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eZedia News
MacTeens.com: eZeMatte Review
June 22, 2002
When I saw eZeMatte in the Made for Mac area of apple.com, I was geniunely impressed. I was quite curious to take a look. eZeMatte is an iMovie plug-in that allows you to matte images over your video. Thats awesome. Before, I would have to do that in Commotion, this is a nice time saver. Also, its really easy to use.
A tutorial can be found here (A PDF version is also avaliable, as well as a video tutorial). You simply select the clip you want to apply the effect to, select an image by clicking on the "Choose Graphic" button, and find the eZeMatte Themes folder. Select the graphic, and click open. Then apply the effect, and there you go. A fast, easy way to overlay images onto iMovies.
You can also make your own themes using Photoshop. The process it also easy and fun, and I was surprised that I tried to make one on my own, not knowing about the tutorial found here. Whoops. And I really botched it too. Anyway, just follow the tutorial, and drop the PNG image into your eZeMatte Themes folder. Just remember to run the NTSC Colors filter (unless you are using PAL) because if you don't, colors can bleed into eachother.
I really liked reviewing eZeMatte. It added quite a lot of power to iMovie's basic editing abilities. Plus its really cool. The software is probably the easiest plugin I have ever used for any application, its almost self explanitory. Skim over the little read-me file, and you are up and running. Making your own themes is just as easy... you can easily make a cool image to matte in two minutes flat. Its also fairly priced - $29 to add matte abilities to iMovie.
However, there is one thing I wish eZedia would have added - the ability to adjust trasparency. There is no way to adjust transparency of the images in the UI, but you can still open the image in Photoshop, adjust the trasparency there, and resave the image (or a copy of the image). Another step, but still a lot faster than exporting and then opening the clip in Commotion (or another editing app). Also, it would appear that Photoshop is required for making your own theme(s), because of the NTSC Colors filter.
THE VERDICT: 4.5 / 5
eZeMatte is almost perfect. Its cool, easy to use and it's a BIG time saver. And it is priced very reasonably. But, you can't adjust trasparency directly. Also, Photoshop is the only application that can make the themes. Thus, it gets a 4.5 out of the possible 5.
A special thanks to eZedia for allowing me to have a copy to review!
-Myles Francis
Courtesy of MacTeens.com
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