Open Source Tools For Video Production
It may be painful for those of us ‘old school’ web entrepreneurs to admit, but the days of a text-based web are numbered. And with it, a text-based marketing strategy for your online business. Video content is becoming the medium of choice, the one people pay attention to. As this Cisco white paper in May 2013 states, 69% of web traffic will be video content by 2017.
Video Production
This is actually good news, because it’s a great time to join this bandwagon.
Remember that in the early days of television, air time belonged to the brave souls who ventured out into that frontier when it was still taking off. As you’ll see in this list, the barrier to entry for video production and promotion of your web business is actually a lot lower than you think.
Avidemux is one of the most popular open source video editing applications. It runs on Windows (both 64 and 32 bit), OS X, and Linux. It has a nice balance of being simple enough for a novice to use, but having some nifty features anyway, including built-in codecs (is that a sign of relief out there?), and support for formats such as AVI, MPG, MOV, and FLV. Avidemux review. Avidemux introductory tutorial. The project is also live and kicking as of this writing.
Kdenlive is another strong contender, but it is only available for Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD, leaving out Windows. It is also a more sophisticated tool aimed at higher-end production, but at the same time more complex. It has a wide range of image effect filters, including support for masking, blue screen, distortions, color and blur filters, and more. On the audio side, it also has support LADSPA, SOX, and other audio APIs. It seems more aimed at animation work. A hammy Kdenlive review. A beginning KDenlive tutorial.