By Anick Jesdanun
The Associated Press
DIGITAL PHOTOS ON LINE
NEW YORK - If you're like a lot of people, you've got a wealth of digital photos left over from the holidays that you'd like to share with family and friends.
Thanks to the Internet, there are more options than ever. Some services even let you make images available to the general public.
But be forewarned: Expect a barrage of pitches for photo printing and other services. That's the tradeoff for getting free unlimited storage space, a hallmark of most of the nine services I tested.
Understanding the need for these companies to make a living, I don't begrudge them the pitches. But I am annoyed by services that make my friends register just to view photos:
So goodbye, Snapfish.
In my reality TV-style elimination, Webshots was the next service to get the boot.
You must install its software; others offer Web interfaces. Adding to the outrage, Webshorts' software replaced my desktop wallpaper with photos of palm trees and autumn leaves.
Though I consider the ads fair, it should be OK to simply ignore them. Not so with Ofoto.
I wanted to like Ofoto, the offering from Eastman Kodak Co. (Remember film?). Lately, many friends and relatives have used Ofoto to send me online albums of weddings and an engagement. They were relatively easy to call up -- and save if you register for an optional, free account.
But the photos you share disappear if you don't buy something from Ofoto at least once a year. Sure, it could be a 29-cent print, but I don't like to be coerced.
See ya later, Ofoto.
(Snapfish has a similar policy, but it's already eliminated.)
Of the remaining six, Yahoo, America Online and Shutterfly all focus on the basics: Add photos. Share them. Order prints, mugs and other goodies.
Typepad, Streamload and Flickr do more.
But Typepad got the boot, despite its ease-of-use and packaging with a blogging service from Six Apart. Plans with photos start at $8.95 a month. You're not subjected to e-commerce, but you can't organize photos as easily.
Streamload is ideal for large files like video and music, but at $4.95 and up per month to get the decent sharing features, the service may be overkill for photos.
AOL service clunky, Flickr too confusing
The final four candidates are all strong.
America Online's service supports several formats, including JPEG, TIFF and GIF. You and your friends can download hi-res versions of photos for free, and AOL's ads for photo-printing sales aren't as "in your face."
You don't even need to be an AOL subscriber -- screen names from the company's free instant messaging service also work, as do ones from the Compuserve and Netscape access plans.
But I found the service slow (AOL says it may be my connection, but I didn't have problems with any of the others). The interface was also a bit clunky, and I had to hit tabs to switch between files stored on my computers, on my account at AOL or on friends' accounts. Most services have better integration.
Flickr gets good marks for innovation.
Besides adding captions, you can tag photos with keywords for easier searching and mark up photos with comments -- for instance, put a box around someone's face so that when others scroll over it, "What an idiot" pops up.
Create a circle of friends from college, and any photo added by one can be automatically shared to all. Or make photos public and create groups on the fly -- for instance, bringing together people who've posted public photos tagged "tsunami."
Alas, all that innovation makes the service confusing to use. Power users with a lot of patience may enjoy giving Flickr a ride but my attention span is quite limited.
Now, where was I again?
Yahoo, Shutterfly come out on top
As for the remaining two, you can't go wrong with either.
Unlike AOL and Flickr, neither Yahoo nor Shutterfly offers free hi-res downloads and both limit you to the JPEG format.
But Shutterfly gets votes for:
· Unlimited storage forever. Yahoo accounts expire if inactive for six months.
· The ability to share a group of photos, rather than the entire album or a single photo only.
· Friends viewing large albums see small versions of photos, or thumbnails, 20 at a time. Yahoo and most others show them all at once -- painful for a dial-up user.
· Optional software for organizing and adding photos online is available for Mac and Linux computers. Yahoo's drag-and-drop plug-in requires Windows computers using the Internet Explorer browser.
Yahoo gets votes for:
· You can send photos from a camera phone.
· You can share photos by sending an e-mail or instant message or by giving out a Web address. Shutterfly limits it to e-mail.
· With Yahoo, you can share photos with everyone, only those you specifically invite or those who appear on a list of friends. Shutterfly limits sharing to invites.
· Yahoo lets you edit or delete an album so subsequent visitors see changes. With Shutterfly, once an invite goes out -- say, after a wild New Year's celebration -- you can't recall it. Photos, however embarrassing, stay in the system forever.
