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Browser Video playback DVD ripping Sound recording Photo editing Graphics Geographic Web Browsing Email 3D Animation CAD Mp3 player sync File Format Conversion Office Misc

Mozilla Firefox The premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Considered by many to be the world's best browser. Download Page Web Browsing

Top Features Private Browsing Surf the Web without leaving a single trace. Password Manager Remember site passwords without ever seeing a pop-up. Awesome Bar Find the sites you love in seconds (and without having to remember clunky URLs). Super Speed View Web pages way faster, using less of your computer’s memory. Anti- Phishing & anti- malware Enjoy the most advanced protection against online bad guys. Session Restore Unexpected shutdown? Go back to exactly where you left off. One-Click Bookmarking Bookmark, search and organize Web sites quickly and easily. Easy Customization Thousands of add-ons give you the freedom to make your browser your own. Tabs Do more at once with tabs you can organize with the drag of a mouse. Personas Instantly change the look of your Firefox with thousands of lightweight themes.

VLC Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface. Download Page Video Playback

Simple , Powerful and Fast Plays everything, Files , Discs and Streams No codec packs needed Completely Free 0 Spyware, Ads or User Tracking Media Converter and Streamer Windows, Linux, Mac, Unix...

Video Playback Media Player Classic Compact, but powerful media player. Plays anything under the sun. No install necessary. Download Page

Media player classic plays pretty much every type of video and audio Additional Player Features Option to remove Tearing . Better support for Windows Vista, including a release for 64 bits platform . Support for EVR (Enhanced Video Renderer) Supports Subtitles. Playback and recording of television if a supported TV tuner is installed. Creation of minidump when MPC HC crashes. OSD (On Screen Display) Shuttle PN31 remote control support Support Multi-Monitor configuration Pixel shader to convert BT601 - BT701 YV12 Chroma Upsampling pixel shader Language Translations . All features from the Guliverkli MPC Project from Gabest .

Other Video Player, Miro Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than windows media player). Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and others. Download Page

Handbrake DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. Download Page DVD Ripping

Supported Sources: Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted--protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode. Outputs: File format: MP4 and MKV Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora Audio: AAC, CoreAudio AAC (OS X Only), MP3, or Vorbis. AC-3 pass-through, DTS pass-thorugh (MKV only) Misc features: Chapter selection Subtitles Integrated bitrate calculator Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling Live Video Preivew

Audacity Simple sound recording tool. Download Page Sound Recording

About Audacity Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to: Record live audio. Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs. Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files. Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together. Change the speed or pitch of a recording. And more! See the complete list of features . See slides for more info

GIMP Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features. Download Page Photo Editing

Introduction to GIMP GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It 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. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

1. Picnik Arguably, Picnik is the most popular web-based photo editor. Why? Because it’s now integrated with Flickr . And Picasa. 2. Pixlr.com Pixlr is the creator of online cloud-based image tools. Today we have two applications in our suite, one we call Pixlr Editor and the other is Pixlr Express . They are built in Flash and you need to have a Flash plug in ( get flash ) to get it to work.

Graphics / Photo Editing Inkscape Vector graphics application. Download Page

What is Inkscape? Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format. Vector graphics are a complement, rather than an alternative, to bitmap graphics. Each has its own purpose and are useful for different kinds of things. Raster graphics tend to be better for photographs and some kinds of artistic drawings, whereas vectors are more suitable for design compositions, logos, images with text, technical illustrations, etc.

What is it Google Earth is a free web-based environment that integrates digital imagery and digital information. “ Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.” From Google Earth web site. Google Earth can be downloaded free from http://earth.google.com/ and its installation is self-explanatory. See slide for more information.

