Posts Tagged
Video
I was very reluctant to adopt Final Cut X and Motion 5 due to a number of reasons, one of the biggest of which was my favorite plugins working with the new software. I am very happy to say after many months, plugins are now available and coming out strong.
Let’s go on a little video lover’s escapade into the world of digital video and check some cool plugins! I even threw in a plugin for those who have not switched over to FCP X.
As smartphones have advanced over the last few years, their storage capacities have grown by leaps and bounds. All that space means more apps, music, and movies to use while on the go. However, transferring large amounts of media files can be a tedious and time-consuming task, (particularly if you sync over WiFi).
Fortunately, a simple solution exists that allow us to stream our media to phones, tablets and laptops, thus eliminating the need to sync to our various devices. But does the convenience of personal streaming outweigh the limitations inherent to such a solution?
The Mac has long been the homestead for effective and easy video editing, graphic design, and video compressing for many professionals and novices alike. If you are at all interested in getting your creative juices flowing, video wise, you will absolutely love this roundup. Many people know the big video apps for Mac, while other smaller and still great apps out there remained a mystery. So as a professional video editor and cinematographer, it is my mission to let you in on over thirty of the best video apps around.
Many of these apps are free and others are paid. Bang for your buck is very important when choosing what to spend your hard earned money on, so rest assured that all of the apps listed are in fact worth every penny. Lets dive right in and get creative!
At AppStorm, I’ve reviewed all kinds of media players and managers for Mac, from the great (Plex), to the not-so-great (Songbird). I’ve always been looking for something that has wonderful management features, but is also a pleasure to actually consume media with. While I use and love Plex, it still hasn’t satisfied all of my media needs – There’s definitely a gap for something incredible.
Elmedia Player is a media player for Mac, which boasts a huge range of codecs, including support for SWF Flash files, and it also has support for downloading movies. Let’s take a look at how it compares, and if it’s the media player of my dreams.
Despite Apple’s near-domination of the digital media world with iTunes, Macs have never really had a stand-out solution for watching video – iTunes supports approximately 0 codecs, Front Row is pretty cumbersome, and standalone video players like QuickTime or VLC require far too much rooting around in my movies folders to find the movie I want. I’m looking for an easy-to-use, beautiful piece of software which will make watching movies on my Mac a pleasure.
This is where Plex comes in. As a firm favourite among movie-loving Mac users, Plex allows you to watch movies on your Mac from the comfort of your own sofa – It has support for the Apple Remote and accompanying iOS apps to improve the experience. To top it off, Plex even looks great. Could Plex be the media center app of my dreams? Let’s take a look!
iTunes. You can’t live with it, and yet you can’t live without it. Sure, it does its job, but there are a whole lot of features which are unnecessary, and necessary features which haven’t been implemented. It has Ping, a social network used by about 7 people, but no support for AVI videos, a video format loved by millions. Unfortunately for us, there aren’t many decent alternatives.
Miro 4 was released recently, and although Miro was always an iTunes competitor, version 4 has really brought it into its own. The 100% free and open source media library does all of the things you want iTunes to do, and more. But is it worth abandoning iTunes for? Read on to find out.
Recently we toured the interface of iMovie ‘11 in a screencast. This provided an overview of how to create a project in iMovie, and how to get your videos into your project. Today we’re back with something a little more in-depth!
In this video, we’re going to look at slicing, trimming, and editing your videos. I’ll show you how to go over your movie with a fine-toothed comb, making sure that you make those cuts right where you want them. By the end of this short tutorial, you’ll be on your way to becoming a video surgeon.
OS X comes with CD and DVD burning capabilities built-in, so you might have managed so far without needing to install a separate app. When I reinstalled Snow Leopard a few months back, I decided to keep my system as lean as possible, since my old Core Duo MacBook has been showing its age. I only installed applications as a real need for them arose.
As it happens, one of the very first apps I added was for burning discs, since I found the native OS X burning seemed to be slower, and certainly gave me less control of how discs are burned.
I had previously had an earlier version of Toast installed, but I decided not to return to that outdated software, and instead went with a free burner app that had good reviews on MacUpdate. Recently, Roxio released the newest version of Toast, and I’m very glad to have updated.
Though there are lightweight apps that can do some of the things Toast does, and there are many cheaper, and even free, programs available, I believe Toast remains best-in-class. And if you go for the Pro version, it’s actually very good value – but more on that later.
With Microsoft splashing out a few dollars on Skype this week, the communication platform has once again hit the headlines. The numbers are impressive – 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010 is nothing to be laughed at, and it’s clear that this medium is growing in a big way.
Although Apple has had a foot in the door with iChat for several years, FaceTime has been their major foray into video communication – initially on the iPhone, and now also on the Mac. It’s been almost a year since the technology was announced at WWDC 2010, but I believe that FaceTime still has a long way to come – as does the whole concept of video communication – before it becomes a pervasive technology.
Mac OS X ships with QuickTime X, a powerful media player that most people will find fits their needs pretty well. However, there is an abundance of media players, managers and encoders available on the Mac App Store if you want a taste of something different.
MPlayerX is a multi-format, multi-touch, multi-monitor multimedia player. MPlayerX plugs it’s application as a powerful media player that fuses the power of ffmpeg and mplayer, allowing for faster decoding of almost any file format. And clearly, MPlayerX was heavily inspired by Apple’s moves both in software and technology.
