LiveStage Professional 4
Words by Scott Dewbre
January 2004

Multimedia designers and graphic artists looking to add something cool to their bag of tricks, take note: a powerful QuickTimeVR authoring tool is out with a new, easy-to-use interface.

In version 4, LiveStage Professional ($449.95, Totally Hip) adds the ease of drag-and-drop assembly to the creation of interactive QTVR presentations. While it may not be the amateur's cup of tea, LiveStage is a powerful tool for the multimedia design professional.

QTVR shortcuts, MPEG 4 and Flash 5 support

Keeping pace with QuickTime, LiveStage 4 supports all the new features found in QuickTime 6, including support for the MPEG 4 format and Flash 5, and now supports the Axel 3D engine. All of these new features called for some heavy interface redesign, so LiveStage now sports a new VR editor as well as drag-and-drop convenience for assembling video and audio clips from libraries.

QuickTimeVR presentations get a boost from LiveStage's support of 360-degree panoramic views and movement, plus cubic and object movies, and a set of shortcuts that the software makers call FastTracks. FastTracks streamlines several fairly complex VR Track scripting processes, such as adding a map and compass or directional sound to a QTVR presentation.

The addition of FastTracks makes it much easier to create eye-popping 3D effects in QTVR presentations, which in turn makes the interactive environment that much richer for the viewing audience. Power users will like the fact that the FastTrack scripts are decompilable, which means small tweaks are easily doable without having to reinvent the wheel.

As mentioned previously, LiveStage now supports Flash 5 media, which can be exported from either Flash 5 or Flash MX and incorporated into a QTVR presentation as a nested movie. While this is great, the MPEG 4 support is probably the bigger story here. Not only does LiveStage 4 support the MPEG 4 format, but it can access and play back original MPEG4 content. This is a potentially huge time saver, because it eliminates the need to reformat or otherwise manipulate files. For large graphics or web support operations, this means that MPEG 4 files used by LiveStage can be repurposed for other apps and devices, eliminating the need to store multiple copies and formats of a file.

Considering the complexity of its features and tools, we were amazed with how quickly we were up and running in LiveStage. The tools, viewing window, assembly window and libraries are all well marked and easy to use. In just moments, we had a background in place and had a picture timed to appear over a portion of the background using LiveStage's layering tools.

The new drag-and-drop features of LiveStage really impressed us. Assembling video and audio clips into a presentation is a simple matter of opening a library, dragging a file to LiveStage's assembly (timeline) window, and clicking along the timeline to create in and out point markers for each video or audio clip.

The more we worked with LiveStage, the more we felt like our past experience with apps like Photoshop and Flash were a big part of the reason we were so comfortable working in LiveStage. This brings up something we should mention Ð a lot of the content that goes into a LiveStage presentation is going to come from sources like Photoshop and Flash. So, don't think of LiveStage as the last multimedia software you'll ever buy.

Considering all it does, LiveStage has some fairly tame system requirements, which include a 333MHz or faster processor, 20MB RAM, 15MB hard drive space, QuickTime 6.0, CarbonLib 1.5, and either OS X version 10.2 or OS 9.1 depending upon your preference in operating systems.

Bottom line

With its drag-and-drop interface and assortment of customization and scripting tools built in, LiveStage is an excellent product that should be part of any multimedia pro's library. For someone just starting out in the realm of multimedia, we recommend starting with a simpler app, like Flash, which leads into more advanced apps like this one.

By the way, if you're still wondering what is possible with LiveStage, check out the LiveStage project showcase on the Totally Hip website (http://www.totallyhip.com/show_lsp/ ). Not only will you see what LiveStage can do, but you'll also see some very original concepts in interface and navigation design.

Item: LiveStage Professional 4 > Manufacturer: Totally Hip, Inc. > Price: $449.95 MSRPWeb: www.totallyhip.com > Pros: New drag-and-drop interface; MPEG 4 and Flash 5 support > Cons: Scripting language could be off-putting for novice users.