As the cost of disk space plummets and broadband Internet connections become ubiquitous, creating and editing video is now a mainstream computing activity. Teachers can now incorporate more targeted video content into their lessons without worrying about queuing up videotapes or DVDs. Students are creating their own video content for projects and sharing it with others over the web. Open Source can help you and your students utilize and create video without software cost.
Similar Commercial Applications: Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime
If you have ever run into a video file that you could not play, you need VLC Media Player. VLC Media Player is the most versatile video and audio file player available. In addition to playing media on your own media, VLC is capable of playing streaming media over the network. If you are ambitious and have some networking background, you can even set it up as a server that will send video and audio to any computer in your school using advanced techniques like multicasting.
Similar Commercial Applications: Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime
Like VLC, MPlayer is a multiplatform media player that can play most any format of video or audio. MPlayer has some especially powerful tools for playing DVDs. It is compatible with a tremendous variety of hardware and its performance outdoes more bloated commercial applications.
Similar Commercial Applications: Premiere/After Effects, iMovie, Windows Movie Maker
If you or your students have wanted to take your video editing beyond built-in applications but do not have the money for a full-featured editing suite, Jahshaka is the solution that you need. It is capable of traditional video editing and can also perform complex effects work such as painting and designing on moving video, creating animations, and editing complex audio effects. It is a powerful integrated video creation tool.
Similar Commercial Application: Adobe After Effects
CinePaint is a suite of Open Source programs that allows you to perform deep paint manipulation and image processing for video. It allows you to retouch video in the same way that you would retouch photos. It can also create digital effects in your video. The creators of The Last Samurai used CinePaint to create flying arrows during battle scenes of the feature film.
Are you tired of wasting time skipping through DVDs to find the few clips that you want to show your students? Handbrake allows you to rip and compress the DVDs you own to your computer's hard drive. You can rip an entire DVD or just a chapter and then even edit it further using video editing tools. These clips can then be shown as part of a presentation without fumbling with a DVD or having to swap programs.
