The 5 Best Online Tools for Making Professional Videos | Dramel Notes

Not everyone can afford a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas Pro. And while there are plenty of desktop video editors out there — on Windows, on Mac, and even on Linux — nothing can beat the accessible-from-anywhere convenience of an online video editor.

What’s surprising is just how many of these Web-based video editors there are, and how many of them just aren’t very good, but the good news is they aren’t all bad. In fact, several are pretty darn good.

1. WeVideo

WeVideo is a cloud-based video editor with a powerful feature set and a lot of reasons to use it, but perhaps the best reason is due to its simple interface, shallow learning curve, and ease of use. It’s one of the few worth paying for.

A free account gets you 2 GB of cloud space, up to 720p resolution, up to 50 tracks from the music library, and up to 5 minutes of “published video time” per month. The downside is that you’re limited to basic editing features and the video will be watermarked.

Or you can pay a one-time price of $10 for 5 GB of cloud space, up to 720p resolution, up to 400 tracks from the music library, up to 60 minutes of “published video time”, no watermark, and all advanced editing features. If you run out of publishing time, you can just pay another $10.

Editing features include transitions, animations, transformations, speed ups and slow downs, green screen, a Storyboard editor, a Timeline editor, and easy exports to popular sites like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Facebook, and Dropbox.

WeVideo is also available as an Android app and iOS app. Editing videos on a mobile device is certainly more restrictive than on a computer, but if you can handle it, WeVideo is easily one of the top choices alongside Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps.

2. Loopster

Loopster is a cloud-based video editor that’s designed to be easy enough for amateurs but powerful enough for those seeking to do more serious work. Even if you have absolutely no video editing experience, Loopster’s interface is so simple that you’ll pick it up in a snap.

A free account gets you 3 GB of cloud space, up to 480p resolution, up to 10 minutes on the timeline, up to 1 GB max size per uploaded file, and a Loopster watermark on the final video. Good enough for amateurs, and not as restrictive as WeVideo in terms of how many videos you can publish.

Paid accounts come in four tiers. The first two are for individuals — Plus ($4 per month) and Movie Producer ($8 per month) — while the last two are for organizations — Education ($80 per quarter) and Business ($130 per quarter). All of these packages remove the watermark, increase resolution to 720p, and unlock a few advanced features.

The difference between Plus and Movie Producer tiers? The former has 10 GB cloud space and 20 minutes on the timeline while the latter has 20 GB cloud space and 30 minutes on the timeline.

In addition, Loopster provides a free library of 600+ sound effects, the ability for multiple users to collaborate on one video, easy distribution to several video sites, and is also available as an Android app and iOS app.

3. Magisto

Want to make a professional-looking video without doing any serious editing work? Then Magisto is the tool for you. Think of what Instagram did for amateur photography, then apply it to amateur videography. Yeah, that about sums it up — and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

It works like this: once you have a video clip, all you have to do is upload it to Magisto, pick a “theme” for it, and decide on the background music for the clip. Despite the fact that you have very little control otherwise, Magisto’s results are rather impressive.

Seriously, Magisto does all the work. Once uploaded, Magisto analyzes the clip and determines which postions are the “most interesting”, then cuts out all of the uninteresting parts. Expect the final video to be noticeably shorter than the source video you uploaded.

Upgrading to a Premium account, at $5 per month, lets you publish longer videos (up to 2.5 minutes in length) and gives you the ability to download the final video. With a Free account, videos can be published directly to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Magisto is one of our preferred tools when editing videos in Chrome.

4. Wideo

Wideo isn’t a traditional video editor. Rather than taking a clip that you recorded elsewhere — such as with your phone or camera — and letting you apply changes to it, Wideo lets you create animated videos from scratch with ease.

Here’s how it works: You can upload your own images and audios (but not video clips, unfortunately) and animate them using the tools provided by Wideo. Animations include transformations, transitions, and text effects.

It’s best for making the kinds of videos you’d see as marketing promotions for a new mobile app or a business presentation full of graphs and data. Wideo comes with dozens of templates — advertisements, tutorials, infographics, etc. — that’ll speed up your video-making time.

The Free plan lets you make unlimited videos with a 30-second limit. Upgrading to the Plus ($9 per month), Pro ($19 per month), or Agency ($39 per month) plans increases the video length limit, increases video quality, and how many Wideo-provided assets you can use. The Free and Plus plans are watermarked.