E-mail Mozilla Thunderbird Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need. Download Page

Easier to Get Started Mail Account Setup Wizard One-click Address Book Tabs and Search Quick Filter Toolbar Tabs Search Message Archive Customize Your Email Experience Smart Folders Add-ons Manager Secure and Protect Your Email Cutting Out the Junk Phishing Protection Automated Update

Format Factory Convert any type of video to mp4 or theora. Convert any video for use with iPhone, iPod, Android, etc. Very clean, easy to use interface. Download Page Video Converter

Format Factory is a multifunctional media converter. Provides functions below: All to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF . All to MP3/WMA/AMR/OGG/AAC/WAV . All to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/TGA . Rip DVD to video file , Rip Music CD to audio file. MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP/BlackBerry format. Supports RMVB , Watermark , AV Mux. Format Factory's Feature: 1 support converting all popular video,audio,picture formats to others. 2 Repair damaged video and audio file. 3 Reducing Multimedia file size. 4 Support iphone,ipod multimedia file formats. 5 Picture converting supports Zoom,Rotate/Flip,tags. 6 DVD Ripper.

Blender is a free 3D graphics application that can be used for modeling , UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging , water and smoke simulations, skinning , animating , rendering , particle and other simulations , non-linear editing , compositing , and creating interactive 3D applications, including video games, animated film, or visual effects

Google Sketch up 3D Computer Aided Design-

Google Sketch up 3D SketchUp is a 3D modeling program designed for architects , civil engineers , filmmakers, game developers, and related professions. It also includes features to facilitate the placement of models in Google Earth . It is designed to be easier to use than other 3D CAD programs. [1]

Media Monkey Mp3 player music sync

MediaMonkey Manage Your Music Sync with an device Record & Convert CDs Tag mp3s Organize & Rename files Create Playlists Burn Audio CDs Play cds

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

Pinnacle Studio VideoSpin is a new, free editor based on Studio. Good for a freeby.

Word Processing / Office Suites OpenOffice.org Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with and a free replacement for Microsoft Word documents. Also supports OpenDocument Format. Download Page

Picasa- quick overview of screen

What can picasa do? Find all pictures on your PC Import , export pictures from a camera etc Edit your pictures Create slideshows Email pictures, create webpages Make collages Rate and label your favourites pictures, Search for pictures using keywords.

Find the pictures you forgot you had. Picasa organises your entire collection while you watch, scanning the images on your computer and automatically sorting them by date. You can import folders of your choice.

Import a folder or from a device

Slideshow- star rate your pictures. This slideshow you can burn to CD as well.

Add a star rating. Rate your pictures with stars And use picasa star search to filter out the best pictures

Move and re-name pictures Clean up messy folders - drag and drop pictures from one folder in Picasa to another. Only takes seconds to re-name one picture or a group of pictures.

Select pictures. Menu, Picture> Batch edit> rename, etc

Also try out some other functions: sepia etc

Right click on pic: View and edit

Make a label. Use labels to tag your photos into quick groupings inside Picasa. Viewing and sharing the pictures you grouped under a label is easy – they make great slide shows and movies or you can email them to friends.

Right mouse click on a picture and select add label.

Keep one picture in multiple albums. Picasa creates a new “instance” of each photo you label without taking up more space on your computer, so you can put the same picture into multiple albums.

Timeline line view of your albums

Create a slideshow on a CD- e.g. for wedding photos etc.

What we will cover Google Earth Google Ocean Google Sky Google Moon Google Mars

What is it Google Earth is a free web-based environment that integrates digital imagery and digital information. “ Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.” From Google Earth web site. Google Earth can be downloaded free from http://earth.google.com/ and its installation is self-explanatory.

New! in Earth 5.0 See global changes with decades of historic imagery If you've ever wondered how your neighbourhood has changed throughout time, Google Earth now gives you access to the past. With a simple click, check out suburban sprawl, melting ice caps, coastal erosion, and more. Dive beneath the surface of the ocean In the new ocean layer, you can plunge all the way to the floor of the sea, view exclusive content from partners like BBC and National Geographic, and explore 3D shipwrecks like the Titanic. Track and share your paths with others Take place marks a step further and record a free-form tour in Google Earth. Simply turn on the touring feature, press record, and see the world. You can even add a soundtrack or narration to personalize the journey.

