xrogers Posted May 1, 2007 Share #1 Posted May 1, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Hi all, Expression Media (the new iView) was just made available for download on the MS website (http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/download.aspx?key=media). It now recommends an Intel Mac, but it installed and runs fine (so far) on my G5. It still doesn't support display of anything but the embedded preview for the M8. I have no idea if it will fix the crashing problems some folks had with iView. I've used iView for years, but am not thrilled by their weak support for the M8. If anyone else tries it out, please tell me if you notice anything beyond superficial differences between it and iView 3. I don't notice anything of consequence, but I'm not digging into it all that deeply. I'm in the midst of integrating CS3 and LR into my workflow, and without better M8 handling, I don't see much point in messing around with Expression Media (unless LR's library and Bridge both perform poorly). Thanks, Clyde Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted May 1, 2007 Posted May 1, 2007 Hi xrogers, Take a look here M8 and iView/Expression Media. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
rwfreund Posted May 2, 2007 Share #2 Posted May 2, 2007 Nope, Looks like the same thing with some cleaned up cosmetics. I really like lightroom, but one of its main weaknesses is iView (er expression medias)'s strength, and that is fairly decent handling of off line media. I MAY end up using both for just this reason. I really would like to drop one of (lightroom, iView, Bridge) but it is just not quite there. My Dream product would be lightroom enhanced to support camera icc profiles, better noise reduction, completely transparent connection with PS (nearly there is CS3), and off-line media. Adobe, when please??? -bob Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrogers Posted May 2, 2007 Author Share #3 Posted May 2, 2007 Hmm. I may be keeping iView/Expression around a while longer. Bridge has some really nice features, but is still just a file browser---I somehow had convinced myself it had graduated into something more able to handle a large number of files. Lightroom kind of choked when I threw 25000 files into a library. Importing was getting slower and slower, so I stopped it at around 8000 photos. LR library performance was okay, but not nearly as snappy as it seemed on smaller test libraries. I started over, and a 2500 photo library worked very well in Lightroom. I guess I'll be trying to keep the size of my LR libraries down to a few thousand or so. Rats. iView built a 25000 file catalog in an hour or two. Browsing is very fast, and if I first run the M8 files through DNG converter, I get a usable preview image in iView. The converted files are fine in LR, and seem okay in raw developer too. Progress of a sort, but I too was hoping to get rid of some software. And this bogus rebranding of iView as Expression had put it on top of the list. Until later, Clyde Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodda Posted May 2, 2007 Share #4 Posted May 2, 2007 Warning. Expression media has some bugs. I have gone back to Iview. On the catalgue fields organize section (left hand above catalgoue folders) you cannot select any and view only those items. Regards Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodda Posted May 2, 2007 Share #5 Posted May 2, 2007 Iview confirmed to me at focus 2007 it was not different really but renamed Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwfreund Posted May 2, 2007 Share #6 Posted May 2, 2007 Expression Media still chokes on out-of-the-M8 dngs. 1) It can't construct a preview 2) When you stop it, it looks like it has stopped, but it leaves a lingering process which must be killed manually. This lingering process prevents one from launching EM. Converted M8 dngs (yup, running dngs through Adobe's dng converter) seem to work fine. The lossless compression feature results in a smaller file than the original dng even with an embedded "large" preview. That conversion step really kind of removes what advantage their might be in using dng as the M8's raw format. I hope that MS and Adobe make nice. Under vista I am still waiting for Adobe's dng codec. I already have Nikon's and Canon's, which make their "proprietary" raw formats more usable than Adobe's "standard/proprietary" format. This is worse than lens coding issues IMO. -bob Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrogers Posted May 3, 2007 Author Share #7 Posted May 3, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) An update for iView and LIghtroom users... I'm finding that Expression Media filtering using catalog fields works for me, so apparently inconsistencies between systems using iView with the M8 contine. I have not found a single new feature in iView. Microsoft claims to have added some video media encoder thing to the Windows version, but not to the Mac, and claims no other changes. I'm not pleased with Microsoft right now---they bought iView ten months ago, and from what I can see, progress on the program stopped then and there. Fortunately, Lightroom's library is working better for me now. I tried importing the 25000 files in chunks, and it seems to be behaving better. I had LR generate full sized previews for everything on import. This uses a fair bit of space, but it clearly pays off---the program performs much better, even with the large library. Now I get to see if keywording and metadata assignment is fast enough. And try to figure out if I can transfer metadata from iView (my first attempts using simple xmp sidecar export from iView failed). If all this works, maybe I will be able to stop running the M8 DNGs through the DNG converter. One can hope... Until later, Clyde Rogers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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