Alpha Core

This article is part of a series of posts containing software that I’ve come to think of as being the best free and open-source ones around at the moment. Check the table of contents for the other articles in the series.

This time I’d like to list some image, audio and video viewing/manipulation applications that I would like to recommend. I want fast and light-weight viewers that open my files immediately but powerful full-featured editing tools for the more complex tasks:

• CamStudio: open-source application that it is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs). It can also add screen captions to your recordings and with the unique Video Annotation feature you can even personalize your videos by including a webcam movie of yourself picture-in-picture over your desktop.

• Foobar2000: free advanced audio player with features including full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats. While I don’t use it to play audio files, I find it very useful to do batch audio conversions with it. It’s an extremely powerful and flexible tool. I should actually use it more often, simply because it’s so good!

• GIMP: open-source image manipulation program that can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. It is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. There’s even a modification of the GIMP called GIMPshop intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop.

• Inkscape: open-source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. Take a look at the screenshots and be amazed.

• IrfanView: free, very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer. It’s extremely feature-rich and extremely fast, which makes it my favorite image viewer and editor. For more advanced stuff, I’d recommend GIMP, but for all your quick and easy conversion, resizing, cutting, color enhancing (and many more) needs, this is the program you’re looking for.

• Media Player Classic: open-source video player that mimics the look and feel of the old, light-weight Windows Media Player 6.4 but integrates most options and features found in modern media players. After additionally installing the K-Lite Codec Pack, QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative as well, you’ll be able to play almost any kind of video format.

• Miro: open-source internet TV and video player. It plays virtually any kind of video file, there’s lots of channels (also HD video content) with many added daily. You can search millions of videos, download them, watch and enjoy them. I must admit I haven’t used it too often yet, but it looks very promising.

• VirtualDubMod: open-source, based on the famous video editing software VirtualDub (by Avery Lee). Born as a unification of several existing modifications, a lot of new features have been added, including support for the matroska container format. It’s a superior tool to capture, encode, convert and edit video fragments. Highly recommended tool!

• WinSnap: free (up to version 1.1.10) enhancement utility for taking and editing screenshots. Standard features include easy capture of non-rectangular windows with customized and transparent backgrounds, simple and automatic canvas transformations, coloring effects, and the addition of eye-candy drop shadows. WinSnap supports a variety of image formats and has advanced auto-save features. Note that later versions from NTWind are not free anymore, but don’t worry: version 1.1.10 has everything you’ll need. It’s a highly recommendable tool!

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