Free Collage Generator

If you love taking pictures of everything around you, then the best way to share it with your friends without disturbing them is to make a beautiful collage. With our Collagerator you can create a collage that collects favorite moments of your life.

Using Collagerator we can place 17 photos from a weekend in one picture. Or 22 photos from a wedding. Or 31 photos of a new born baby. Or... What can you do with it?

·         Highly customizable collages

·         Includes templates

System Requirements:

§  Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 2003, Windows XP for PC systems (32bit/64bit)

§  macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra), OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), OS X 10.8(Mountain Lion), Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Intel only

§  About 60 Mb of free hard drive space

Cost: Free

https://www.mediahuman.com/collagerator/

LMMS – Free Cross-platform Music Maker

LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.

Screens:

Core Functionality:

·         Compose music on Windows, Linux and Apple OS X

·         Sequence, compose, mix and automate songs in one simple interface

·         Note playback via MIDI or typing keyboard

·         Consolidate instrument tracks using Beat+Bassline Editor

·         Fine tune patterns, notes, chords and melodies using Piano Roll Editor

·         Full user-defined track-based automation and computer-controlled automation sources

·         Import of MIDI files and Hydrogen project files

Effects Mixing:

·         Drop-in LADSPA plug-in support

·         Drop-in VST ® effect plug-in support (Linux and Windows)

·         Built-in compressor, limiter, delay, reverb, distortion, EQ, bass-enhancer

·         Bundled graphic and parametric equalizers

·         Built-in visualization/spectrum analyzer

Musical Instruments:

·         Built-in 32-bit VST instrument support

·         Built-in 64-bit VST instrument support with 32-bit VST bridge (64-bit Windows)

·         Roland ® TB-303 style monophonic bass synthesizer

·         Embedded ZynAddSubFx: Polyphonic, mutlitimbral, microtonal, multi-voice additive, subtractive and pad synthesis all in one powerful plugin

·         Native Commodore 64 ® SID microchip/instrument emulation

·         Native SoundFont ® support (SF2), the industry standard for high quality instrument patches and banks

·         Nintendo ®, GameBoy ® and game sound effect emulation

·         2 built-in oscillator-based synthesizers

·         2 built-in wavetable-based synthesizers

·         Gravis UltraSound ® GUS Patch support

Cost: Free

https://lmms.io/

DJ Prodecks - Free Professional DJ Software

Got inquiry from one of the blog readers on what is the best free DJ Software for mixing and mastering. As it is not area of my personal expertise, had to consult with one of my friends.

His ultimate verdict was - DJ Prodecks – especially for beginners.

Assuming that most beginners have just their computers and keyboards to work with, this free software will be the one and the only they may need. While there is no support for decks or turn tables, Prodecks does allow for full keyboard functionality to edit sounds in any way you like. It can even allow you to set up an advance track list so you can keep the party going even if you need to grab a drink mid-session.

Main Features:

* DJ ProDecks is a professional DJ Software for Windows, it Is a full functionally DJ tool, completely free for the users, with no limitations or “small print”.

* Intuitive and ergonomically designed for deejays, DJ ProDecks lets mix your music without limits...

* Scratch, Effects, Auto Loop, AutoMix, Sampler, Recording, Advanced Tracklist… and much more.

Manual: http://www.djprodecks.com/doc/DJ_ProDecks_Users_Guide.pdf

http://www.djprodecks.com/index.html

MusicBee - the best free music player

When I see that somebody is claiming that there is something the best, I usually “flip” the page over. No desire to fall into trap of the modern advertising.

However, MusicBee is listed on top of the free players’ ratings by several well-respected web sites. Still, not the best, but surely “one of the best”.

MusicBee is a free music player created for serious music lovers and includes everything you need to manage and enjoy your collection, no matter how large (it's reportedly handled a library of over 500,000 tracks without a hiccup).

Switching to MusicBee is easy. The first time it runs, the app scans your PC for music and lets you import your files from Windows Media Player or iTunes. Tracks are catalogued, but aren't moved unless you've checked that option under Library Preferences so there'll be no surprises.

Once your songs are imported, tagging them is a piece of cake; hit Shift+Enter to open the tag editor and go to work. MusicBee's automatic tagging is superb, or you can update metadata yourself using industry-standard tags for each file format.

As in Windows Media Player, adding artwork is as simple as copying and pasting, and it isn't limited to the album cover – you can also add pictures of the artist, lead singer, band logo, and photos from live performances. These additional pictures are used throughout the player as navigation aids, and as visualizations while tracks are playing. MusicBee also searches for song lyrics to display as each track plays.

