VAMP Media Center 4.1.0

VAMP is a free media center for viewing photos and listening to your music to creating your own clips, wallpapers, screen-savers, calendars and greetings. There is always a big challenge to create such a software, especially in this days when every publisher is concentrating a lot on multimedia applications. More than this to try and create one that is also free.

VAMP should be the perfect media center, but it isn't. It's a hardware resources eater, mainly because it scans all the media files from your computer, and it will work only with the links to them. This system is very similar to Windows Media Player.

At first I tried to create a clip mix. The clip editor interface is very similar to Windows Movie Maker, so I was happy to begin creating. Unfortunately it took an eternity for the application to load 3 clips for the mix. This clips were in total 1:25 minutes, but the application evem crashed in the begining. Second time I tried, I wished to save the mix, but the application could save only the project, without being able to convert the mix in a normal video format. Don't try the preview because the clips won't run continuosly. The result project runs much better.

Similar to creating the clip mix, is the slide show creator, the screen saver creator and the wallpaper creator. You just have to choose the video, audio and picture files, the transitions and effects that you want to apply and then save the project.

The calendar is something new and very simple to use feature. From your personal pictures collection, you can create a calendar that you can set it as a wallpaper, print it or save it as image. If you think that your creation is quite remarkable, you can send it also to a friend via e-mail.

VAMP has also an online service from where you can obtain new photo collections from different user, and of course upload your own. This service can be set to download pictures every hour, twice a day, once a day and weekly.

Pluses: calendar creator, online service;

Drawbacks / flaws: hardware resources eater when working with video clips; cannot save the result clips in a normal video format;

In conclusion: Being a free media center application, you can try it, but if you wish to create better clips use another one.

version reviewed: 4.00