Installing Google Earth To use Google Earth on a Windows PC, you must have at least the following: Operating System: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista CPU: 500Mhz, Pentium 3 System Memory (RAM): 128MB RAM Hard Disk: 400MB free space Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 16MB of VRAM Screen: 1024x768, "16-bit High Color" screen For better performance, see Recommended Configuration. To use Google Earth on a Mac, you must have at least the following: Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 or later CPU: G3 500Mhz System Memory (RAM): 256MB RAM Hard Disk: 400MB free space Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 16MB of VRAM Screen: 1024x768, "Thousands of Colours"

Things You Can Do in Google Earth View an image of your home, school or any place on Earth Go on a tour of the world Get driving directions from one place to another and fly (follow) the route View other cool locations and features created by other Google Earth users View 3D terrain of a place

Look at later on Explore the moon What's new in Earth 5.0 Explore Mars in 3D View historical imager Explore the ocean Record your tour Your World in 3D Fly to Any Place Explore the Sky Find Local Businesses 3D Buildings and Terrain Layers of Mapping Placemark, Save and Email

Lets look at the screen 1. Search panel - Use this to find places and directions and manage search results. Google Earth EC may display additional tabs here. 2. Overview map - Use this for an additional perspective of the Earth. 3. Hide/Show sidebar - Click this to conceal or the display the side bar (Search, Places and Layers panels). 4. Placemark - Click this to add a Placemark for a location. 5. Polygon - Click this to add a polygon. 6. Path - Click this to add a path (line or lines). 7. Image Overlay - Click this to add an image overlay on the Earth. 8. Measure - Click this to measure a distance or area size. 9. Email - Click this to email a view or image. 10. Print - Click this to print the current view of the Earth. 11. Show in Google Maps - Click this to show the current view in Google Maps in your web browser 12. Navigation controls - Use these to tilt, zoom and move around your viewpoint (see below). 13. Layers panel - Use this to display points of interest. 14. Places panel - Use this to locate, save, organize and revisit place marks. 15. 3D Viewer - View the globe and its terrain in this window. 16. Status bar - View coordinate, elevation and imagery streaming status here.

Layers Layers of Mapping Information When exploring a location, you can turn on various layers of mapping information such as roads, shopping and services, geographic features, 3D buildings, gas, and food and lodging, among others. Click on any of the icons, and you'll see a bubble with more information about that place.

Layers Layers that add a wealth of information to users. E.g.3D layer will enable you to fly between New York City’s Skyscrapers or through the Grand Canyon. You can also observe Eiffel Tower in 3D.

History Go back in time with historical imagery View your neighbourhood, home town, and other familiar places and see how they've changed over time See the impact of recent trends like suburban sprawl or global warming Set the length of time and exact location that you want to see

Record trip Record your trip from point A to point Z Capture your navigation through Google Earth in real-time, without using place marks Narrate your virtual journey and share it with friends Save tours and trips so you can reuse and revisit them in the future

Lets start by taking a tour Play Tour button at the bottom of the Places panel. The tour begins playing in the 3D viewer, which flies to each location and stops for a period of time before flying to the next place in the list. To stop the tour, click the Stop Tour

Site seeing- view grand canyon etc

View an image of your home, school or any place on Earth Fly to or search for addresses and locations Click Fly To . Enter the location in the input box and click the Search button. In the search results (Places pane), double click the location. Google Earth flies you to this location. Showing and hiding points of interest Sight seeing

Type in Glasgow and watch it go!

The dots are places of interest- you can click on them

The letters correspond to addresses- you can click on them

Zoom right into your own house! Click on camera icons to see photos people have uploaded

Spend some time Look for some places of interest. Click on the camera icons to see pictures of the places. You can add your own photos and share them with people online.

Spend some time Create a new Placemark - Select Placemark from the Add Menu . Share Placemark - right click Placemark and choose Share/Post . Add a point of interest - right-clicking on Placemark, select Save to My Places from the pop-up menu. Add search results - Right-click search result & select Save to My Places from the popup Saving an image – do a screen shot Printing imagery from the 3D viewer – File> Print

Add > photo Add other things as well !

Right click on your place- share it via a forum.

Read other peoples places and visit them

You will notice Panoramio images in GE.