· Yahoo also lets some people download hi-res versions of photos, though the photo's owner must be a premium Yahoo member, either by paying $5.95 a month or getting high-speed service through a Yahoo partner like SBC Communications Inc.
It's a close vote, but Yahoo wins 5-4.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NOTE
Or you can order tvCD here and create digital slide shows that will play on your TV through your DVD or CD player.
Nero has announced that their MPEG-4 encoding technology, Nero Digital, is now fully integrated with NeroVision Express 3. Here's part of their press release:
Nero, leaders in digital media technology, announced today that NeroVision Express 3, its video authoring and editing application included in the comprehensive digital media suite Nero 6, will now include Nero Digital(TM), the world's leading MPEG-4 solution.
With outstanding video and audio quality, Nero Digital(TM) is at the center of Nero's strategy for content creation, delivery, and protection. Featuring cutting-edge AVC/H.264 video encoding, and HE-AAC audio, NeroVision Express 3 can now capture directly to Nero Digital's(TM) High Definition video format with surround sound, or export and burn to Nero Digital(TM) for playback on compatible devices. With the addition of VCPS in the near future, Nero Digital(TM) output files will provide the required level of security against unauthorized re-distribution.
NeroVision Express 3 is able to author or edit video from virtually any input source and record video files to DVD Video, Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD), miniDVD, and now Nero Digital(TM). Chapters can be created using automatic scene detection, videos can be trimmed in a fast and flexible way and customized menus can be created using pre-defined layout templates and button frames. Extensive editing is available for more advanced users, while fast and friendly wizards for the keen enthusiast mean no matter what skill level, the user is always in control.
If you'd like to try it out, NeroVision Express 3 can be downloaded from Nero's website.
HP Ships DVD+R DL Drive; Philips Boosts Disc Output
Leading DVD+RW format proponents HP and Philips gave a push to the format family’s 8.5GB double-layer (DL) version last month with HP’s announcement of a $99 DVD writer incorporating double-layer compatibility and Philips’ promise of expanded double-layer media shipments.
HP’s dvd530i writer features double-layer recording technology at up to 2.4X speed and single-layer recording at up to 8X. In addition to DVD+R DL media, the dual-format drive can write to 4.7GB DVD±R/RW as well as CD-R/RW discs. The device comes with software to let users edit and author video and save photos, video, music or data to DVDs or CDs.
HP claims that while competing DVD+R DL writers have met with compatibility issues, double-layer discs created with the dvd530i achieved in testing a near-90 percent compatibility rating with most DVD players and DVD-ROM drives.
The dvd530i is expected to be available at major retail outlets in the U.S. and Europe in August; a 16X model is expected to be available later this year.
Meanwhile, Philips announced it was increasing shipments of its own DVD+R DL media in all major world markets. Philips developed its DVD+R DL discs in cooperation with Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), based on initial investigations carried out in 2001 by Philips Research.
Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U 9
Plextor is the leading manufacturer of DVD/CD Recorders. However, in an attempt to provide more complete solutions covering from DVD creation to DVD recording, Plextor has introduced the ConvertX series for real time video encoding. Their latest product in this series is the PX-M402U.
The PX-M402U follows on the footsteps of the M401U, but has real-time, hardware based MPEG-4 encoding, along with real-time Dolby Digital audio encoding. This external device is also suitable for laptop users, making encoding as easy as possible. It can capture DVD quality video from multiple sources, such as TVs, VCRs or camcorders.
- Features
The device uses the Hi-Speed USB2.0 interface, making it compatible with all computers running Microsoft Windows XP. Of course, it can be connected to a slower USB1.1 port, but this is not recommended, since the transfer rate on such ports will not allow for real time video encoding. On the other hand, USB2.0 connectivity allows high bitrate video capture using MPEG-2 compression, maximizing data throughput to the host computer.
Most available encoders will encode audio in normal stereo or wide stereo 2-channel format. Dolby Digital is a key feature of the M402U. It converts the audio input to Dobly Digital channels, muxing them with the produced video stream. However, this is not hardware based real time encoding, but instead, the software handles the audio signals in such a way that produces Dolby Digital audio.
The PX-M402U is the first capture device to be officially DivX certified. This is a very interesting feature, since users can benefit from this popular format for sharing videos easily over the internet.
- Specifications
The device is compatible with both PAL and NTSC transmission formats, ensuring compatibility for all users around the world.
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