This free music player is designed to make the most of your PC's hardware, including top-end soundcards and surround-sound setups, with upmixing for stereo sound. Continuous playback eliminates silences between tracks (ideal for Pink Floyd fans), and you can choose to add silences or fades, normalize volume, and experiment with the equalizer.

MusicBee is also great for streaming from internet radio stations and listening to podcasts, and supports both SoundCloud and Last.fm. You can even link it to VLC Media Player to stream video podcasts.

The free music player supports almost every audio format around and converting files is simplicity itself, with presets for different playback devices (though for MP3 encoding you'll need to download the LAME codec).

If all of that isn't enough, there's even an Android app for controlling MusicBee remotely, and support for WinAmp plugins. You won't find a more comprehensive free music player, and although it's not open source, it's completely free to use and tinker with for personal use.

Installer and portable: https://getmusicbee.com/downloads/

Reviewed by Techradar: http://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-music-player

Avidemux - free and open-source video editor

First time, I posted the note on Avidemux almost 10 years ago. Many software titles become non-existing, and even more non-supported anymore. Avidemux is however, is up, and still supported by active development.

In many cases, when you need a simple video clip editing capability, like cutting, that is the software you need.

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license. The program was written from scratch by Mean, but code from other people and projects has been used as well. Patches, translations and even bug reports are always welcome.

http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

The portable version

http://www.thumbapps.org/2014/09/Avidemux-portable-x86-32-bit-x64-64-bit.html

StreamWriter - freeware internet-radio recorder

StreamWriter is a free application for windows that records music broadcasted by internet radio stations.

Current version: 5.4.0.2

Main Features:

* Record as many streams as you want at the same time (MP3/AAC)

* Automatically record a wishlist's song when it's playing on a stream

* Player for streams and recorded files

* Track splitting with silence detection

* Function for manual cutting of saved titles

* Tracks are named by a given pattern

* Short songs (ads) can be skipped

* Writing of tags to recorded files

* Script-based postprocessing

* Applying of effects to recorded songs (SoX)

* Integration of different audio encoders

* Scheduled recordings

* Stream browser

* Multilingual (English/German/French/Spanish/Polish/Finnish/Russian)

* Can be installed or used in portable mode

* ...and much more!

Screenshots:

Website: https://streamwriter.org/en/

OpenShot - Freeware Multi-platform Open Source Video Editor

OpenShot Video Editor is a free, open-source video editor for Linux, Mac, and Windows licensed under the GPL version 3.0.

OpenShot can take your videos, photos, and music files and help you create the film you have always dreamed of. Easily add sub-titles, transitions, and effects, and then export your film to DVD, YouTube, Vimeo, Xbox, PlayStation, and many other common formats.

Main Features:

ü  Cross-platform (Supports Linux, OS X, and Windows)

ü  Support for many video, audio, and image formats (based on FFmpeg)

ü  Powerful curve-based Key Frame animations

ü  Desktop integration (drag and drop support)

ü  Unlimited tracks / layers

ü  Clip resizing, scaling, trimming, snapping, rotation, and cutting

ü  Video transitions with real-time previews

ü  Compositing, image overlays, watermarks

ü  Title templates, title creation, sub-titles

ü  3D Animated Titles (and Effects)

ü  SVG friendly, to create and include vector titles and credits

ü  Scrolling motion picture credits

ü  Solid color clips (including alpha compositing)

ü  Support for Rotoscoping / Image sequences

ü  Advanced Timeline (including Drag & drop, scrolling, panning, zooming, and snapping)

ü  Frame stepping (key-mappings: J, K, and L keys)

ü  Video encoding (based on FFmpeg)

ü  Digital zooming of video clips

ü  Time-mapping and Speed changes on clips (slow/fast, forward/backward, etc...)

ü  Custom transition lumas and masks

ü  Audio mixing and editing

ü  Presets for key frame animations and layout

ü  Ken Burns effect (artistic panning over an image)

ü  Digital video effects, including brightness, gamma, hue, greyscale, chroma key (bluescreen / greenscreen), and many more!

ü  OpenShot provides extensive editing and compositing features, and has been designed as a practical tool for working with high-definition video including HDV and AVCHD.

Screenshots:

Website: http://www.openshot.org/

Office Image Extraction Wizard

Office Image Extraction Wizard is an app that allows you to easily extract images from many "office type" documents and ebook formats, and save these as normal picture files on your hard drive. More than 45 common file formats are supported!

Images are extracted in their original format, with no image processing or re-compression being performed, so no quality is lost during the extraction. It does not require MS Office to work.

Office Wiz is free, open source software.

Supported file formats

Screenshots:

Website: http://www.rlvision.com/officewiz/about.php