Rapid Environment for Audio Prototyping and Efficient Recording,” abbreviated Reaper, is a great multi-track editor allowing for the production of complete tracks from bits and pieces of audio loops. Reaper doesn’t look impressive-it has a Grey color scheme with an interface filled with buttons, so it doesn’t “feel’ like more mature audio editing tools such as Adobe Audition. Making things better are the colorful custom themes available.
The left half of the interface is filled with the channel array which allows one to add, delete, mute, and adjust playback characteristic and add effect to a particular channel. The center area is the largest, filled with visual tracks, allowing direct editing of envelopes of specific regions. At the lower left-hand corner, you’ll find the master fader/volume. Adjacent to it are faders for other channels along with VU meters, recording button, FX console, and more.
Excellent MIDI, DX, and VST plugin (VSTi and DXi) integration allows you to work with complex MIDI sequencers and import files into Reaper. The visual pane displays the progress of a track, and can be zoomed into or out of using the scroll wheel-so you can look at the entire project in a single snapshot. Pre-and post-FX effects on a particular channel are easy to apply, and most novices and semi-professions can manage them easily.There’s a handy grid for working write tracks and loops, allowing one to add loops and resize them. Markers are present as in most professional software, and allow fine-tuned placement of loops.
Overall, Reaper works great as a multi-track recorder-you can record single or multi-channel sessions using inputs from multiple channels or sources. loops-based techno and tracks are easy to sequence using Reaper. Reaper doesn’t turn your PC into a Digital Audio Workstation, though; mastering and audio editing software is still required. Reaper stays well under 30 MB while working with two or three tracks.
At $40 Reaper provides great value for the novice. The $200 commercial license isn’t justified. Cakewalk Sonar at $369 is a better buy for audio professionals, with Steinberg’s Cubase and Nuendo Mackie’s Tracktion also available in he same price range.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Toon Boom Storyboard Pro should help you do away with all the paper and pens that people normally associate with storyboarding without a computer. The interface is somewhat dull, and the layout disappoints: tools like the colour palettes are not easily accessible enough. The drawing tools are very basic; Storyboard Pro is meant for rough sketching and basic drawing, and we’d have liked better brushes. Some changes to the brush can be done to inprove on the default set, though. Sounds can added to the shots; voice-overs can be recorded in the software and added. you can also add notes- useful for dilogues.
The Onion skin feature is especially useful: it allows artists to use earlier panels as a reference and make accurte additions to the next shots.
A few templates are provited as well. You can select from ready-made characters and items and add them to a scene by a simple drag-and-drop move.
The colour selector in Storyboard Pro is pretty advenced; itdisplays a wide range of colours using three separate parameters-Hue, Saturation, and value, for the three standrad colours-red, green and blue, However, this three wheel selection mode window is too large to fit into a resolution of 1152 x 864. A minimum resolution of 1280 x 1024 is required.

Storyboard Por has incorporated cameras similar to those in 3D modelling application. The camera can be panned and moved about. Transition effects can be set between shots-this makes Storyboard Pro a viable option as an animation tool (to some extent). Prepared animations can be exported as rendered frames in TGA and JPEG or as QuickTime or Flash animations.
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro demonstrates that by moving the process of storyboarding to a computer, it’s possible to exponetially improve flexibility-mark changes effortless; easily put detail put into perpoduction plans.
$999 for the commercial version may seem high, but remember that professional studious’3D softwere and compositing softwere run into lakhs. Still, you can find similar storyboarding softwere at around half the price. The edcational package for studebts-which adds a watermark-is expensive, at $499.

Popularity: 4% [?]