Upload image and map image to Google earth

Placemark, Save and Email Google Earth allows you to print, save and email your images/views. For instance, if you want to email a certain point of interest to a friend, you can send it as a Placemark that can be opened in Google Earth. You can also email your view as a regular JPG image or even email driving directions as Google Earth files.

Adding other things You can also add place marks, polygons, models etc. To do models you need to use Sketch 3d. We wont cover this as it is a Computer aided design tool and we’d need another night to look at it.

Lets look at getting directions From one place to another and follow the route –

Click directions, enter place name or postcode

Fly to Fly To Any Place in The World Whether you are looking for a specific address, the intersection of two streets, a city, a state, a zip code, or a country, just type it into the "Fly To" box and hit Search.

View businesses + other locations

Spend some time Viewing businesses and locations E.g. look for a hotel in Padstow Cinema in Glasgow

Using Map Features Roads –view roads Terrain – 3d elevation Borders – international etc Viewing 3D Buildings Viewing Google SketchUp 3D Models Try these features just now.

3D view Your World in 3D - Zoom, Tilt and Rotate Use your mouse, keyboard or trackball to navigate the world. Grab the image with your mouse to move around. The navigation compass allows you to manipulate the view in multiple ways. Drag the right slider up and down to zoom in and out. Drag the top slider left and right to tilt the view. To rotate the image, spin the navigator's on-screen wheel.

3D Buildings and Terrain With Google Earth, you can see 3D buildings from the ground up in many places around the world. Tilt the screen to see the buildings in 3D. Similarly, the terrain is also mapped in 3D, meaning you can see mountains, valleys and canyons in vivid detail.

View 3D terrain of a place 3D layer - fly through the Grand Canyon- see Pyramids and Eiffel Tower in 3D. Go to a location grand canyon or san Francisco city. When the view shows the location, use the tilt slider to tilt the terrain.

San Francisco + 3d view Go find this place

Eiffel Tower Go find this place

3D terrain – drag to fly through.

Viewing Google SketchUp 3D Models

Sketch 3D How to get your 3D models into Google Earth Take photos of the building you want to model. Model your building in Google SketchUp and upload it to the Google 3D Warehouse . We will check your model and publish it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth . See this PDF and http://sketchup.google.com/yourworldin3d/howitworks.html

Spend some time Spend some time with Google earth. Look for your house Look for a holiday destination. Look for a place you’d love to visit in your life.

Things to do History : Go on a Virtual tour to the Pyramids in Cairo, Egypt. Take note on European locations for historical events. Middle Eastern studies: Construct tours for countries in the Middle East. Stop in every capital and add information about that country.

Things to do African Studies: Create virtual tours to countries in the in the African continent. Stop in every capital and add information about each country. Foreign Languages: Fly to countries and create tours that center around cultural and language issues.

Links to Google Earth related Web Sites: The Journal of Education, Community, and value: How Digital Mapping Tools can change our perspective on learning: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/02/szymanski.php#5 Google Earth Help Center: http://earth.google.com/support Google Earth Tutorial: http://www.keyhole.com/GoogleEarthHelp/GoogleEarth.htm Google maps can be found at: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ Google Earth Blog http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/08/back_to_school.html

Using GPS Devices with Google Earth If you have a GPS (Global Position System) device, you can connect it to your computer and import your waypoint and track data into Google Earth. Note that this set of features is available to users of Google Earth Plus, Google Earth Pro and Google Earth EC,

Google Ocean Explore the ocean with Google Earth Dive beneath the surface and visit the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench Explore the ocean with top marine experts, including National Geographic Learn about ocean observations, climate change, and endangered species Discover new places including surf, dive, and travel hotspots and shipwrecks

Things to do Look through ocean layers: BBC layer National geographic layer Find a shipwreck

Google Sky Explore the Sky Until now, Google Earth has let you zoom in from outer space to view our planet. With Earth's new Sky feature, you can turn that perspective around and explore the wonders of the heavens. View images of distant galaxies and nebulae from the Hubble Space Telescope, learn about the movement of the planets and the lifecycle of the stars, and more. Learn more about Sky .

