Free Stuff!!!

[Nikosony]

Thanks for telling us how a particular piece of software worked, I haven't gotten round to trying them all (maybe one day). Glad to hear it helped you out in your work presentation, I think the quality of freeware and open source has improved considerably over the past few years. I spotted this on my way here tonight, it isn't freeware but for $149.99 it's looks like a cheap ticket into the world of special effects, chromakeying and colour grading. It's called CompositeLab Pro, first time I've heard of it and it can be found at:

CompositeLab Pro - FXhome + 10' x 6' Green Screen

CompositeLab Pro 'professional grading and compositing for digital video'

You also get a 10 ft by 6 ft greenscreen thrown in with it.

$149.99

Watch the short demo video aswell to see what it can do.

I should point out I have no affiliation to any of the products or companies in this thread.

[Nikosony]

Freeware basic particle generator...

I recently downloaded a small program called Explogenv2 that allows you to create explosions for games, while looking at it and messing around with the settings I saw some potential for creating basic particle effects. It has 3 inbuilt emitters but I just used number 1 and created a series of still images to create an animation. You can find it at: http://www.kenginegaming.com/explogen2page.php

It will create your file but you will need another small app called Img2Avi, where you can import a set of bitmap images and it will convert them to a .avi file that can then be opened in all the popular editors. It can be found at: Img2Avi Jpg2Avi Bmp2Avi Gif2Avi

Unfortunately the .avi files created don't have an alpha channel but I just used Luma Keying to get rid of the black background.

If you decide to download Explogenv2, try these settings to create a particle effect:

Explosion 1 (on) Explosions 2 and 3 set to off

Speed 1

Amount 400

Life 30

Particles

Speed 4

Amount 40

Life 30

Type Fuzzy

Start Colour Purple R=128 G=128 B=255
End Colour Light Grey R=192 G=192 B=192

[Nikosony]

Some more bits 'n' bobs I ran into while wasting time on the Internet...

Two interesting plug-ins for Virtual Dub, might be worth having a closer look to see how many more are lying in some dark corner of the net.

Editors Vista files subcategory (page 1). - Free Vista Files


Video DeNoise for VirtualDub 2.0

The filter for VirtualDub to remove video noise on VHS movie. Its main task is suppression of noise as small bright lines, red or blue color, less often green. Reducing noise can increase video encoding quality and decrease file size.

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Editors Vista files subcategory (page 1). - Free Vista Files

AviTricks Classic 1.64

AviTricks is a non-linear AVI video editor with real-time preview. The sub-project approach allows combined effects, while rubber-band adjustment gives a smooth blending of video and audio for a professional result in .AVI or Windows Media Format.

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video edit freeware, shareware, software - Windows Vista Downloads

Kate's Video Converter (free)

Video converter which can convert video file between all popular video formats including AVI, WMV, MOV , DIVX, ASF, 3GP, MP4, MPEG1, MPEG2, VCD-PAL ,VCD-NTSC, SVCD-PAL, SVCD-NTSC, DVD-PAL, DVD-NTSC and other formats.

Also check out Kate's Video Cutter and Kate's Video Joiner.

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video edit freeware, shareware, software - Windows Vista Downloads

DivXLand Media Subtitler 2.0.5

Software Description:
DivXLand Media Subtitler allows you to create and edit external subtitle files for AVI, MPG, WMV and all type of videos fast and easily. The subtitle creation process consists ... subtitles into the opened media file during the video playback using just a click. The program includes cutting-edge features to edit and improve existing subtitle files as well. Now with support for more than 30 subtitle formats.

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Multimedia Software Developer: Ulead Download Center - Free Goodies

Freeware


* Ulead ArtTexture.Plugin
Explore the possibilities of digital tie-dye by creating multi-color patterns swirls and backgrounds.
* Ulead Particle.Plugin
* Eight natural particle effects for images and selections - smoke, fire, bubbles, clouds, rain and more.
Ulead FantasyWarp
Take any image or selection and warp, distor, and twist it into surreal patterns.
* Ulead DV Converter
Ulead DV Converter conveniently changes DV Type I format video to DV Type II.

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Download Freez 3GP Video Converter 2.0 - Freez 3GP Video Converter - convert batches of video files to 3gp, 3g2 - Softpedia

Freez 3GP Video Converter 2.0

Freez 3GP Video Converter was designed to be a 3GP-converting tool for mobile phone users. With Freez 3GP Video Converter, you can convert batches of video files to 3gp, 3g2 formats to be played on mobile phones.

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Download Design & Photo Freeware only

MSU Old Cinema 2.0 VirtualDub plugin 2.0

Free video effect of old cinema plugin for VirtualDub. Make you video like CHRONICLE (several effects: noise, color, speck of dust, FPS changing and etc)! Easy to use.

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[videospot]

Great, here another freeware E.M. Free DVD Copy 2.01 which can copy DVD and rip DVD to any video format.
E.M. Free DVD Copy - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com
http://www.effectmatrix.com/free-DVD-copy/

[Nikosony]

Wire Pilot Plugin 1.0 is no longer freeware. It has just been upgraded to version 3.0 and is now shareware. You can still download a free version with the wire removal tool included but a more sophisticated patching tool is not available in the free version. It is called Wire Pilot Lite 3.0.3 and is a standalone application and it runs on Vista aswell.

