Product Review: Abaltat Muse Composes Music For Your Video
I’m A minor (get it) when it comes to any sense of the word music composer. But with Abaltat Muse the freaking software does it for you. I like this software… a lot. It is perfect for corporate industrials, commercials, short web videos. I’m holding judgment about how it works with dramatic pieces and films. I will be testing it on a couple of short film projects in the near future. They have a 30 day free trial. If you are even half way interested in this you should download and try it out.
All my reviews are subject to change after I write the initial review. The more I use a product and unlock the features I’ll return to this post and update it.
Overview
Abaltat Muse is made for video editors. It gives you a great jump start in getting the music that you need for your video. 
You drag any kind of video clip, SD, HD, 1080i, 720p, .mp4, .mov and drop it on the Abaltat Muse icon on your Dock and it immediately begins to analyze the movie file.
After analyzing the file It compiles the colors from the video and sorts them into individual tracks on a separate timeline. Those separate colors are the key to the composition of the music.
Now press the Compose button in the main timeline.
A new menu appears with the settings for your new score.
There are so many possible ways to compose your audio track to make it sound the way you want. But you have to experiment with the software and understand what each selection will do for you. For instance. The drop down menu gives you the power to select the band anything from ensemble one to percussion one. The band selection gives you different instruments for each band selected. Once the band is selected and you click the OK button you can change the instruments with keyframes in the timeline… I’ll get to that later.
Go ahead and select the Beats Per Minute (BPM) the greater BPM will give you a faster beat and the less will give a slow beat. You can also tell the software which colors to pay attention to. Look at the color timeline and select the colors that are most prevalent. Hit OK and watch the software work. All the instruments being summoned and sorted into the new score for your video.
Now hit the play button and listen to your new score for your video. It might be overwhelming at first but that is because Melody 1 & Melody 2 are turned on under the Tracks on the main timeline. Go ahead and click off Melody 1 while it is playing. Click it back on and click off Melody 2. This is a great tool because you can preview the audio in real time. Once the software composes the score you can now go back and fool around with the settings and listen to the changes.
Usability
It is fairly simple to compose music for your video track. It is a bit more difficult to make good music. When you download the software you have a couple of video samples you can test out. The great thing about these samples are the colors in the video. There is a BMW commercial. The car is an intense red with a white background and a splash of other high contrast colors. If you are using this program to compose a short film I suggest you use it from scene to scene rather than the whole project at once.
All editors are familiar with keyframes and this software allows you to add keyframes to change the instruments, volume, pan, transpose and tonality. It gives you the option to rearrange anything you can think of.
If you feel that the instruments are lacking the sound you require but you like the feel of the score and you want to use different instruments you can export the composed music as a .midi file and import it into Garageband. Once open in Garageband you can change any of the instrument tracks to any Garageband instrument. I love that option, I’m not a fan of the instruments in Abaltat Muse they sound too much like computer music. If the instruments sounded more like Garageband this would be huge, but with the functionality of importing the file in Garageband and using the instruments that you want they are at least allowing the user to make it to their liking.
Features
• Designed for video editors
• Create broadcast quality music compositions quicker than real-time
• No music royalty payments
• Rich variety of Abaltat Bands gives a wide choice of musical genre
• Complimentary and seamless integration with Apple, Avid, Adobe and Media 100 edit applications
• Full MIDI export functionality to import directly into Digidesign Pro Tools or
Apple’s Logic applications
Geek Specs
Mac OSX
10.4.7 (PPC) 10.4.8 (Intel)
512mb RAM (2 GB recommended)
Download file size is 3.2GB
Version 1.0 of Abaltat Muse™ runs on Mac OSX. A Windows version will be released in 2008.
The video is imported as a quicktime file and the finished compositions can be exported as .AIFF or .WAV files or as MIDI files. The Abaltat Muse playout works with Mac’s own soundcard or with the standard editing third party cards such as Blackmagic.
Price
$495. Not a big fan of the price. I have to work too much in order to get the sound that I want. When you are the editor, composer, motion graphic designer and DVD author this is one more step in the process that will take you longer. If you are a quick learner and have a great ear and understand music then Abaltat Muse is a steal compared to sound libraries. With Abaltat Muse you can make more soundtracks and customize it for each project. That alone is great, no more searching through Hip Hop Sounds Vol 1-10, or Made in America Patriotic Tunes Vol 1-107. If you can use this application and make it work then it pays for itself. There is a 30 day trial which I encourage you to try out it is a trip and you will fall for it.
