Media Make & Go

 

Compatibilities: Required Xtras: Media Make & Go

This item has not yet been rated

MediaMake&Go is the multimedia authoring software that utilizes and enhances the strengths of one of the best selling tools in the multimedia industry: Macromedia® Director®.With its special tools for planning, design and content assignment, MediaMake&Go reduces the complex processes of multimedia production to five simple steps.MediaMake&Go is very easy to use and requires almost no programming skills. Experienced Director® programmers can process the results directly in Director® if they wish to do so.MediaMake&Go generates fully designed and linked pages directly from the project database and thus creates a perfectly functioning multimedia CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.Humans have always relied on technology to enhance their performance. High-tech swimsuits increase competition speeds by up to 3%. MediaMake&Go speeds the production of professional multimedia applications by up to 50%.

The first question that came to my mind when hearing about MediaMake&Go was, “How will this make things easier for a professional developer?”  I had seen scripts and utilities before that claimed to make development faster and easier, but usually involved some confusing methodology that hampered the process more than it ultimately helped. I opened the program with a little skepticism bit was happily surprised at what I found.MediaMake&Go utilizes the power of Director to construct standard projects in a very fast and efficient way.  The beauty is that once you are finished you are left with a normal Director file that you can then edit as needed. You will start by creating page templates for each layout.  I know we have all had projects with an almost endless number of slides, all set to look like the one before except for different text, a changed image, and a set of new links.  Then, just as you are finishing the client calls, and has decided that he would also like a search engine. Well, this is the product to solve your problem. MediaMake&Go utilizes a great template structure to create your layout.  This allows that designer who is deathly afraid of lingo to construct a functional page with no coding needed.  Then it’s off to the copywriter (or those $6 an hour interns) to fill in the rest. When the project is done you can specify different translations of text, add a search engine (in multiple languages), and in minutes you have a completed movie ready to publish, or add on those finishing touches in Director.This program is fairly easy to use.  A good example is included as well as a solid help manual in multiple languages. It would be nice to add a search function to the help, but otherwise it is easy to follow and browse. I did find a few interface elements a little frustrating like the non-standard undo (Ctrl+Z), and the way it tended to undo more than I anticipated, but overall it had a solid feel to it. Text is easy to add and edit, graphics drop right in and even QuickTime movies are supported in templates. I would like to see the ability to set custom screen sizes (as 800X600 is not always my preferred authoring size) but once in Director this is easy to alter.  So is it worth the price?  That would heavily depend on your company and what you do.  If you are a 1-5 person team working on highly advanced OOP games then you would probably only use it as another box on that shelf to show just how much software you have. This product is intended for the company that does a lot of production work that uses repeat screens or slides, and wants to save some production money.  $1000 for a license is a bit hard to initially swallow, especially after paying just less than that for Director, but if you can pay a high school student to take over the redundant production you are currently sending to a $100,000 a year programmer, this program will pay for itself in days.MediaMake&Go has taken the power of multimedia and returned it to the masses.  Using Director you still have the capabilities to expand your projects to the limits of your imagination, but now you can stop spending days on repetitive production that is now done for you.