This New Streaming Software Is Free… and It’s Easy
About two years ago my wife wanted to start adding livestreams to her arsenal of content creation outside of traditional videos for YouTube etc.
At that time the darling of the livestreaming world was Open Broadcaster Software – OBS.
I then spent quite some time learning how to setup and use it because even though it was free, it was really, really complicated.
Now don’t get me wrong, OBS is great and for free software is incredibly feature rich!
However the problem with all that feature richness is that it is wildly complex and with that, has a steep learning curve.
These days my wife has switched to an alternative to OBS called Meld Studio.
Just to give you an idea of the difference, she set it up and started using it by herself with no input from me at all.
Bear in mind this is a woman that yells at computer screens so that will give you an idea of how (reasonably) straightforward it is.
Where to Get Free Footage for Video Editing? 5 Best Stock Sites
Free stock footage and image sites tend to come and go all the time although a few remain consistent.
The main reason for tht is that a free website trying to compete with some of the big ones without generating revenue beyond ads is pretty hard.
The two I know of that keep on keeping on are Pixabay and Pexels and the reason for them hanging around is that they were bought out by Canva.
So before we proceed any further, there are only two things you really need to know about me.
They are that I make videos and I am incredibly cheap and hate spending money on things I could get for free!
So in light of that here are a few of the current resources you can check out for free footage for your projects form the guys at Movavi.
Add Effects To People In Your Videos – PowerDirector
This is a feature in PowerDirector that has been around for a little while but it seems not a lot of people are aware of it.
As a broad overview, there are many,many built-in effects in PowerDirector that come with extended abilities.
By that I mean most effects do what they say on the box but if you dig into them a little you may find controls and settings beyond that.
Generally speaking the only way to really know what they are is to add the effect to a clip then go into the properties of that effect to see what is available.
You can see that in action in the video below where a “shake” effect is applied and as expected it applies to the entire clip.
However by going into the effect properties we discover that the effect can be applied as a mask and can track an object or objects in the clip.
How to Make Use of the Library Preview Window – PowerDirector
Sometimes when you are previewing what you have on the timeline in PowerDirector, you may want to also preview something that is in the media library.
Normally you do that by clicking on that asset and it displays or start to play.
The problem with that is that in doing so you have just lost your playhead spot from the thing you were previewing on the timeline! Doh!
That’s where the Library Preview Window comes into play.
It is a way of previewing something already loaded into the library without losing your spot on the timeline.
How to Save and Share your Project in Filmora 14
A feature that is well worth considering when it comes to choosing video editing software is the portability of that program.
It is not something that people tend to think of when deciding and very often only becomes a problem… when it becomes a problem!
By “portability” we actually mean the ability to create a project on one computer and be able to resume working on that same project on another computer.
There are two main ways most software deals with this situation.
The first is that it packs everything relating to and contained within the project into a single file that can be deployed on another computer for work to continue.
The second is to have the program accessible to a cloud account where the project is uploaded to.
Then later from another location, another user can access the assets online and continue working.
There is no “better” solution in this case, just individual preferences.
Here’s how Filmora handles this scenario.
How to Make High Quality Instagram Reels (Complete In-App Tutorial)
A few weeks ago I mentioned that Instagram had released its own editing App for the creation of Reels for their platform.
Since that time there have been a few upgrades and improvements added to the App making it a lot more effective for its purpose.
In the video below the guys from Primal Video run through an end-to-end Reels creation process using the App.
5 Free Audio Effects Every DaVinci Resolve Editor Should Know
The recent release of DaVinci Resolve 20 and the even more recent release of an update to version 20.1 saw the addition of a few interesting features.
Of note here were those added to the Fairlight page and although some already existed everything has had a bit of a polish up.
In the video below Jason covers 5 tools in that Fairlight Page that are built in to the program that can be used to very easily improve any audio track.
5 DaVinci Resolve Hacks I Wish I Knew Sooner
It’s pretty easy to get totally lost in all the settings of DaVinci Resolve especially in the Color Page.
After all it is intended for fully professional applications so there is a lot of stuff in there!
Having said that there are a few little tricks you can apply to take advantage of its power without having to go through 6 months of training to get it to do what you want.
In the video below you can see a few of those, two of which I use on nearly every project.
The first is the use of an HSV output node to control saturation easily and the second is using the Color Slice tool.