Arboretum is now shipping Montage Media Editor, an alternative to Apple’s iMovie, for Mac OS X. The cost is US$149.
Montage features a “transparent” user interface and a “trackless” workspace that lets you manipulate video, audio, stills, and text in an expandable window, according to Arboretum. Media clips can be dragged and dropped, imported or captured in real time from a FireWire DV camera. You can then arrange them in Montage Media Editor’s workspace to make movies or audio projects.
Real-time, editable transitions are automatically created when video clips are dragged atop each other. Over a dozen video effects — including edge detection, emboss, film noise, and color tint — can be applied to any video clip. A realtime preview box helps in adjusting effect parameters.
Audio clips can be edited, arranged, stacked, and processed for soundtrack generation. Montage comes with a variety of effects from Arboretum suite of processors; more can be added thanks to Montage Media Editor’s plug-in architecture. Included with the app are Ray Gun and Ray Gun Pro for cleaning up scratchy vinyl, tape hiss, hum, and other audio problems.
Montage’s text features lets you display credits, section titles and karaoke lyrics. Font type, font size, text color, style, alignment, scroll direction, and auto clip duration can be adjusted. You can put text against a transparent background for use on video or specific your own background color. Text boxes can be placed over video clips or keyed against an editable background with adjustable duration for scrolling.
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