Streaming Media - 2008 Industry Sourcebook - (Page 99) DIY Video 10 User-Generated Content Tools You Can’t Live Without by Cliff Wootton i n the early 1980s, the desktop publishing revolution democratized the whole process of page layout and book production. Suddenly everyone became a publisher. The same thing is happening now with the tools and processes for working with audio and video. Anyone who wants to edit or convert moving images and sound can do it inexpensively. The desktop publishing revolution resulted in some amazingly beautiful design ideas being tried out for the first time. The same thing is happening with video. You only have to spend a little while on YouTube to see some very creative ideas. (Of course there’s plenty of bad execution out there, and at least as many nondescript productions, but we’ll not dwell on those here.) The general public is enthusiastic about producing video now that they can afford the tools, and the best way to learn is to experiment with your ideas and show them to people. Choosing Your Platform In this article, we’ll explore how you can put together a toolkit to deal with the 10 main areas of video processing that you’ll need to cover. Rather than recommending one tool above all others, we’ll present you with a number of options for each part of the process. You may have no money at all and need cheap or even free tools. At the other end of the scale are enterpriselevel users who can afford anything that is available whatever the price, provided there is a good business case. In the middle are professionals working in small companies who have a limited budget for their tools. Beyond budget, the other main variable is your chosen workstation’s operating system. Creative professionals tend toward the Macintosh platform, although tools are widely available for Windows, too. And, at least as far as open source tools are concerned, Linux is also well-supported for this work. You certainly don't need to consider switching platforms just to produce video. You may occasionally find that an important tool or a direct alternative to it is not supported on your chosen platform, but there is usually a workaround. Where I refer to Linux, the solution is also generally applicable to other UNIX variants such as BSD or Solaris. WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 99 buyer’s guide http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
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