Not so crazy about Aviary...

For the past four hours, I have been attempting to use Aviary, "a free suite of powerful online creation tools". Now, I know that I don't have a whole lot of patience for figuring out applications I don't understand. However, I purposely went into today's task with a clear head and had not a slight feeling of pessimism.

Four hours later, I'm ready to throw the computer out the window.

I have found multiple problems with Aviary; the first being that it says that beginners can use these tools...that is not completely true.

The first thing I tried to use was the Phoenix tool, which is an image editing program. This is the video they show on the website of what you can do with the program:


When I first took a look at that video I thought the program was going to be so cool and that I would be able to create such awesome images; that did not happen. I opened up four tutorials in total and attempted to do four different things including: adding a border (which doesn't sound too hard, cloning the background of a photo, casting shadows,and lastly understanding layers.

I read and re-read these tutorials at least two or three times each (like I said, I've been doing this for 4 hours) and I was only able to follow the "Understanding Layers" one. This is what I was able to create:
1st try.egg on Aviary.

Kiersten, Logan, and Jules in the Desert.egg on Aviary.

Happy Saint Patricks Day!.egg on Aviary.

The second image was the coolest one in my opinion; however it is still no way near what I should be capable of doing on this program. For people with experience in graphic design, this program must be heaven.

For those who have only used a photo-shop application, this is confusing.

The biggest problem is that the tutorials that they provide don't use the same language for the tools and toolbars that are on the website. It gets confusing when they tell you to use a specific tool, and then it is not there. When I got really lost I used this support page which made it easier to figure out.

Although difficult to use,I think the idea of using photo-editing programs in journalism could be useful for stories and websites. The only problem I could see is that it takes time to edit and be creative with these photos.

The next tool I tried was the Audio Editor. When I first opened the program, I thought it looked very familiar to a program I used for one of my classes so I thought I would be able to use it easily.

What I found is that this is also confusing. There are many dead-ends in this program that made me feel as though I didn't have the freedom I would have liked to have in an audio editing program. I tried to put two songs together, but was not able to make the volume of the voice lower than the music, which was upsetting. I then tried put together an interview with a song on two different tracks, but I was not able to cut certain pieces of the interview.

A program that is very similar to this but easier to use and you have many more options is Audacity. It is a free downloadable audio editing program. This is something I created on Audacity for a class of mine. The project, which required a lot of editing, was to turn a two-person interview into one person telling a story.

Foleyaudio3.7.wav. by user179716

An audio-editing program I think is very useful for journalism. If there is a case where a reporter does not have a flip camera on them but has an audio recording device, using a program to create a story out of an interview to put up on a website could be nice to have. Also, if someone does not want their face to be shown on a website, having them create their own story using just their voice may be appealing to audience members.

Next, I played around with Aviary's Music Creator. This program, I must say, did not necessarily need instructions. I just started to play around with it and I understood it pretty quickly. It was really fun to play with for a while but I just don't see a real journalistic purpose for it. This is the sound bite that I created using sounds from a piano, bells, and a harp:

Practice 1.egg on Aviary.

Lastly, I tried to use the Peacock Application which is an effects editor which Aviary calls its "Visual Laboratory". Once again, look at how cool this looks:



And so I got all excited to be able to do that too, but was only more disappointed then before. I am thinking that maybe there was a problem with their server, or something wrong internally. I uploaded a picture to the "canvas" to start editing, but when I got there I was not able to click on anything. I would click, click, click away on different effects but nothing was happening! It really seemed as though something within the website was wrong because literally,NOTHING worked when I clicked on it.

I am not exactly sure how useful an effect editor like this would be in the field of journalism; it seems more like it has a professional art focus, but it definitely would be cool to play with if it would work.

There is a possibility that I will give Aviary a second chance and try to learn it better in the future; however as of right now I think that it is more for people with experience in web/graphic design and is too time consuming for small newsrooms to be using.