video editing

PhotoFilmStrip Creates Ken Burn-Style Video From Images

9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows/Linux: Free, open-source application PhotoFilmStrip creates video from photographs quickly and easily, complete with effects, a soundtrack and smooth zoom in/out effects (commonly referred to as the Ken Burns effect). More »

PhotoLapse Makes Time-Lapse Movie Creation A Snap

6:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows: PhotoLapse is a tiny and portable application for stitching together images into a time-lapse video. Point it at a folder full of pictures, and you’re mostly done. More »

Photoshop.com Hosts Videos Up To 2GB In Size

7:00AM Adam Pash | Today, online photo editor Photoshop.com announced that they’re now allowing users to upload and share videos up to 2GB in size. More »

Windows Live Movie Maker Leaves Beta, Ready For Download

7:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Windows Live Movie Maker—the new, ribbon-sporting, updated version of Windows Movie Maker, has left beta and is now ready to handle your video editing needs. More »

Free Video Cutter Cuts And Splits Your Videos

9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: If you’ve ever needed to extract a small section of a much longer video to share with friends or family, Free Video Cutter 1.1 is a dead-simple solution. More »

Portable Windows Movie Maker Resurrects Missing Features

3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows: If you’re using Vista or Windows 7 and miss some of the features and transitions that were in earlier versions of Windows Movie Maker, this portable version brings them back. More »

Six Best Video Editing Applications

2:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | You want to be the supreme ruler of your own virtual cutting room? Better break out the checkbook—your film-chopping powers aren’t going to come cheaply. Photo by FaceMePLS. More »

Puredyne Turns Any Computer Into A Multimedia Powerhouse

10:30AM Lifehacker US Edition | If you’re looking to get some more use out of an old machine, or just play around with multimedia programs but not interested in shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars, download Puredyne. Based on Debian Linux, the downloadable disk image fits on a standard CD-R and will boot on almost any machine — you can even run it on your current system without having to partition any drives or re-install your operating system. The distribution includes all the software a multimedia maker might need, including Kino and Cinelerra for video editing; Audacity and Pure Data for audio; and GIMP and Inkscape for images, along with other fantastic open-source tools ranging from software synthesisers and drum machines to BitTorrent clients and encoding tools. Since all the software is free, it’s perfect for educators as well as starving artists and enthusiastic hackers. It’s a great introduction to Linux for creative types scared of anything besides Mac OS X — the interface is familiar enough to any casual computer user that you should be able to start watching videos from across your network with media player VLC in no time. Puredyne More »

Soundsnap Offers Free Downloadable Sound Effects

10:30AM Lifehacker US Edition | Spice up your videos, games, applications or just make system alerts a little more hilarious by downloading sound effects from Soundsnap. Whether you’re an electronic musician using Ableton Live or a budding YouTube auteur looking to flesh out the audio on a Final Cut Pro project, libraries of free sound effects, loops and samples are like mana (I’m a longtime fan of The Freesound Project). All the sound effects at Soundsnap are uploaded by creators, so if you’ve already done some foley work or futzed around with a Moog to produce sci-fi ambience, help out others by contributing. There are already many thousands of audio clips already available. If you’re a multimedia maker, what sound effects sources do you use? Soundsnap [via Echoplex Park] More »

Xtranormal Makes You The Director Of A 3D Clip

1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Xtranormal, a free 3D animation creation and sharing tool, is a seriously addictive sandbox for crafting miniature dramas, comedies, or whatever you can tell your little actors to do. The clip editor works like a storyboard that you drag story changes onto. So in one “scene,” for example, you can have the camera switch to a close-up view, have your character wink and then recite some decent text-to-speech dialogue, then have them cross their arms and make the camera go for an overhead shot. You can add another character, change the backdrops, turn the camera positioning to automatic, and generally spend way too much time being an online Hitchcock (or Scorcese, or Tarantino, or any other name you care to drop). Building the movies takes a good chunk of time, and sometimes fails entirely, though that might be due to early-discovery traffic. Xtranormal is free to use, requires a sign-up to save your clips for later editing. Feel free to share links to your own mini-epics in the comments. Xtranormal [via TechCrunch] More »