Mike Jones Digital Basin
cinematic media rinse cycle

Free creative software and resources list (updated)

Here follows the updated concise list of some of the most useful, powerful, functional and downright clever free software apps, utilities, plugins and resources available to the creative media maker.

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Celtx is the creative development tool of the digital age. 100% Open Source and Free to download and use. It combines screenplay formatting with script break-down tools, research and production scheduling functions. Forget that its Free, Celtx is the best tool of its kind on the market - integrated, comprehensive, holistic and very very functional. There just isnt a reaosn on the planet to Not be using Celtx. (Win, Mac)
www.celtx.com

Audacity is an excellent open source, cross-platform digital audio waveform editor that can work with a wide variety of audio codecs including wav, aiff and mp3. (Win, Mac)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Blender provides a powerful, free and open-source 3D modelling and graphics application that is complete with all the professional features you could want. modelling, rendering, animating, radiosity, textures, virtual cameras . (Win, Mac)
http://www.blender.org

Directors Boards is a very useful A/V storyboarding and script management tool. Perfect for those who like to storyboard with digital photos Uses a FileMaker Pro engine but doesnt require FileMaker to be installed. (Win, Mac)
http://www.directorsnotebook.com/

QT Movie Notetaker allows you to annotate Quicktime video files with specific timecode references. Perfect for reviewing a work in progress or providing feedback on a video project (Win, Mac)
http://www.dvcreators.net/qt-movie-notetaker/

Mpeg streamclip Cross platform encoding tool that is extremely effective. Will read program and transport stream formats and transcode to a host  of MOV and AVI wrapped files. (Win, Mac)
http://www.squared5.com/

DVD Shrink is the long standing Windows-based tool for ripping and recompressing DVD's. Of course many may use such a tool for illegal copies but with a good feature for selective DVD extraction its perfect for extracting individual scene clips. Such clips are great as examples for developing a films design or for those teaching filmmaking to demonstrate techniques and ideas. (Win)
http://www.dvdshrink.org/

Mac the ripper. For Mac users who don't have access to shrink Mac the Ripper is your best option for DVD extraction. Though it lacks the detailed extraction of Shrink it can rip by DVD chapters. (Mac)
http://www.mactheripper.org/

VLC. When you've finally hit the wall and can no longer tolerate the absurdities and incopetantcies of the QuickTime player (like its inability recognize widescreen anamorphic flags) move yourself on to VLC and never look back. VLC pays just about every format known to humankind. No mess, no fuss, just a better media player for all OS's. Lean, mean and effective. (Win, Mac)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Aspect ratio calculator. This is a simple java app that runs directly without installing and allows you to quickly calculate pixel dimensions based on 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Just plug in a horizontal measurement and the utility will calculate the vertical dimension (or vise versa). Great for scaling videos for online deliver in correct ratios. Cross-platform. (Win, Mac)
http://www.wideopendoors.net/design/aspect_ratio_calculator.html

Zipeg. There are near countless archive formats around (zip, rar, iso and so on) and Zipeg, available for Mac and windows, is free and unzips them all. (Win, Mac)
http://www.zipeg.com/

Video space widget. For Mac users the Digital Heaven VideoSpace  calculator runs a very useful widget. Elect your video format (hdv, dvcpro, dv, prores, uncompressed, xdcamhd, imx) and the duration and the widget will do an immediate calculation o the fie size. (Mac)
http://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/videospace/

Gspot. If you wrestle with online video, downloaded video and video scrounged in all manner of weird and wonderful codecs Gspot is your best friend. A simple drag and drop of the file will reveal everything you need to know about it - data rate, codec, format and what application you may need to open it. Windows only. (Win)
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

Reaper. Not 100% free but very bloody close to it ($50 for non-commercial use, $175 for pro users) Reaper is an amazingly powerful, totally functional and astoundingly efficient multitrack sequencer and audio system. Reaper is directly comparable to Sony's Acid, Adobe Audition and Apple SoundtrackPro and exceeds all three in some areas. What is truly staggering is that Reaper has comparable features to these three apps and yet the installer is just 3.2mb in size. So why is it that Acid, SoundTrack and Audition take up multiple DVD's..? Windows only for now but an OSX version coming soon. (Win)
http://www.reaper.fm/

Adobe Media Player. leveraging of the Flash platform and the FLV/On2 video format into what is arguably the most comprehensive net-TV system for RSS vieo feeds. Its slick, its powerful, its free. if you're into watching lots of online video then its hard to go past. (Win, Mac)
http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/

Miro Media Player. The open source answer to Adobe Media Player (AMP), Miro is a very comprehensive RSS video feeder, downloader and viewer. Miro offers all the power of AMP but in a completely open platform. (Win, Mac)
http://www.getmiro.com/

BlipTV. Of all the copious video hosting sites that flood the internet its BlipTV that have really found the right mix of ease of use, sophistication, clarity and quality. BlipTV doesn't play in the same lowest common denominator game as the likes of YouTube and its numerous clones; instead BlipTV is focused on hosting quality online video as a personal online Tv channel. It has fantastic RSS features, great embedding and player options, a clean simple interface and can host multiple versions and formats. t also has a Blog system built in. Blip once had competition from Stage6 and Brightcove but with Stage6 having its plug pulled and Brightcove going corporate only, BlipTV is left standing as one of the best video hosting options around.  For filmmakers in particular Blip makes a perfect on-line showreel system.
blip.tv

Ice Clean. The Mac OSX is a lovely efficient operating system but occasionally it demonstrates true absurdity. One such example is that all the built-in OS maintenance features are pre-set to run at ungodly hours of the morning. The geniuses at Apple obviously assume that EVERYONE leaves their computer on all night and doesn't use sleep mode to allow for this self-cleaning. Of course if you, like me, dont leave your computer on all night because you refuse to be a wasteful, environmental vandal, and do use sleep mode, your poor Mac may never get a chance to clean itself. The answer is IceClean which is a powerful system for manually running the maintenance protocols on your Mac.
http://www.macdentro.com/MacDentro/Home.html

Switch. Is the free version of NCH audio editing software that functions as a simple but very effective audio file convertor. Perfect for converting OGG or FLAC files to more universal WAV or AIFF. (Win, Mac)
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/

Perian for Quicktime Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. In simple terms it gives Quicktime the ability to play a host of different file formats that it otherwise cannot. In even simpler terms, Perian gives to QT what it SHOULD HAVE HAD IN THE BLOODY FIRST PLACE! Perian is an absolute Must have for every mac user. (Mac)
http://perian.org/

Posted at 12:10PM Jun 06, 2008 by Mike Jones in technology  |  Comments[2]