Expression Media??

[fredjeang]

Hi guys,

I've just evalutated the latest expression media and I have a question: what can do this software that can not do Bridge???

I found it rather slow, Can't passe the slides at the speed of light because the program "think" while with bridge it's instantaneous even with big files.
In short, much slower, interface is rather boring to my taste and I haven't been able to find so far a task or a file that can't do Bridge.

What's the strengh of this software?

[Chris_Brown]

Fred,

You must be kidding.

What kind of files did you load into your archive?

[fredjeang]

a simple file with 2000 3MP downsampled jpegs in it.

In bridge I jump in the slide show like a pantera where I want. It's instantaneous
With expression media it just blocks very fast because it has to load at one point or another. If I move the slides too fast it just doesn't follow my finger. pretty much a big black bear already full of salmon so ready for a siesta.(the only image that came in my mind to ilustrate)

Visualisation of the movies is slower than in Bridge too.
In fact, in my testings everything is slower.

Do you really like the interface? Design is poor and boring, looks like a freeware home made software. Just the opposite of C1. Ok, just my impression.

mmm...got the sensation that the engineers from Phase haven't work on it yet and this is still a remanent of the Microsoft period.

But as I said, maybe I'm missing something but i'd like to know the magic properties of this program then.

[Chris_Brown]

Fred,

2000 JPEGs! Are you kidding?

I am. 

I've used Expressions Media since it was iView MediaPro v1.x for my digital library archive. It was the only program of its kind that provided this function when I bought it. As far as I can tell, Microsoft didn't do anything with it other than add recent digital cameras' raw file compatibility to it. PhaseOne has not done anything with it yet, but my hopes are high.

While Bridge is a sprite program, when its cache get corrupted it brings the program to its knees. While CS4 Bridge is far better than previous versions, cache corruption can still pose a problem. For this reason I prefer Expressions Media.

I don't use the slideshow function for browsing. I set my thumbnails to a large size and can scroll through a library of 10,000 images (raw, PSD, TIFF, etc.) without waiting for anything. Its search function is equal to Bridge as far as I can tell, but I've not used Bridge to search through thousands of images.

[fredjeang]

Finally I got it. Doug explained to me the differences: Expression Media is a catalog manager. Bridge is a folder browser.

So I was not using it to its full potential so I couldn't see the differences.

Cheers.

[RFPhotography]

One word:  Lightroom. 

[EricWHiss]

back  when it was iView Multimedia - it was just that (multi media types) and was awesome.  It could display previews of everything from fonts to movies including word and excel files.  There were not that many other tools that could manage such an extent of different file types. You could put your invoice files in with your image sets for example if you wanted whether they were pdf, .doc or whatever.   All your notes and files related to a project could be managed and that was great.  Remember the first canon 1D?  You could record audio notes associated to a particular image file - and iView would catalog those and you could click on the file and hear the recording.  That was great.  Bridge is vastly improved over the years.  Conversely since Microsoft acquired iView, it hasn't improved much and in some ways has gone backwards.    I still use iView for doing stuff lightroom can not manage.  I don't know why I never took to Bridge but...

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Conversely since Microsoft acquired iView, it hasn't improved much and in some ways has gone backwards.

It is now owned by PhaseOne, ...

Cheers,
Bart