SoundPix

John Ross – Product Review Editor

I was initially contacted by a company representative to see if I desired to review a new product application that dealt with sound and JPEG images. I agreed and received a CD in the mail a few days later.

I have been very pleasantly surprised by this $29.95 (SRP) application!

SoundPix desktop application products include SoundPix Plus, SoundPix Sampler, and the SoundPix Plugin. Embedded products include the SoundPix OEM developer's kit and the SoundPix ISV developer's kit

The initial launch of the SoundPix product suite supports a plug in for Internet Explorer 5.x running on Windows 98 or later, including Windows XP, 2000, and Me. Releases coming soon will support a wider array of JPEG viewing applications on a broader selection of desktop platforms.

The SoundPix Sampler is an evaluation version of the fully functional SoundPix Plus. SoundPix Sampler allows you to bring still digital images to life by recording your own sounds or selecting existing .wav audio files directly into your JPEG images. While providing full audio-image management capability, SoundPix Sampler does contain several evaluation product conditions, including a 15 day trial period, limited recording length, support for .wav files only, static text annotations, and a static "SoundPix" voice annotation.

The SoundPix Plugin enables any application that can view a JPEG image to actually hear audio that has been encoded into the image by SoundPix Plus or SoundPix Sampler. Whether you are viewing an image sent by a friend, perusing a photo processing site, or viewing images on a corporate web site, the SoundPix plug in lets you hear SoundPix JPEG images.

To get the SoundPix Plugin, go to www.soundpix.com and simply press the Download SoundPix IE Plugin button on the home page or at the top of this page. Just follow the download and installation prompts, and you will be hearing all that audio-enabled images have to offer!

Imagine hearing the wedding march as you view a photo of your daughter walking down the aisle on her wedding day, or your grandchild's first words along with the image of her beaming face, or the story that goes with that great Hawaiian beach shot from your favorite vacation... Or documenting that business photo with a detailed explanation in your own voice… With SoundPix Plus, a new and powerful audio capture and editing software tool available from SoundPix, you can easily enrich your digital photos with sound - adding an entirely new and pleasurable sensory dimension to the image creation, editing and sharing experience.

With SoundPix Plus you can record or import greetings, background sounds, captions and comments, making them an integral part of each of your digital images - which you can then easily share with others.

• Create industry standard JPEG files that contain sound - all in one file!
• Easily email your SoundPix audio enhanced pictures to others for their enjoyment
• Easy to use screens and controls
• Add audio effects and compression
• Create captions and hyperlinks in your images
• Modify your images with standard functions such as rotate, crop, resize, print, etc.

Now that I passed on all of the marketing hype from the company’s web page, let me tell you why I really like this program.  They have developed a very simple metaphor for working with images and sound.  The old way is to attach a .WAV file to an image and hope that the recipient’s computer setup does not foul up the linkage, lose the attachment, etc.  SoundPix just asks you to pick an image, pick a sound file or record a sound file, and embed it. Once you save the .jpg image, the sound is embedded within it, not outside. It cannot be corrupted or detached. If you are taking many digital images, this utility will be a real boon to voice annotating your pictures.  I installed the SoundPix Plus software off of the CD they sent and I was off and running smoothly. I called up an image of the earth taken at night from the space shuttle. It really showed the lights twinkling from the various areas around the world. Plugged in my trusty headset and microphone and began adding a voice annotation to the image.  Saved the file and played it back. Heard my annotation and shipped the file off to a friend in Florida to see what happened. Worked just as advertised!

Check it out at www.soundpix.com

Member Association of Personal Computer User Groups

Northeast Wisconsin
Personal Computer Users Group
(NEW PCUG)

Mail Stop 7
P.O. Box 2277
Appleton, WI 54912-2277

Questions and comments: webmaster
Copyright ©  NEW PCUG