Things to do Look through the various layers: Find Andromeda Galaxy Look for Orion Look for Pluto

Google Moon Explore the moon in Google Earth Take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronauts View 3D models of landed spacecraft Zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts' footprints Watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions

Things to do Look through the various layers and Look through guided tours

Google Mars Explore Mars in 3D With Mars in Google Earth, you can: Be the first human being to view images downloaded by NASA just hours ago, in the Live from Mars layer. Take an interactive tour of Mars, narrated by Public Radio's Ira Flatow or Bill Nye the Science Guy. View 3D rover models and follow their tracks to see high-resolution 360-degree panoramas. Search for famous Martian landmarks, such as the Face on Mars or Olympus Mons.

Things to do Look through the various layers Look through guided tours Look at various rovers and landers Look for the “face” on mars

Audacity: - used for recording sound. - to clean up the recording - then split into manageable bits for sequencing.

Open up Audacity and let us look at the menus.

File: open, save, close, export- usual menu items.

Edit: undo, cut, copy paste, trim, split, duplicate

View: zoom in and out, fit to window

Project: import audio- not used much

Effect: Amplify, EQ, Delay Filter- used to process you recording.

Analyse: Beat Finder- not used much.

Recording sounds into Audacity: e.g. recording your piano piece into audacity Record your material with a constant tempo otherwise it will be more difficult to sequence. Using ‘human timing’ is great, but dealing with the tempo changes is a bit beyond what we want to do here.... maybe next time the course runs you can look at this!!

How to record sounds into Audacity

Open up recording software- Audacity

Select microphone as the source.

Press record button and start recording audio .....do this now.

Now you have your sound recorded.. You will need to process the sound. i.e.. fix any bits which you don’t want such as noise and bits of silence so the part will sound correct when it is in the tune.

EDITING: Firstly open up: “guitar parts for 1E-23.wav” This is a guitar part recorded for a tune however it has leading and trailing silence... Look at the silence at the start- we need to loose this. The guitar part should then play in time with the rest of the tune..once we make it...

Select the start of the wav with your mouse- the area becomes darker

zoom in – fit selection to window

Zoom out to see whole wav That is basic editing.

Now we want to amplify the recording so it is a good decent volume. Select the whole wav.

Hit OK and the signal is Amplified (but so is the background noise as well, so be careful)

Now what?.. ( Split the wav into logical parts.) So now we have a recording which is a decent volume, has no leading silence, but how do we use this in a sequencer ? We need to split it into manageable chunks- it is up to yourself how big or small you want to split it. I like to split it up into bars or parts of bars so it will be easier to use in the tune.

Now we want to save each bit of the recording into smaller manageable samples for sequencing. Let’s do the bit circled in red. This bit is part of the first bar of the tune.

Duplicate this bit so we can work on it separately..

minimise the top track- using your mouse and grabbing the edge of the wave.

zoom into the selection and select the part with sound- leaving the trailing silence (on the right)

Close that selection, maximise the main recording. Select the next bit and repeat the process until all bits are done.

So after a while you end up with a library of samples which you can import into the sequencer and get your tune going.... So lets look at Buzz now...

Notes on sample rates Remember that recording with a high sample rate uses a large amount of hard disk space. e.g. 1 minute of audio at mono 44,100 hz 16 bit = approximately 5Mb. This is particularly critical when using audio on the Internet. This might take approximately 15 minutes to download on a normal 56K dialup link. For best quality recordings it is preferable to sample at high sample rate and then Convert the sample type to a lower value if required. Always listen to the sound after using a transform to check that you have a good result BEFORE saving. When recording with a microphone the quality of the microphone has a great impact on the quality of the sound. When possible use a high quality microphone with an adaptor cable to plug it into the 1/8" mono socket on the sound card. Alternatively an external audio mixer can be used. Plug your input sources such as microphones, tape recorders, VCRs etc into the mixer. Plug the output of the mixer into the line input of the soundcard on your computer.

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