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Digital Media Series Media Cleaner Pro 4.0 |
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As the name suggests, Media Cleaner Pro works with multimedia. In a nutshell, Media Cleaner Pro takes an existing audio/video file and prepares it for final presentation. Media Cleaner is a pretty simple application that has wide-reaching features. Oddly however, Media Cleaner doesn't specifically do anything special. Instead, the program reduces dozens of mundane compressing and enhancing tasks down to a handful of settings.
Media Cleaner 4.0 mainly deals with audio and video compression for various types of publishing. Whether it's for a CD, TV or the web,
Media Cleaner
takes advantage of the latest in video enhancing and compression software to put
your project where you need it. The program takes a video file and renders it for
the highest quality and largest pixel by pixel size possible. While heavily slanted towards QuickTime, Media Cleaner also support RealVideo, DV and MP3 technology. All these formats allow users to take virtually any video file and squeeze it to be streamed or just played quickly over the Internet. Media Cleaner supports "canned" streaming or "fast start" style playback over the web. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, Media Cleaner can help prepare your content for delivery.
If you're publishing with CDs instead of the web, Media Cleaner is also an ideal choice. While not as critical as the web, CDs and the computers they're used with do have limitations for file size. Again, Media Cleaner can take a file, compress it, resize it and easily store it in the desired format for CD pressing.
What if you don't do content for the web or CDs? I rarely do either, however I do work with DV for full-sized presentations. I don't have any need for compression, but I often do require video and audio touchups. Media Cleaner takes advantage of the many QuickTime filters available, such as Brightness, Contrast, Sharpen and others. Media Cleaner can use these filters to easily touchup your media without degrading its quality.While for the most part, QuickTime 4.0 Pro itself can handle nearly all compression and retouching that Media Cleaner as to offer. The difference however is that Media Cleaner can make the process very easy and pretty well streamlined.
Instead of adjusting each individual setting, Media Cleaner has many presets and
recommendation for files. For example, Media Cleaner has a preset for 56k modems,
which will compress your file to what is considered a tolerable download over a 56k
modem. Another feature allows the user to preview
the user's settings. This is probably one of the coolest features,
which allow
users to try different filters and compressions and see what it will look before
its rendered. This way, the user can add a little hue here, take some contrast away
there without committing to lengthy rendering time.
Media Cleaner also allows users to save all these setting for future work. So say
for example, if every day or week you publish a video on the web, you can just load
the preset file and let it rip. For myself, I needed to perform color correction
to a number of individual files. Here, Media Cleaner helped to ensure my final project
had a consistent look. To aid in this type of work, Media Cleaner also supports batch
lists, letting users set up multiple files for rendering. In this case, you could
set up say five individual files, each with their own settings, and walk away letting
the program do its work.
Really, the features of Media Cleaner Pro 4 are almost endless. It has most of the
features from the individual software titles such as QuickTime, Sorenson Video, Q-Design,
Purevoice, RealVideo and MP3. Additionaly, Media Cleaner also has many of its own
features tying these technologies together.
Bottom Line
In the end, Media Cleaner is a time saver. Depending on how much time you have, it
may or may not be a life saver. Media Cleaner has a hefty suggested retail price
of $500. While justified, I'm afraid it pushes it out of the reach of a lot of people
who could use it. Media Cleaner Pro, as it indicates, is a professional tool with
professional features. Frankly I feel anyone who works with digital video will find
it quite useful, but realistically, it's not for hobbyists.
Media Cleaner Pro is designed for volume work. Whether modifying many files with
the same settings or just processing many files, Media Cleaner can take a lot of
the grunt work out of post-processing your presentations. While convenient, Media
Cleaner isn't intended for compressing a file every once in a while. But, if you
find yourself spending a lot of time in QuickTime's Export Options window, Media
Cleaner Pro will be worth while.
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