5. PowToon

PowToon is similar to Wideo in that it isn’t meant to edit existing videos that you’ve recorded. Instead, you use it to create animations and presentations from scratch. Basically, if you need something like Wideo but don’t like Wideo, then try PowToon. (Or vice versa.)

Free accounts have basic animation and slide features, no downloading of videos, can only be used for non-commercial purposes, a max length of 5 minutes, a limited selection of royalty-free music and styles, and are watermarked. Compared to Wideo, it’s admittedly a bit gutted for flexibility.

Pro accounts ($229 per year) and Business accounts ($708 per year) have advanced features, better video resolution, commercial rights, more music and styles options, longer video lengths, and no watermarks. Pretty expensive, I know, but worth it if you’re going to be making a lot of videos.

Which Online Video Maker Is Best?

If you absolutely need a professional video, your best bet is to spend the money and find someone with the right tools (e.g. Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas Pro) and the proper skillset to make it a reality. If your budget is limited, however, then these tools can still get you pretty far.

Are there any online video editing tools that we missed? Which ones look most interesting to you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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How to Calibrate Your Monitor on Windows or Mac | Dramel Notes

Modern desktop operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X offer built-in tools for calibrating your display‘s brightness, contrast, gamma, and color levels. This can help make text more readable and give images and videos more accurate colors.

Sure, digital photography professionals will want to use colorimeters to do this. But, if you don’t have such a tool and just want to make some quick adjustments, you can just do it with your eye.

Before performing any of these steps, ensure you’re using your display’s native resolution.

Use Your Monitor’s On-Screen Controls

If you have a monitor with on-screen controls, you can do this just by pressing those buttons. But it’s hard to adjust options without anything to go by. Use the Lagom LCD monitor test pages (or a similar online tool) and you’ll have on-screen test patterns that you can look at while calibrating the various settings. Go through the pages one by one and they’ll explain what you need to look for when adjusting the various settings on your monitor.

If you don’t have such on-screen buttons — let’s say you have a laptop, for example — you can also use the tools built into Windows and Mac OS X.

Windows 10, 8.1, 8, and 7

Windows has had a built-in display-calibration tool since Windows 7. To open it, launch the Control Panel. On Windows 10 or 8.1, you can do this by right-clicking the Start button and selecting “Control Panel”.

Click “Hardware and Sound” in the Control Panel window, click “Display”, and then click the “Calibrate color” link at the left side of the Display control panel.

You can also open the Start menu, type “calibrate” into the search box, and click the “Calibrate display color” shortcut that appears to launch the calibration tool directly.

The Display Color Calibration tool will appear. This tool will walk you through adjusting the various options — gamma, brightness, contrast, and color balance — explaining what option means and what you’re looking for when adjusting each option. Windows does a good job of explaining what you need to know, so just read along as you go through the wizard.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X has its own display calibration tool built-in. To open it, click the Apple menu on the menu bar at the top of your screen and select “System Preferences”. Click the “Displays” option in the list.

Click the “Color” tab at the top of the window, and then click the “Calibrate” button.

This opens the Apple Display Calibrator Assistant. It will walk you through calibrating the display’s various settings, explaining what you need to know and how to select the ideal option on the way. Different settings may be available on different displays. The assistant will explain what you need to know and what you should look for when adjusting various settings.

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Modern Linux desktop environments may have display-and-color calibration built into their control panels, too. Of course, if you’re using a Linux desktop, you can also just load the color calibration web pages and adjust the settings on your monitor itself.

Chromebooks and Chromeboxes don’t have any built-in tools for this as it’s just not integrated into Chrome OS. If you’re using a Chromebook with an external monitor or a Chromebox, however, you can use the above web pages and adjust the settings using the buttons on the monitor itself.

Image Credit: Denelson83 at Wikipedia

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YouTube Introduces a ‘Trending’ Tab, Surfacing Viral Videos in Real Time by @mattsouthern | Dramel Notes

YouTube has introduced a new permanent fixture to the iOS, Android, and desktop versions of its service — a ‘Trending’ tab that will surface viral videos in real time.

Going forward, this will essentially be the home on the web for viral videos, especially videos that are going viral right at this very moment.

