MovieWorks--it works. There is no application quite like it anywhere else. Despite the creaky interface, it is not difficult to use. Just plan on some extra time in the beginning to get used to what it wants you to do and in what order.

For classrooms, I cannot imagine a better tool to introduce kids to the world of multimedia. And, if you have both images and movies of your summer vacation, there is nothing better around to combine them into one interactive production. If you have a company and want to send to your customers an interactive production of what you manufacture and of the people involved in your company--this can be a (relatively) fast and easy way to achieve this goal. (I only use the word relatively because you are still required to take the movies, images, and assemble this into a work of art. Just like assembling a website, someone still has to collect the material.)

If you want to combine your digital images with music files, you can do that with anything from Portfolio to iPhoto (ranging from expensive to free). Likewise, if you want to combine movies and music files, you have some high-end stuff like Final Cut Pro (remember, Adobe Premiere Pro is Windows only now) and iMovie (ranging from expensive to free). Or you can spend a smaller sum of money and get it all in one box.

MovieWorks occupies a special place right now. With Apple creating more and more software and with more and more companies declining to make Mac titles because of the competition from Apple, I do not want to see Interactive Solutions drop the fight. There are a number of things I'd like to see improved with MovieWorks Deluxe, but as it is, MovieWorks does a fine job.

.