Cool Tools

[Scotness]

Here's some little programmes I use at various times which may be of use to to others as well:

Daxtar's Shutdown Timer
https://sourceforge.net/projects/daxshutdown
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Lau ... imer.shtml

If you're doing a render of something that's going to take quite a few hours and you won't be around or awake you can use this programme to power off the computer when it's finished.

123Renamer
http://www.123renamer.com/

Bulk and batch file renaming

Rostrum Camera
http://www.price-media.demon.co.uk/rostrum.html

A programme that will create avi files from panning across or zooming into graphic images. Can also be used to make credit rolls.

Solveig AVI trimmer
http://solveigmm.com/?Products&id=AVITrimmer

Cut AVI clips into two parts - quick and losslessly - no need to re-render

Servant Salamander
http://altap.cz/salam_en/index.html

A programme which allows you to compare the contents of two directories - very useful if you have heaps of back ups and want to identify (or keep) which ones are the most recent.

Move On Boot
http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/moveonboot.html

If you were doing a long rencer or soomething and the computer crashed and windows still has a file locked that it won't allow you to access or delete this programme will delete it (or rename it) next time you boot up, before windows grabs it

Auto Mouse Clicker
http://www.geocities.com/mangokun/autom ... licker.htm

Automatically clcks the mouse where and how often you want it too. I sue it some batch runs in Photoshop where it insists on getting an "okay" in a filter dialogue box, and won't over-ride it automatically

Huffyuv 2.11 Lossless Codec
http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.ed ... ffyuv.html
Lossless video codecs - gives huge files - but I only use this (and nothing else) before doing a final render out in DV or MPEG2 etc -- this avoids any unnecessary quality lost. Don't leave home with out it. I have a feeling version 2.2 may be buggy.

Virtualdub
http://www.virtualdub.org/

We all should know this one!

Panasonic VFW DV Codec
http://users.tpg.com.au/mtam/install_panvfwdv.htm
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Panasonic_DV_Codec
Read dv files in Virtualdub

Anyone have any others? Hope they're of help to you all - they have been for me!

Scot

[VideoFred]

Media Player Classic
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... p_id=82303

It looks like the old windows player, but inside it is completely different.
This is the ideal tool to analyse transfered film. Very easy to skip from frame to frame, zooming in and out etc... It even plays DVD's with a build in Mpeg2 encoder.

DVD Styler
http://www.dvdstyler.de/

An awesome -free- authoring tool. It even accepts VOB files from different images to make one DVD from them. It then creates a new image, and this can be burned on DVD with Nero. This is also the ideal tool to put several mpeg2 files from several sources on one DVD with menu's and submenu's. This is not an encoder tool, it accepts only mpeg2 files. Those files must have been made with other applications.

Fred.

[Scotness]

DVD Shrink
http://www.dvdshrink.org/

There is actually a legal use for this programme - if you encoded a dvd and got the bit rate wrong on your original mpeg2 files - rather than start all over again - just run this over it.

Bitrate Viewer
http://www.tecoltd.com/bitratev.htm

A useful programme for viewing the bitrate of files across time -- probably not really needed if you use DVD Shrink.

Scot

[VideoFred]

SIW
http://www.gtopala.com/

This tool will show you nearly everything about your PC.
Including some very well hidden secrets

Fred.

[Scotness]

Visualsubsync
http://coreforge.org/frs/?group_id=29
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/VisualSubSync

Tool for generating subtitle scripts than can be imported into Virtualdub using the sub titling filter

[Scotness]

Primo PDF
http://www.primopdf.com/

Free PDF creation programme

[VideoFred]

GSPOT
http://gspot.headbands.com/

Free video file analysing tool.

FOXIT PDF READER
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Free and fast PDF reader.

This topic is cool , Scot

Fred.

[Scotness]

Yeah you've suggested soome good programmes there Fred - I've already tried the PC system info one, and downloaded DVDStyler

Here's something else:

BESweet GUI
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/BeSweet
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downl ... i_186.html

Audio file converter

And then of course there's this site - where all the old apps go (abandonware?):
http://oldapps.com/





Scot

[ccortez]

Maybe you'd like to know a little something about the network you are on...

http://www.cacetech.com/products/toolkit.htm

8O

[Scotness]

Here's a couple more I just remembered:
Filezilla
http://filezilla-project.org/

Great free FTP programme


and

StartUp Inspector
http://www.windowsstartup.com/startupinspector.php

Work out exactly what the hell is running when your PC starts up!

and can't forget



Filmulator
http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/show/filmulator.zip

My own little programme - there are far better implementations of this idea around, but here it is - can be used for calculating film and telecine lengths and costs and how much hard drive space is needed etc (I should probably do this as a spreadsheet one day)


whoops - also good ol Audacity:

Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Free wave editor - can't remember if it does multi-track - I think it does

Scot

[Blue Audio Visual]

http://users.forthnet.gr/pat/efotinis/p ... kpins.html



Deskpins is an incredibly useful program that allows you to keep any window "always on top" of your desktop. I have this installed on all 4 of my PCs. The download is only 50k or so.

I use this program almost very day, simply because it is so easy and so handy, for so many different reasons, e.g. keeping help or instruction files open, calculator on top etc. etc.

The only thing that I've ever noticed is that the download site is sometimes offline, probably due to bandwidth restrictions.

[Scotness]

HDV Split
http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/ (homepage)
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/HDVSplit (good description)

A utility for capturing HDV stream from your camcorder with scene splitting by timestamp. You can also split MPEG2 Transport Stream files captured earlier - new scenes are detected by date and time read from .m2t file.

HDTV to MPEG2
http://www.midwinter.com/~bcooley/ (homepage)
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/HDTVtoMPEG2 (good description)

This program converts HDTV MPEG2 tansport stream files to standard MPEG2 video files playable (mostly) by media player -- I had to sue this to convert an HDV capture from an HDV camera so I could use it in Virtualdub mpeg2 -- it alters the packet size in non standard mpeg2 streams to a standard size.

Celtx
http://www.celtx.com/


Production scheduling, scripting, organising, breakdowns etc etc

[Scotness]

Media Coder
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

Another beauty - great transcoding tool.

Scot

[MIKI-814]

Thank you for sharing all this. One of the most useful posts I've recently read.

[Scotness]

Your welcome - feel free to add any of your suggestions on too

Scot