“This new tab in your YouTube app delivers the top trending videos directly to your Android, iOS, and desktop device. It’s the best way to catch the videos, creators, and trends that people watch, share, and talk about each and every day.”

According to The Verge, YouTube’s Trending tab uses an algorithm based on comments, views, and “external references.” Instead of recommending popular videos on the homepage, this tab will be the new place to find popular/trending videos.

VentureBeat reports the content displayed in the Trending tab may vary based on location, and will in no way be influenced by a user’s viewing history. In addition, if some particularly explicit videos are trending,they may be manually filtered out of the tab.

Manual filtering suggests that YouTube can override the algorithm to add or remove content from the tab at any time. That may be why the recent YouTube Rewind video is pinned to the top of the Trending tab right now, even though it may not be the most viral video at the moment.

In any case, it looks like this tab will be a mostly reliable source for keeping up with videos that either have gone viral, or are going viral. It will be interesting to see what kind of effect being featured in Trending will on a video’s traffic. Are people actually going to pay attention to the trending tab? I guess we will see over time.

Featured Image Credit: Daxiao Productions / Shutterstock

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How to Hide and Restore System Icons from the Desktop | Dramel Notes

You might have a lot of icons on your desktop, but did you know that you can choose whether to have the Recycle Bin, Control Panel, and other system shortcuts showing? Here’s how to make them go away (if they’re too cluttered) or how to get them back (if accidentally removed).

For Windows 10: Right-click empty space on the desktop and choose Personalize. From here, click Themes on the left sidebar and choose Desktop Icon Settings to open the dialogue. You can choose to show or hide Computer (or “This PC”), User’s Files (your user folder), Network, Recycle Bin, and the Control Panel. Click OK to show your icons.

For Windows 7 and 8.1: Right-click on your desktop and choose Personalize, then on the left sidebar choose Change Desktop Icons. You’ll get the same dialogue box with the five choices to show or hide. Click OK to save your changes and see your icons again.

If you want to keep the Recycle Bin shortcut around but don’t like clutter on your desktop, try pinning it to your Start menu. This keeps it accessible without blocking your awesome desktop wallpapers.

Now that you can see it again, make your Recycle Bin even better.

What icons do you like on your desktop? Do you prefer the convenience of showing them, or do you like to keep things clean? Let us know!

Image Credit: Yongcharoen_kittiyaporn via Shutterstock.com

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How to Choose Whether Your Function Keys are F1-F12 Keys or Special Keys | Dramel Notes

Modern laptop and desktop keyboards have a multi-purpose set of keys in the “function” row. These keys can perform special actions related to the audio volume, playback, and hardware features. They can also function as the classic F1-F12 keys — but not at the same time.

These keys will often perform special actions by default, but you may want to use them as standard F-keys — for example, for PC gaming. Rather than holding down the Fn key every time you press a key, you can choose what they do by default.

Toggle Fn Lock

This can often be toggled with an “Fn Lock” key, which functions like a Caps Lock key. Toggle the Fn Lock on and the keys will function as if you’re holding down the Fn key all the time, just as the Caps Lock key makes your letter keys function as if you’re holding down the Shift key all the time.

Depending on your keyboard, you may actually have a dedicated “Fn Lock” key. If you don’t, you may have to press the Fn key and then press an “Fn Lock” key to activate it. For example, on the keyboard below, the Fn Lock key appears as a secondary action on the Esc key. To enable it, we’d hold Fn and press the Esc key. To disable it, we’d hold Fn and press Esc again. It functions as a toggle just like Caps Lock does.

Some keyboards may use other combinations for Fn Lock. For example, on Microsoft’s’ Surface keyboards, you can toggle Fn Lock by holding the Fn Key and pressing Caps Lock.

Change an Option in the BIOS or UEFI Settings

Many laptops that ship with built-in keyboards often have an option for this in their BIOS or UEFI setup screen. Reboot the computer and press whatever key it asks you to press while it’s booting up to access this screen — often F2, Delete, or F10 — or use the new method to access UEFI firmware on Windows 8 and 10. If you’re not sure how to access this screen, perform a web search for the model of PC you have and “Access BIOS” or “access UEFI.” You could also just look in the PC’s manual. (If you built your own PC, look in the motherboard’s manual.)

