PhatBoy Hacker Interactive Music Tool Released

Leading UK new media developer Modified today announced the immediate availability of PhatBoy Hacker, a major upgrade to its 1998 interactive music utility, PhatBoy.

PhatBoy Hacker enables you to combine audio, graphic and video samples to automatically create endlessly morphing multimedia productions for Windows and Macintosh platforms. With PhatBoy Hacker you can import GIF and JPG bitmap files, AVI and QuickTime movies, WAV, AIF and MP3 audio files.

These can then be quickly and easily combined to create ever-changing eight track audio mixes of your own samples in realtime and run them with both video and bitmap graphics as standalone creations - playing over your own audio CDs if desired.

PhatBoy Hacker will trawl local hard drives and networks, preview the multimedia files it finds and allow you to import chosen material. When you've finished selecting, PhatBoy Hacker will automatically create ever-changing mixes of your sample and videographic combinations - with a handy readout of which files are playing.

With the facility to save and edit your creations, PhatBoy Hacker takes the hassle out of wading through your multimedia sample collections trying to mix and match your sounds and vision.

Joe Maas, Modified's development director, comments: "The original PhatBoy has proved to be an extremely popular creative tool for smartly sequencing random sound samples together to produce eight track evolving mixdowns. So we thought, okay, let's add some visuals to proceedings and support for MP3 and audio CD. Cue PhatBoy Hacker - now you can mix and match your own videos and graphics to any sound mix - whether it be from samples, MP3 or your favourite CD."

Maas believes Hacker is the tool any budding new media artist or developer should own, adding: "With its support to export to Macromedia cast format, Hacker enables new media developers to pull together diverse media and act as a digital sketchbook for content planning. What's more, its user-selectable randomiser mode means Hacker will come up with audio and visual combinations users won't have preconceived."

Types of standalone productions supported:

• audio only - WAV, AIF, MP3 or combinations thereof
• bitmap and audio - GIF, JPG and audio as above
• video and audio - AVI and QuickTime with audio as above. Plus playback over audio CDs