Introduction
Why this Book was Written
I know, you don’t really care why this book was written, so I’ll try to make it short.
I started my filmmaking career with the humble but infamous Windows Movie Maker. I got to where I hated it. In fact, my first two short films were edited with it. When I went to college, I was relieved to learn Sony Vegas and Final Cut Pro. I figured I knew what I needed to know and never looked back to my days with Movie Maker, or tried not to.
But I didn’t own either of these great software, so for my third short film, I once again turned to Movie Maker. The one thing I hated about Movie Maker was it only had one audio track. So I looked around and discovered Sony ACID Xpress. I ended up editing all the audio in ACID Xpress and then importing the one rendered audio track into Movie Maker for the rough cut. Then, I learned about free trials…end of Movie Maker!
After I graduated from college, I looked for jobs. I tried everything…one really awesome job turned me down because I didn’t know Avid. They totally ignored my Vegas knowledge and looked askance at my Final Cut Pro knowledge. By this time, I was posting on the Videomaker Forums and a friend led me to an obscure copy of Avid Free DV…I gradually discovered other freeware.
I also noticed that newbies on the Forums were trying to decide whether to spend money on good software they couldn’t afford or bad software they could afford. I decided to step in..and that’s why this book was written - for you, the humble videomaker with no money like me.
How this Book Works
Each chapter is a different freeware program. Below is the format.
Quick and Fast: If you don’t have time to read the whole chapter, here’s a couple sentences to tell you the important stuff.
Where to get it: This will be a link to the website where you get the freeware.
This section will have a review by me. I will be testing most of this freeware including first time ease of use, features, etc.
Tutorials: Most of this freeware has a help manual or tutorials somewhere, so this will be a link to where to go.
License and Use: This will be a very important section. It will tell you if the freeware is under GNU GPL (see below) and if you can use it for commercial purposes/jobs/making money.
Demo (optional): This will be a link to a demo so you can see what this freeware can do. Most of these will be bits of a short film I’m working on and at the end, there’ll be a whole short film made entirely on freeware! I hope you enjoy this part. This may not be in all chapters.
And that’s it!
What’s GNU GPL?!?
I’m GLAD you asked! GNU General Public License says “YES! You can use this freeware for commercial purposes! You can even redistibute, modify and sell the software…”
But I’m assuming for most filmmakers, you couldn’t care less whether you can resell the software or whatever. The point is, GNU GPL is your friend because you can use freeware licensed with it for commercial purposes/jobs/making money.
Also, I’ve found through experience that freeware under GNU GPL is the better freeware anyway and if it’s not under GNU GPL, you can usually find a better freeware that is.
So, I STRONGLY urge you to get freeware under the GNU GPL.
Hey, you didn’t say what GNU stands for!
Do you really care? Go google it. I’m too busy learning freeware…
