Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

[KGL]

Hi all,
I am thinkng of buying AMS4 and am in the process of comparing it to other authoring software on the market. I will use it for the following: I am a former teacher now raising a baby. I want to make educational CD's to sell. I do not have programming experience, and I can usually figure things out as long as they are meant for the average person willing to figure something out. What will the pro's and con's (if you're allowed to post that) be for my situation?

Also, I am assuming I am allowed to sell CD's I make using AMS4. Do I pay royalities or put a special icon on my product?

Thanks, all.
-- Kristine

[Corey]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

You will love AutoPlay Mdia Studio 4.0 it's built exactly for people such as yourself. Best of all you can take it for a test drive with full functionality right here:

http://www.indigorose.com/products/trial_downloads1.php

Feel free to ask any follow up questions you may have... As for royalties, once you buy AMS you can build whatever you want with it and distribute royalty free. (Provided you haven't infringed on someone else's copyrighted material)

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

You're gonna love it! No royalties, no Indigo Rose mention required. Since you are in the educational market, one drawback that I see is no Mac OS support. I know the numbers in the educational market are much more slanted toward Macintosh than elsewhere. There has been some talk of Mac OS X runtimes, but there will never be a Macintosh authoring environment.

Otherwise, a terrific product to suit your needs!

[KGL]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Thanks - I was going to ask about the Macs and forgot! So with AMS4, once I have my project burned on a CD, it will not run on a Mac. Is that correct?

[cartire]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Hi there. You are correct in that the resulting CD's you make will not play in a Mac.
Other than that, its a great product if you're not marketing specifically to schools.

Carter

[Corey]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Although many schools run Macs, you will never have a problem finding a market for high quality educational materials for PC if you take the time to learn some basic marketing skills, the market is HUGE.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Yep, currently no way to run this stuff on a Mac (actually there is with Connectix's Virtual PC - but that is going to make your projects run unreliably). Certainly no way to distribute to a wider Mac audience, no.

But Corey is right. If I had to have one operating system over the other, I'd go with the flow. Windows is a much more accessible market for sales. While I would LOVE to see my projects run on OS X, I can live without that functionality.

[John-oh]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users


Go for it, its a very capable product. So much more than I think we have begun to explore. When the Autoplayzone site come up I'm sure we'll have lots of examples of what can be done.
The only slight downside, is that it's so versatile and has so many actions / commands, (although these are all accessed via drop down lists and dialog boxes) it may take you some time to get the best out of it, but at least you know you will not 'grow out' of it after a couple of Projects.
I find its one of those apps that enable you to very quickly 'knock up' a Project, but when you've finished you'll think "next time I'll do it like this.." and then having done that you'll think of yet another way of presenting your Project - hours of fun.

Go for the trial download, and as you can see the forum is stacked with people who should get out more, but are very knowledgable and helpful.

[Bruce]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Hello KGL-
I can only assume the other authoring program is Director, right? That is the standard most certainly, but... AMS is very hot on their trail! I use both and Director has a massive learning curve. Spend the $395 here as appose to $900 there and be much happier. ;-)

[Corey]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot to mention. We give our users better support than pretty much any software company out there, feel free to ask about around here if you'd like. just take a look around at the video tutorials, templates, etc. and the fact that you can ask a question around here and usually get an answer with a working example and/or vid tutorial in mere hours.

This is not sales hype but I have never seen this anywhere else. We genuinely care about our users on a purely human level, and the CEO of Indigo Rose is completely committed to carrying through on this approach for the long term.

As I say, feel free to ask around here about our sales, service, and support performance, no one can say it better than our actual users.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

no one can say it better than our actual users

I had been looking around for 3 years for a better answer to Director. I wasn't looking for the exact same feature set in a cheaper product - I was looking for proper customer care in a better product. AMS doesn't do all of the things Director can, but it does most, and then some, and it's a whole bunch more fun! I've said it before on the forums and in talking with colleagues, Indigo Rose are collectively the best customer care people I've had the pleasure of working with. And I've worked with quite a few professional software products before.

[Carlos]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Usually fast, reliable support.

Oh and the programme is great too!

[KGL]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Thanks everyone -

Corey - I can see what you mean about the excellent support. I read around a bit before I asked my question, and I was really impressed by your customer service.

[Corey]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

Certainly no individual is to be credited for this, it is a full blown team effort for which credit goes to the entire Indigo Rose team BUT also, and maybe even more noteworthy, all our users here in the forum who I am proud to say are some of the most helpful and knowledgable users I have seen in any software forum.

Glad to hear you're getting positive vibes. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[CD_MANIAC]

Re: Thinking of buying AMS4 - question for users

If you need cross-platform(UNIX, PC & MAC) cd burning along with AutoPlay, you can give CDEverywhere(www.cdeverywhere.com) a try. I use both with no issues and very happy.


FYI - This is not an advertisement!!