terran interactive Media Cleaner Pro 4.0 - Software Review - Evaluation

Emedia Professional, Dec, 1999 by Jeff Sauer

Media Cleaner's interface provides a solution for both digital media experts and compression neophytes. A Settings Wizard leads novice users though a series of checkboxes about target playback (is the media intended for CD-ROM? the Web? streaming media? etc.) and about the source content (How important is audio compared to video? Is smooth motion more important than highest image quality?) Careful explanations accompany each series of questions and options. When you're finished, Media Cleaner does the rest.

An Advanced Settings mode, on the other hand, will satisfy experienced compressionists with thorough controls of data rate, scaling, cropping, frame rate, color adjustment, black levels, white levels, saturation, noise reduction filters, blurs, audio levels, codecs (of course), and more. If you've used the Settings Wizard, you can always enter the Advanced Settings mode to view Wizard settings, amending them as necessary or just to learn. Either mode allows you to name and save settings for future use with other clips. Media Cleaner also provides several templates already programmed for a wide variety of output scenarios.

Once you've applied settings to each of the clips in a batch, you'll simply hit the start button and Media Cleaner takes over. Regrettably, you're only prompted for a destination folder and have no way to name output files. Media Cleaner arbitrarily uses the source filename without adding a suffix for compression settings. That's not so bad if you're compressing different files, but it's more trying if you're trying to evaluate different settings on the same clip. All files in a batch go to the same target folder.

Whenever Media Cleaner starts compressing a file, it opens the Before/After preview window, which depending on codec settings, also offers wonderfully detailed information about video and audio output data rates, including a graph showing rate changes over time. Oddly, a source window also opens and closing it suspends compression. On occasion, closing it actually caused an error, and once, posted the error in the status column though not in the dialog box that opens at the end of processing: "finished at 6:38:24pm--no errors."

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A little first-version bugginess and interface oddities shouldn't be enough to keep you away from what has become a clear industry standard for video compressionists: and a standard to which Windows-based content creators finally have access. While $500 may seems like a lot to pay for something you get free from an editing system's export module, think again. You can certainly get away with not having Media Cleaner and output digital media files, but Media Cleaner is a tool that will make your work look better and will make you more efficient. If you're serious about your work, it's a tool worth having.

terran interactive Media Cleaner Pro 4.0

synopsis: Terran Interative's Media Cleaner Pro has become a staple of any serious digital media production studio by doing a specific function: compressing video for digital distribution, very well. Initially a Mac only product, Media Cleaner pro 4.0 ($499) is the first version available for Windows, supporting 95/98 and NT. With the exceptions of its use of Windows conventions and a few first-version bugs, little is lost in the translation from the Mac. If you regularly compress video for digital distribution, Media Cleaner offers two distinct advantages that make it well worth the price of admission: better quality and greater efficiency.