FREEBIES

Your webmaster is a Scot - with a frugal Scottish attitude to obtaining tools and media.
So here is a collection of goodies which prove that sometimes you do get more than you pay for ...

Video Editor | Sound Editor | Computer Tools | Music & Sound Effects | Natural Sounds |  Fake & Make | DVD Burning | Special Effects & Stock Footage | Public Domain & Creative Commons Materials | Animation

Music		Atmospheric Sounds
	In this video Kevin McLeod demonstrates how choice of music influences the way audiences understand your movie. Watch it, then visit his site http://incompetech.com to explore mountains of fine music.	A favourite of your webmaster is Atmosphere ( Ambient Soundscape Generator ) which does just what its name suggests. It lets you generate all sorts of soundscapes which can run as long as you need - complete with random sounds to maintain variety. I use it as a relaxing background sound when working. The "Lite" version is free from www.vectormediasoftware.com - scroll to the foot of the download page to find it. If you enjoy it as much as I do you may even be tempted to buy one of the more fully featured versions.
Explore the link at www.freebyte.com/music to find material you can use. It's not Apple's excellent freebie, Garage Band, but Sony's Acid XPress for Windows allows PC users to make decent music for movies.		Make and Fake How often have you needed a fake newspaper headline for a drama? What about a fictional brand of cigarettes (so you do not get sued). Or even your own clapperboard image? fodey.com makes it easy to generate those and more.
Special Effects & Stock Footage Stock Footage For Free Want a shot of the presidential helicopter taking off from the White House? How about Niagara Falls? A Nantucket sunset or a Malibu one? Short full-sized clips to use as cutaways or background for green-screen trickery - requires signing up but costs nothing at - Stock Footage For Free. Give your video that "old, scratched film" look in Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express with the CGM Aged Film LE plug-in - totally free.		Sound Editor Audacity offers complete control of sound recording and post-production control of sound ... totally free. It runs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Video Editors VideoSpin comes free from Pinnacle and makes it easy to assemble video, stills and music into simple movies - ready for viewing, upload to YouTube and so on. It is for Windows XP (SP2) and Windows Vista. Virtual Dub is a free simple editing program for Windows and aimes mainly at AVI files. Windows Movie Maker - for XP. This may be on your PC already, if not you cannot get it from Microsoft any longer, but you can get it here. Allows easy assembly of video footage into attractive movies. For those on Vista or Windows 7 try the Windows Live Moviemaker. iMovie - bundled with most Macs this is a powerful editor for simpler projects.
Animation Software Pencil Animation Software - animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source. Pencil 2D Animation - allows you to create cartoons inclusing sound. For Windows, Mac and Linux. TrueSpace free 2D/3D graphics software - a great free package to explore. Take a look at SmashMash which lets you play with stills or videos to add simple animation, new dialog and more.		Making and Burning a DVD Editing systems produce an AVI or MOV file of your movie. You can burn those to a DVD but they will not run in a normal domestic DVD player. You need a DVD authoring program which will prepare the standard folder and files make your movie play on most set-top boxes. DVD Flick is simple to install and use as well as being very effective. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles and a menu. It is totally free. Or check out VideoDVD Maker where the free version offers all you may need.
Computer Tools A startling number of computers have little or no protection against computer viruses. Even Apple machines - long considered relatively immune - have become targets for the bad guys. In the past viruses might wipe files or corrupt your system. Now they are more likely to steal you identity, credit card and bank details - or to make your computer part of a worldwide network which can be used to send spam mail or carry out denial-of-service attacks on businesses. There are several good commercial packages to protect your system. There are also pretty good free tools. AVG - Anti-Virus - the free version lacks a firewall, spam stopper and a few bells and whistles, but there is nothing to match it for the price! There are more comprehensive paid for programs from the same company. PC Tools Firewall - a good, robust firewall to keep the bad guys out of your Windows PC. Ad-Aware is so good it has been adopted by Google. It finds tracker cookies and other threats to your privacy. There is a free and various paid for versions. Foxit  PDF Reader - much smaller and faster than the Adobe PDF Reader - for Windows.		Public Domain/ Creative Commons Materials These are libraries and links to all sorts of images, movies, music and material that is freely available for use in your projects. Sometimes a credit is required - check each site carefully. www.archive.org/index.php http:/turtleservices.com/jukebox.htm www.collectionscanada.ca/index-e.html www.freebyte.com/music www.a1freesoundeffects.com/radio.html www.freesound.org www.partnersinrhyme.com/soundfx/warsounds.shtml
MeltMail How about a very temporary email address? Use it get activation keys for new software without the follow-on sales emails. Use it to post a single question to a web forum. it asks for a real email address and how many hours you want the temporary one to last: 3, 6, 12 or 24. Free Email There are free web mail services available from Windows Live (formerly Hotmail), AOL, Yahoo, Google, GMX and others.		PRE-PRODUCTION Project Dragonfly - a web-based room design program intended to help people choose their furnishings. But it can also help you send details of a location to other people on the film team, help you plan lighting and camera angles etc.

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