CeQuadrat and Adaptec support MP3 with upgrades

Emedia Professional, July, 1999 by Michelle Manafy

CeQuadrat and Adaptec support MP3 upgrades

CeQuadrat and Adaptec have both announced significant upgrades to their premastering tools that include the addition of MP3 support.

According to John Tafoya, CeQuadrat's vice president of sales and marketing, the addition of MP3 support was a major factor in upgrading WinOnCD. The Power Edition has an improved audio editor that provides a real-time decoder, allowing users to apply MP3 files directly as input for creating Red Book Audio CDs. Other new features of WinOnCD's audio editor are CD Text, which allows users to list title, artist, and song names; frequency analysis; a graphical equalizer; and PQ-subchannel control, which enables users to insert custom index points, pre-gap adjustments, and EAN/UPC and ISRC codes. WinOnCD Power Edition allows users to create CDs in all major formats with new features for Audio and VideoCD. WinOnCD supports on-the-fly writing at speeds of up to 10X, according to the company, and is designed to work with today's fastest 8X drives.

With the improved VideoCD editor, WinOnCD users can produce White Book-standard interactive Video CDs. The improved software also offers an extended editor that allows users to record digital slideshows in Video CD format with accompanying music that can be played on second-generation DVD players, as well as PCs. The integrated MPEG encoder will convert AVI, BMP, or JPEG images to MPEG prior to recording.

WinOnCD ships with PacketCD 3.0, which provides Windows 95/98 users with the ability to store files to CD-R/RW directly from Explorer or other Windows applications. PacketCD also provides a compression option that allows users to store up to 1.2GB on a standard CD-R/RW (varying by filetype), as well as a defect management system. The WinOnCD assistant has been expanded to support the new features and the navigation icons are now scalable. WinOnCD Power Edition sells for $99.

Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe offers an improved audio editor that converts analog to digital and provides pop and hiss clean-up features. Easy CD Creator's new MP3 capabilities allow users to drag-and-drop files to their hard drive as well as access the CDDB Disc Recognition service to facilitate the creation of custom music CDs. Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe also allows users to manipulate their audio tracks to add special effects, transitions, and custom spacing between songs. The bundle also incorporates Adaptec's new Jewel Case Creator--which features curved text, in-place editing, disk labeling themes, and support for commercial labels for designing customized CD labels.

Adaptec's Take Two image-based data recovery program is also included in Easy CD. Take Two supports compression, sector skipping, and CD spanning. Take Two is built on Adaptec's DirectCD packet-writing technology and is compatible with packet-writing CDR/RW drives.

For video creators, Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe now includes Video Wave II SE, which allows users to edit video clips and add titles, transitions, audio, and special effects to combine them into custom movies. The program also allows users to create photo albums and video postcards. Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe has a suggested retail price of $99 with a $20 mail-in rebate in the U.S. and Canada for qualified owners of early versions of Easy CD Creator or any competitive products.

(Adaptec, Inc., 691 South Milpitas Boulevard, Milpitas, CA 65035; 800/442-7274 408/945-8600; Fax 408/262-2533; http://www.adaptec.com. CeQuadrat (USA), Inc., 1804 Embarcadera Road, Suite 101, Palo Alto, CA 94303; 800/330-6734, 650/843-3780; Fax 650 /843-3799; http://www.cequadrat.com.