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jahshaka

Featured Freeware: Jahshaka

If you're looking for a free, professional-level video editor, Jahshaka for Windows and Mac should top your list. With every release, it gets more stable and gains more features.

The list of what the application can do is extensive and exhaustive. It can handle real-time image processing with node-based effects; edit DV, SD, HD and film; do real-time 3D compositing and Flash animation; OpenGL-based paint; and it has a text module. There are also modules for color correction, keying, and tracking, and an array of media support. It comes with JahPlayer, a media player that claims to work with &… Read more

Free video-editing software

One of the most frequent questions I get from CNET Download.com users is "What free software can I use to edit video?" If I didn't respond to you personally, it's likely because there's not an easy answer. It depends on what type of video you have, and what you want to do with it.

Let's start with the basics. If you didn't know, you likely already have Windows Movie Maker, which was included with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and recently beefed up for Windows Vista.

The XP version of Movie Maker is adequate for putting together clips into larger videos, adding simple transitions, and making basic edits, but I can't recommend the experience. The review on CNET Download.com is overly harsh, but it encapsulates several problems you may encounter.… Read more

Roll your own Adobe CS3 for free, part 2

(Read about other alternatives for Adobe Creative Suite in the first part of Roll your own Adobe CS3 for free.)

Okay, so you can get the basic functionalities of Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Dreamweaver without the gut-punch to your wallet. What's that you say? How about Flash?

Synfig Studio is a great answer to the replace-Flash question. Like Flash, it's a 2D vector-based animation tool, and it's one of several programs I found that tries to conquer that particular programming mountain, and does an admirable job of it--especially for freeware.

Synfig takes a bit of effort, but if you're reading this blog post then you can probably handle it. There are four install files that need to be installed in order: Gtkmm, Gtk+, Synfig Core and Synfig Studio. (Apparently, I can't handle it, since it took me two tries to get a successful installation.) There's also what seems like several metric tons of documentation and tutorials on the Synfig wiki, which is befitting for any app with Linux roots that has been ported to Windows.

Neither Flash nor Synfig make for quick studies without a guide, but both are learnable. Whether Synfig is truly capable of competing with Flash for complex multimedia animations remains to be seen. Is anyone out there giving it a try?… Read more