Retouch unwanted objects on your photos with Wire Pilot

[willywilly99]

Can I try ACID software for free?
Yes. You can download ACID XPress software — our free, 10-track version of ACID software. ACID XPress software will give you a taste of what ACID Pro and ACID Music Studio software have to offer. To make the music creation process especially easy, ACID XPress software has built-in Show Me How tutorials that help you step-by-step using interactive wizards and guides.

[Pinoy]

also download.com is the best place

[Nikosony]

Some filters and plugins for both Adobe Photoshop and GIMP...

Freeware Home - Free Software Downloads

NDNoise 0.2

NDNoise is a Java-based freeware that enables the removal of noise in digital images. 3 sliders tuning for basic use : noise removal, dots/spots/lines smoothing, retexturing. Direct visualisation of filtering effect by alternate visualisation. Load/save multiple images with the same filter tuning. Multiple image format support : PNG, JPEG, GIF, (prefer lossless PNG compression !)

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scripts that work in gimp 2.4

Plug-Ins for GIMP 7.0

Open Source Script-FU (plugins) fixed to work with GIMP-2.4+ some of the scripts also have added functionality over the originals. There are currently 61 Script-FUs (51 scripts, some contain multiple effects) including: Auto Contrast; BSSS_sharpening; CDlabel2; ColorSaturation; EZ Red Skin Fix; add-bevel; addborder; amazing-circles; balloon; blackboard-effect; and lots more. I was not the original author for any of these scripts. I believe they all let you redistribute (GPL-like). So use them, pass them around or make them better. It's all good.

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GIMP - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

GIMP 2.4.6 (update)


GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

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SourceForge.net: Files

GIMP Animation Package 2.2.0

The GIMP Animation Package was designed to be a collection of graphic Plug-ins designed extend GIMP 2.4 with capabilities to edit and create animations as sequences of single frames.

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Free Adobe Photoshop / Elements filters, plugins, and resources

Free Adobe Photoshop Compatible Filters & Plug-ins

The ones I like best are:

3D Shadow, Eraser Classic + Eraser Genuine (click on Mehdi link), Topazdejpeg (click on Topaz Labs link) and Deep Paint (Mac only).

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Xero Plugins : Clarity

Photoshop-compatible plugins available for download. These are all freeware.

The ones I like best are:

Mistifier, Seasons, Skycleaner, Clarity and Emphasis.

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Luce site

Luce 1.9a

Luce is a plugin that easily generates or intensifies beams/rays of light from an image. Some properties that can be manipulated include light color, intensity, type, and shadow intensity. Available for Photoshop, after Effects and Premiere Pro?

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[Nikosony]

Have you ever wanted to make your own dvd backgrounds for the menu's that show up on screen when you play a dvd? I downloaded a 30 day trial of Texture Maker 3.1 from Texture Maker - The Seamless Texture Generator and got into making these backgrounds for my dvd's in the past few days.

The program will also allow you to make animated backgrounds aswell although there is a bit of a learning curve you should be able to turn out some quite impressive stuff after a few days. If you create a still background at 768 by 576 in .tiff format that will be around 1.26 MB in size but if you create a 4 second animated background it will be around 126 MB in size or double that for an 8 seconds animation. They could be used as keyed in background plates for music videos for example.

The program also has a particle generator but it takes a bit of getting used to. Again like the animated backgrounds it can make animated clouds, smoke, fire, explosions etc. I have included an example of the type of textures you can create.

[Nikosony]

Webcam Publisher 2.0 Beta 0014

WheresJames Software - Shareware and Freeware

Have you ever been doing blue/greenscreen work and wished you could see the final composite shot previewed on your monitor during the shoot?

Well now you can, and it doesn't cost hundreds. I found this 'interesting' piece of free software recently on the net and it was one of its features that caught my attention. It has a chromakey feature that allows you to combine a live camcorder image (talent standing in front of blue or greenscreen) with either a still image or video clip from your computer and see the two combined onscreen.

This would allow you to create more realistic videos as both you and the talent can see what is going on in the background. You could rig up two monitors in a studio, one for you to look at and one for the talent to look at offscreen (think weather presenter who keeps looking off to the right on tv) and he or she could see the big scary monster creeping up behind them!

This would allow the talent to interact with whatever is going on in the background to a much greater degree. It also opens up the possibility of putting it on a laptop so you could do blue/greenscreen work outdoors using a small portable monitor connected to the laptop so the talent can see what is being keyed in behind them.

The program is really designed for streaming video over the internet but I feel it has a use in video production aswell. If you decide to download it and use it, when the main screen opens click on Edit->Properties and change the settings on the tabs to suit your own setup.

Remember this is just for preview, when you go to edit, the talent will still only be standing in front of the blue/greenscreen and you will still have to key in the background plate using your NLE or effects program.