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Free Programs and Services

Useful computer programs.

Cartoon of man and documents. The official pdf reader is free from Adobe (www.adobe.com/uk) but is a big 22.3Mb to download, slow to open files and offers more options than most of us need. Try the free Foxit pdf reader from www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads [download "Foxit Reader 2.2 (.exe)"] which is just 2.13Mb in size. It opens and displays pdfs very quickly.
Squared Five logo. MPEG Streamclip is a powerful video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files; encode movies to many formats; extract from DVDs; can cut, trim and join movies. It is free from www.squared5.com
Photo of an audio level meter. Paul Marshall has devised a range of software Audio Level Meters - all available for free. They include PPM (Peak Programme Meters), Analogue and VU ones. There is even a calibration tone wav file.
Banknotes. What does that cost in my currency? Buying on the internet, planning a holiday abroad ... we all need to have some idea of what prices are in our own money. xe.com provides exchange rates between almost any currencies.
Symbol for IrfanView. There are lots of programs for manipulating still images. Few can match the power and speed of Irfanview which is free. The official website www.irfanview.com will point you to several shareware websites where you can download it.
Firefox logo. Firefox is the fast, free alternative browser which offers Windows, Mac and Linux users a better way to browse the internet.
Picture of a generated fake newspaper. How often have you needed a fake newspaper headline for a drama? What about a new brand of cigarettes (so you do not get sued). Or even your own clapperboard image? fodey.com makes it easy to generate those and more.
Screenshot of GOM video player. There are plenty of media players around but GOM seems to have codecs for just about anything. It even plays damaged AVI files. It has a good screen-capture facility ... simple to run but with oodles of control options if you want them. And it is just 4Mb download !

Useful internet services.

Find your way from home to Harrogate for BIAFF 2008 perhaps? Or look at some of the world's cleverest adverts:


Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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