Audio Visual Software

First answer the question: "What do I need to do?"

Types, according to function, of AV Software

Screen Capture (What is appearing on your computer monitor)

The simplest way to take a "still image" of what is on your computer screen is to "hit" the PrtScn (i.e. Print Screen) key. This captures the screen and puts it into the "clipboard." Open any graphics/image editor that is already installed on your computer. File > New > New from Clipboard or File > New, then when the new window opens Edit > Paste will do this for you.

There are also stand-alones that will give you additional abilities. Entering "screen capture" on the Downloads section of C-Net.com results in a long listing of possible software. Snag-It from TechSmith is a program that gives you many of these additional functions. Its cousin, Camtasia, will capture series of pictures and produce a video from its capture. (A higher end/more costly program Captivate from Adobe gives you additional capablilites. For example, you could:

Screen Reader Adobe Acrobat Reader (more recent editions) has the ability to read a pdf out loud through your computer speakers. (For sight-challenged/blind who use the internet and your web page) Enable Mart has a listing of screen readers available.

Video Editing - "captures"/digitizes/imports video and audio/video from video camera, television, dvr, or vcr.

Look first of all in what is included in your Operating System. Both Windows (beginning with XP) and Apple have included software that offers most users all they will ever need - at no additional cost to themselves or to their organization/church.

If you want more, consider the following titles: Premiere Elements (reasonable), Premiere (professional) - both from Adobe, Pinnacle's Studio - various price ranges, Avid (professional), Cyberlink's Power Director (good for basic MPG editing), Quicktime Pro, Vegas by Sony, Ulead, Movie Edit Pro by Magix Entertainment. Be careful, staying with Cyberlink, Pinnacle, Adobe, and Sony are your best bet, (e.g. Premiere Elements).

Audio Editing - "captures" or "rips" audio tracks from audio media (e.g. music cds); also able to capture from any audio media place on device having audio outputs.

Audacity is a free audio editor. You can use it to transfer your taped music/sermons/etc by importing from your recorders headphone port into the mic port of your computer. You may download a "plug-in" from Audacity that will allow you to use the program to output MP3 files of the recording.

Higher end software that is available includes SoundForge from Sony and Audition from Adobe. These higher end products have the ability to import a video's audio clip, editing that audio track of the video, and saving it back to the video. Lower end audio editing packages confine themselves to audio only.

"Ripping" songs off CD is a common practice among audiophiles. This is legal as long as the person doing this owns the cd and is ripping to assemble a collection, again from CD she/he owns. This process is automatically done by Apple's IPOD software, I-Tunes - a free software download from Apple. The software rips and converts to a propietary format that plays on IPods. Do not count on this for using any or all a music track for other uses such as home video.

If you already have a CD/DVD creation suite such as Roxio's CD Creator (packages available for both Windows and Apple) or Nero's similar package, you have an audio editor. Look also at what came with your computer's Operating System.

AV Compression - This software is composed of special software routines that compress your finished video transcoding (read: "saving them as") them into formats (Windows Media, QuickTime, RealMedia, MPG, MP4, IPOD H264) and file sizes (larger the size, larger the file; larger the frame, the larger the file) that can be played without problems from CDs, DVDs, office networks, dial-up connections to the web, and broadband connections to the web.

Most AV editors such as Windows Movie Maker (comes with Microsoft's XP, Vista, and 7 operating systems) and stand-alone programs such as Adobe's Premiere (or Premiere Elements), Avid's high-end software, Cyberlink's Power Director, and Pinnacle's Studio are equipped with these abilities.

There are also stand-alone programs such as Sorensen Squeezeand DivX's various programs that have the ability to do little if any editing, but are very good at opening your finished video file and converting/compressing it into any of several formats (DivX compresses to flavors of DIVX). Sorensen will compress to Quicktime, Flash FLV, Flash SWF, WindowsMedia, RealMedia, H264, and others at levels that will accommodate cds, dvds, intranets, and the internet for a variety of connection speeds, streaming and download.

Media Players - Windows Media Player is best known. CD/DVD creation software suites include a player of their own. There are also stand-alones such as Cyberlink's Power DVD player that give the user opportunity to do on computer what many high end dvd decks will do.