Monday, June 08, 2020

Video editing and Animation

You don't have to try too hard if what you want to do all day long is watching videos on the web. Yes, we just take it for granted but it does take some skills to put together a presentable video! Editing home video is one of my hobbies started before the days of YouTube. I bought a copy of Adobe Creative Suite with my student discount when I was taking Graphic design classes. Adobe Premiere Pro is still one of the top choice for this task. Of course, 17 years have gone by one would think there must be lots of free/open source alternatives to Adobe Premiere. For those using Mac, PCWorld recommends iMovie 10. And there are many choices for Open Source cross-platform (i.e. Linux too!) software, for example, the UI of OpenShot would look familiar if you have used iMovie before.

Similar to video, animation is everywhere. You would remember Adobe Flash if you did animation "back in the days" In fact, some scammers still try to trick people to download malware disguised as Flash installer now that Adobe doesn't even call their animation tool Flash anymore. The company has adapted to the current HTML5-based standard (instead of needing a proprietary browser plug-in) and calling their tool simply Adobe Animation. If you cannot afford a license or just want to use other freeware, check out this video: