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With YouTube’s Your Film Festival contest is on the horizon, I bet some of the prospects are frantically looking for creative edges. Perhaps some software that I have heard of might be useful in allowing these folks to attain their creative edges so they can create awesome 15 minute short films for YouTube’s Your Film Festival contest. Let have a go at this.
Autodesk Maya‘s official website has amazing 3D animation software. I believe many professionals who deal with 3D animation on regular basis are using Autodesk Maya’s 3D animation software for their projects. Without an affiliation to school/education somehow, I think you have to pay at least couple thousands of dollars to attain Autodesk Maya’s 3D animation software. Luckily, you can download it for 30 day trial period without being charged for any money. Autodesk Maya’s official website will not ask for credit card for downloading its 3D animation software for 30 day trial period. Also, if you are a student or affiliating with certain educational institutions somehow, Autodesk Maya might give you huge discount! (This software supports Windows and Mac!)
Avid Studio is an amazing, easy to use post film production software. You can use Avid Studio to piece together parts of the short film fast and easy. You can use markers and keyframes to make your film editing even more sophisticated. You can split audio, enhance video with special effects, and much more. Paying a little more for plugins might allow you to edit your short film with even more special effects and styles. When done editing a video with Avid Studio, you can export it to various video formats such as in Full HD. Avid Studio will cost you near two hundred bucks or so, but you can download it without giving out your credit card detail for 30 day trial period. After the trial period, you have to pay up or you cannot use the software any longer. (I think this software supports Windows only!)
Blender is a free 3D animation software. I don’t know much of it since I had only tried it once. Nonetheless, if you don’t want to pay any money but being able to do some 3D animation, I think you should check out Blender. Blender supports Mac, Windows, and Linux.
If you need software that can allow you to have a ton of flexibility on editing photo, I think you should check out Photoshop. Of course, Photoshop is going to cost you money. Now, if you don’t want to spend money on Photoshop and still be able to have a ton of flexibility on editing photo, I think you should read the next paragraph. (I think Photoshop supports Mac and Windows!)
Gimp is an alternative to Photoshop in my opinion. It’s FREE by the way. I had used Gimp in the past, and I felt that it was one of the best photo editing software out there. Although Gimp might not be at Photoshop level, I say it’s pretty damn near as capable. With FREE price, I think many people might prefer Gimp over Photoshop. (This software supports Windows and Linux and Mac!)
I don’t know much about Garageband since I’m not an aspire musician or having much love for messing around with sound and music. Nonetheless, I do love music if it’s excluding my part in creating it. Anyhow, I have heard many good things of Garageband through online comments. Also, Garageband isn’t expensive, because you can acquire it on Apple App Store for under twenty bucks or so. I think with Garageband, you can use it to record and editing music. (This software supports Mac only!)
In case you want to capture videos from video games for whatever reasons, you can use Fraps. Fraps is designed to capture gameplay from video games. It’s easy to use and fast at capturing gameplay from video games. It does not slow down the gameplay at all. Fraps often has been used as software to do benchmark for various videocards. Fraps has the feature where you can use it to do benchmark for a videocard. Nonetheless, videos create with Fraps will be very huge in sizes. I think Fraps records raw video data. This is why you must you another software to encode videos made with Fraps before you can edit such videos with video editing software. Fraps will cost you around forty bucks or less. (I think this software supports Windows only!)
HandBrake is a free video encoder. It has several encoding presets to allow you quickly encode videos that are compatible to popular video formats such as Quicktime. Nonetheless, it does allow you to dig deeper and change various settings to allow you to encode your videos your way. People who use Fraps often use HandBrake to encode their Fraps videos, and by doing this they can edit their Fraps videos with their special video editing software.
So, obviously some of the software I’d mentioned are going to be super expensive, because these are the tools for professionals. Nonetheless, you can try them out for free, but after 30 days you have to either pay up or stop using them. Perhaps, 30 days would be good enough for the folks who need to use these software for one time projects! I’m looking at the folks who want to enter YouTube’s Your Film Festival contest! Anyhow, other software I’d mentioned of are straight up FREE, and yet these FREE software do have professional quality to them. Let just hope the software I’d mentioned in this blog post will be helpful somehow to the people who need to release their inner creativeness for whatever reasons! I’m looking at the folks who want to enter the YouTube’s Your Film Festival contest!
Vinh Nguyen