Look for an option that controls this feature and you can change it. For example, we found this option under Advanced > Function Key Behavior on one modern Dell laptop.

Change the Option in a Control Panel

You may also see this option in various places throughout Windows. For example, if you’re using Windows in a Boot Camp configuration on a Mac, you can open the  Boot Camp configuration panel from your system tray and you’ll find this option named “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” under the Keyboard tab.

On Mac OS X, this option can be found in the System Preferences window. Click the Apple menu and select “System Preferences” to open it, click the “Keyboard” icon, and then click the “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” option.

Dell inserts this option into the Windows Mobility Center, and some other PC manufacturers may also do this. To access it on Windows 10 or 8.1, right-click the Start button and select “Mobility Center.” On Windows 7, press Windows Key + X. You’ll see the option under “Fn Key Behavior.”

This option may also be available in a keyboard settings configuration tool installed by your computer manufacturer. You might find it in your system tray or Start menu, and it might offer a similar option for controlling this. It’s not standardized.

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In general, you can often change this setting right ont he keyboard itself via the Fn Lock key or a hidden Fn Lock shortcut. On many laptops, it’s available as an optoin in the BIOS or UEFI settings screen you can access during boot-up. If all else fails, dig through your keyboard-configuration panels in the operating system itself.

If you still can’t find the option, perform a web search for your manufacturer of laptop or keyboard and “fn lock” or something similar. The information you find online may point you in the right direction.

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How to Use Rainmeter to Customize Your Windows Desktop | Dramel Notes

Rainmeter is a lightweight application for customizing your Windows desktop. Rainmeter works by installing community made ‘skins’, many of which can change how the desktop works with widgets like app launchers, RSS and email readers, calendars, weather reports, and many others. It has been around since Windows XP, where it was used as a tool for displaying basic info on the desktop, but has since gained a large community following which has produced high quality skins which can change the whole desktop experience.

Installing Rainmeter

Rainmeter is an open source program and can be downloaded from their official website. If you want the latest updates, you can also build it from the source code at their Github repository.

Rainmeter can be installed portably as well, but it isn’t recommended. The standard installation works just fine.

Installation is simple, but make sure “Launch Rainmeter on startup” is checked, or else it will have to be manually restarted after a reboot.

Once Rainmeter is installed, you should see a few new things on your desktop, displaying basic things like disk and CPU usage. This is Rainmeter’s default skin.

To get to Rainmeter’s settings, right click on any one of the skins and click “Manage Skin”. A window will come up listing all your installed skins. Clicking “Active Skins” will let you manage each one individually.

You can edit the positioning and settings of each skin. If you want to make not draggable, unclick “Draggable” and click “Click through”. This will also disable the right click menu, but fortunately Rainmeter adds an icon in the Windows toolbar, which also lets you access the menu.

Finding and Installing Skins

Rainmeter’s default skin is useful, but fairly boring. Many sites exist for showcasing Rainmeter skins, including DeviantArt, Customize.org, and the Rainmeter subreddit. Sorting by “Top – All Time” on the subreddit brings up some of the best skins and layouts. Skins from these sites can be downloaded and mixed and matched to your choosing. Some skins, like Enigma, are essentially entire Rainmeter suites by themselves.

To install a skin, just double click on the .rmskin file. Rainmeter’s window will pop up allowing you to install and enable the skin. For some skins, there are lots of different features, so if you don’t want everything loaded at once, uncheck “Load included skins”, and Rainmeter will simply just add them to your list of skins.

Tweaking Rainmeter

Rainmeter allows for an amazing amount of customization. If you want to get your hands dirty with the code behind the skins, it isn’t too complex. Right click on a skin and hit “Edit skin”, which will bring up a configuration file with lots of variable definitions.

For example, if you wanted to change the color of the outer rim of this clock, you can edit the values of the variable that controls that. Most skins have comments in the configuration file, so it’s easy to tell what controls what.

Alternatives to Rainmeter

If you’re on a Mac or Linux, unfortunately you’re out of luck, as there isn’t a Rainmeter build for OS X or Linux. For Mac users, there is Geektool, which performs many of the same basic functions such as displaying info on the desktop and some basic widgets, though there isn’t as big of a community following behind it, so the options for skins are limited. Geektool is also much more oriented towards people who are familiar with the command line, as it runs nearly entirely on bash scripts.

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