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 Cape Town: At the last meeting of the WACC 2008 Congress, I met a radio
producer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I asked her if she could
share some audio excerpts for my website on stories for peace building. She
said unfortunately, no. Her organization did not have the equipment or budget
for producing audio files.
$20 for a headset with a microphone, and the free audio
editing program, Audacity, is all she needs. Audacity is a great sound editor
that is especially appropriate for international contexts. The multilingual
version comes in numerous languages, and there is a portable version that runs
off of a flash drive or CD for people relying on cyber cafés. With one hour of
practice, you can begin creating your own audio content.
Yesterday I showed a free image editing program to a delegate
from Uganda, called FastStone Image Viewer. It has everything you need for
basic image touch-ups – resizing, cropping, red eye reduction, even annotation
tools. The intuitive interface is very user-friendly. One of the most
time-saving features is the batch image optimization tool. We reduced 200
digital photographs from 2 Mb each to 90 Kb with only one click. Then we used a
single-screen dialogue box to create a slideshow, optionally with music. This
is the program that we used to create the slideshows that were shown at the Congress
plenary sessions.
The most accessible free video editor is Microsoft Movie
Maker, because it comes bundled with Windows XP and above. With it, you can
create video footage live with a web camera, download footage from a camcorder,
import photographs and add movement to them, and add soundtracks and
voiceovers. Again, the software is simple enough that you can become productive
with it in an afternoon.
All of these tools are easy and affordable. The only
constraint is bandwidth to download them. If you have good Internet access, and
work with organizations that can’t easily download large files, I encourage you
to burn some CDs with these, and other, free software tools. This will enable more organizations to begin producing using multimedia content in their work. And as we have heard convincingly throughout the Congress, communicators for peace need all of the tools at their disposal to foster better understanding and empathy.
Attached below is a list of these free software tools and more, with links to the websites where you can download them. I include this file as a guide on the software CDs that I distribute. I’ve also
attached the slides from my multimedia software workshop, which includes links
to other websites of
interest, such as free blog websites and photo sharing sites.
If you have other software tools or websites to recommend,
please share them in a comment.
Carole St. Laurent, Website/Multimedia Consultant, fluidIT
solutions
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