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I’m looking forward to purchasing Adobe’s CS5 Master Suite sometime around September.  It’s a big purchase, but with a faculty/education discount I’ll finally be able to have a few programs I need and several that I want, all for a third of the cost.  I’ve been using open-source versions of some of these products for several years now, and it’s time to graduate.

To be clear though, I disagree with anyone claiming that commercial software products like Adobe’s are the only way to go.  Although commercial software often has more advanced features than their open-source or freeware counterparts, the reality is that most people are only using basic parts of these programs and thus have paid for lots of features they’ll never use.  If you only need to cut objects out of images or adjust color levels, why pay for Photoshop CS5 when Gimpshop works just as well?

I’d like to pay tribute to some of the free software programs I’ve used to complete projects over the years.  Even though I’m upgrading to commercial software for some of their uses, I’ll probably still use many of them, and of course recommend them to friends.  Hope this is useful to you!

Audacity. It’s a great little digital audio editor.  It has a simple & straightforward interface, which means there really isn’t much of a learning curve.  I have a hard time seeing it as a complete solution for audio editing, though.  I’ve just used it to edit voiceovers and such because I really prefer the more advanced features of Pro-Tools and Soundtrack Pro (commercial products) for editing music and sound effects.

Blender. Warning – do not install this program unless you don’t mind looking up and realizing you’ve just spent three days straight animating a snowman.  That’s exactly what happened when I downloaded Blender, a 3D modeling and animation program.  It taught me a lot about using three dimensions of space, which has come in handy with other visual effects programs like Motion 4.

Celtx. I actually just started using this program, and all I can say is WOW. For storyboarding and project organization, I can’t imagine anything better.  It works for several types of projects – scriptwriting, comics, novels, commercial/broadcast shoots – you name it.  After just 2 weeks, I’m a big fan.

Gimpshop. I’ve blogged about Gimpshop in bits and pieces before, so it’s well-documented where I stand with this product.  We’ve had our problems, Gimp and I, but that’s not going to keep me from recommending it to my students next year when they complain about not having Photoshop on their home computers.

Handbrake. This snappy little program is a go-to for me when I have to do some quick converting, particularly if I’m ripping video out of a .VOB container.  Plus, I love that the program instructs me to “put down that cocktail” when my file’s ready!

Inkscape. Gimpshop is to Photoshop as Inkscape is to Illustrator.  For basic creation and manipulation of vector images, look no further than Inkscape. I’ve never used it with a drawing tablet or for anything fancy, but I’ve laid out some invites and the like using this program and I found it relatively easy to use once I got the hang of it.

Kino. Truthfully, I only used this program a few times because I had access to better NLE systems at school.  But I thought Kino worked just fine for editing digital video; and in fact reminded me of the old iMovie interface.  Sometimes, you can’t beat simple & easy. But the bad news is that it only runs on Linux.

MacTheRipper. This program rips DVDs straight from the drive, which makes it ideal for ripping several movie chapters or the whole movie.  I like that there are several settings you can manipulate to decrease the file size, or just grab a few scenes from an authored DVD instead of having to rip the whole thing.  Hooray for space-saving!

MythTV. Forget paying your cable company for DVR – if you have a spare computer lying around, use MythTV! When Tanner set up our Mac Mini to work as our MythTV box, we could record television shows, pause and rewind live TV, and even save shows to the server.  We used it a lot until Tanner needed the Mac Mini for some other project and we got a Netflix streaming disc.  I still think it’s a sweet little program.

Soundslides. Great for turning your photos into a video with music.  Prior to finding Soundslides, I used Quicktime Pro for this.  Soundslides is actually easier to use for this purpose than Quicktime Pro, and it allows for more precision.

VLC. I’m trying, but I still don’t fully understand certain codecs and how they work.  That’s why VLC is a little like magic to me.  VLC seems to be able to open any file, regardless of format or codec.  VLC isn’t my default media player, but I definitely use VLC a lot for troubleshooting file & codec problems.  It seems that if VLC can’t open it, nothing can.

Actually, I should say that I love my jobs since I seem to wear so many hats lately.  I just finished up the IgniteOKC 2 videos this weekend and they’re finally uploaded to the IgniteOKC  YouTube channel (Tanner said we’ve uploaded 14 GB this weekend alone!!! Holy crap, HD Video!!). Below is my favorite talk from IgniteOKC – and it’s not just because I’m biased (Watch it in HD if you like):

As you can see, I kept things much, much simpler this time around by using just two static camera angles.  I think this helped put the focus back on the speaker and the content, and less on the event itself.  It certainly made the videos easier to edit and color correct.  I also went with tighter shots on both cameras, which I think helped immensely.

Then today, I filmed the EJPPG Client Day showcase at the OSU Alumni Center.  EJPPG wanted to shoot some client testimonials as well as some of the action at the client day.  I ended up shooting over two hours of client testimonial – it was non-stop! But, I think I got some great stuff from the clients and I can’t wait to log and rough cut that footage tomorrow.

Since I’m back in charge of the Road Crew, I had to set up one of our sound systems for today’s event as well. It was a little rough trying to handle two things in different areas, but SCC’s new public relations intern, Shea, was a big help.  Shea learned how to control the audio equipment really quickly, and he was a great ambassador for the Road Crew.  My job is cool, and so are my co-workers!

Days like today are typical of what I want out of my life and career.  I love to be challenged and stressed and multi-tasking on several different projects.  I’m also so excited to be working on several video projects at once, even if it is a little overwhelming.  There are some days that I’m just not sure what I want to do.  And then there’s today – when I realize I’m kind of already doing it.

I found a new tool to put in my A/V tool belt today: screencast-o-matic.  Unlike a lot of other screencasting programs, this one is browser based and it’s free.  You can upgrade to a premium account for $5 that will allow you to record up to an hour and will remove the watermark.  I don’t really care about those features, but I kind of want to give these guys $5 anyway.  You can quickly upload your screencast to YouTube, or export it as a .mp4, .avi or .flv on your computer.  It’s also super-fast; I made this screencast in about 4 minutes:

Full disclosure – I used the internal mic on my laptop, so the audio was kind of soft. When I tested to see how well the screencast imported into FCP (answer: very) I boosted the audio a bit.  Anyway, I thought this was a very cool and useful tool, so I hope you’re able to get some use out of it or the Quicktime trick I showed you in the video!