Software : Download of the day: Avidemux |
- Download of the day: Avidemux
- Google Maps just became an even better sat nav
- Updated: Amazon explains why its app was kicked from Google Play
- Updated: Best free MP3 software: 10 programs for playing and managing your music
| Posted:  Avidemux provides easy to use video editing tools that are perfect if you're put off by some of the higher end packages – and higher end price tags. Why you need itVideo editing is not always the simplest task in the world, and getting started may seem like more hassle than it's worth. But not with Avidemux, a free program that aims to make video editing as simple and straightforward as possible. To that end it ditches the timeline and multi-track editing features often seen in other video manipulation programs and instead simply lets you import your video file and get started straight away. You can perform simple editing tasks like cutting and trimming the video or moving sections around, making it ideal for novice users and those looking to learn the basics. But that doesn't mean Avidemux is short on features. It has numerous filtering options, allowing you to add a touch of flair to a video or alter its look, while there are options for auto-resizing, text overlays, deinterlacing and more. Key features
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| Google Maps just became an even better sat nav Posted:  Google has given its Maps navigation app a little upgrade, with new heads-up notifications on what lane you need to get in to help ensure you don't miss that vital turn-off. Google Maps is a pretty good freebie sat nav already, but Google product manager Darren Baker has just let us know about this new feature in the service. Turn-by-turn navigation has been improved, with more sophisticated mapping data letting Maps tell you what lane you need to be in when turning off motorways and the like. Smarter sat navThis feature will be available in "Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK and Ireland," according to a post on the Google Europe blog. You'll be directed into the right lane with both a little visual cue and voice commands. Because, as any driver knows, there are few things as frustrating as missing your turn-off on a motorway. It seems likely this info may spread to some of Europe's smaller countries in time, but for now it's only for the real big hitters. This marks one of the few neat little features we've seen added since Google altered the Maps interface to fit in with the Android 5.0 Lollipop Material UI back in November. |
| Updated: Amazon explains why its app was kicked from Google Play Posted:  Update: We asked Amazon for its take on what caused its app to be removed from Google Play. An Amazon spokesperson relied that "we launched a new Amazon App for Android Phones on September 9 that provides an award-winning mobile shopping experience, enables customers to discover and purchase all of Amazon's digital catalogue, and provides customers access to the Prime Instant Video player and unlimited streaming of over 15,000 movies and TV episodes. "Google subsequently changed their Developer Distribution Agreement on September 25. As a result, we removed the app from Google Play and published the Amazon Shopping app. "Customers who want the best Amazon experience on their Android phone, including access to Prime Instant Video and Amazon's entire digital catalogue, can still get the Amazon App for Android Phones at amazon.co.uk/androidapp". Original story follows... Amazon has replaced its Google Play app with a new version at Google's behest - all because the old app linked users to Amazon's own app store. Google doesn't allow other app stores in Google Play, but Amazon updated its app in September with a link to download Amazon apps directly to users' Android devices. It seemed the bookseller had gotten away with it, but now the app has disappeared, and Amazon confirmed with Android Police that Google forced it to take it down. Apparently the search company changed some language in its developer agreement in late September, making Amazon's app objectively against the rules. The section previously stated that developers could not release apps "whose primary purpose" is to distribute other apps, while the new version prohibits "any product which has a purpose" that does the same. Oh well. Instead Google Play now hosts a new and separate "Amazon Shopping" app that, other than the removal of Amazon's app listings, is identical to the old one. And the old one is still available for sideloading from Amazon's website. |
| Updated: Best free MP3 software: 10 programs for playing and managing your music Posted:  In these days of Spotify streaming, an MP3 collection may seem like a throwback – but managing your own music means you never need to worry about it disappearing, being unable to get on the internet or hearing it in lower quality than you'd like. While Windows Media Player and Windows 8's music player do their best, there are better apps to play, organise and sort out your collection. These are our favourites. 1. WinampFor many of us, Winamp is the only music player worth mentioning: it's been around since the earliest days of digital music, and while various ownership issues mean development has been halted for a while as lawyers fight each other, it remains a fantastic and very flexible music player. In addition to supporting every audio format you can possibly imagine, Winamp supports skins to change its appearance and plugins that add new features – equalisers, audio processors, visualisations and more. As its slogan goes, "it really kicks the llama's butt" – we can't wait to see what the new version in 2015 will bring. 2. MediaMonkeyMediaMonkey is a great app for organising and playing music libraries of any size. It can automatically rename your MP3s and sort out the way your music files are organised; it can fix broken ID3 tags and tell you if tracks have been duplicated, and it makes it easy to share your music with other devices, including Apple and Android kit, Smart TVs, DNLA-compatible Blu-ray players and so on. Some of the advanced features are limited to the paid-for Gold version, but the free version delivers an awful lot of bang for zero bucks. 3. iTunesIf you've got an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad then Apple really, really wants you to use this program, and while it's not everybody's favourite, it remains the best way to get music onto Apple devices. The latest version introduces an improved user interface, Family Sharing (which enables you to share purchases with other members of your family without having to share your account details or passwords), better playlist editing and performance improvements. If you find it runs a little slowly, delete the Smart Playlists and disable the Genius feature: they seem to have a big impact on iTunes' performance. 4. MusicZenMusic folders can be frightening places, and the longer you leave them disorganised, the more terrifying they can become. Thank heavens, then, for MusicZen. It's an incredibly simple and very useful utility that can tame even the most tempestuous digital music collection, moving and renaming files while getting shot of duplicates. By default it organises music by artist, then by year, and then by album, although you can change that if you like. Its simplicity means it's very, very quick, so if you've been putting off that music folder fixing, you don't need to put it off any longer. 5. VLC Media PlayerAs a music player VLC looks rather basic, but we're including it here because it's the Swiss Army Knife of digital media: if it can't play it, it probably isn't worth bothering trying to play in the first place. It plays CDs and DVDs, video CDs, MPEG, AVI, ASF, WMV, WMA, 3GP, MKV, Real Audio, FLAC, Flash, MIDI… you get the idea. It can even handle streaming music. It isn't just a player, though. It can convert music from one format to another, extract audio from video, stream media over a network, apply audio and video effects and grab podcasts too. 6. MP3TagDigital music veterans shudder when you say "ID3 tags" to them: they're the tags that describe each music file, and that audio apps use to organise music. Unfortunately incorrect or inconsistent tagging can cause chaos when half your REM tracks are tagged "R.E.M.", collaborations are tagged as separate artists and nobody can never make up their mind about how to spell Red Hot Chili Peppers. The good news is that MP3tag can look at the mess, tut loudly and sort it all out. It can fix inconsistencies and errors, spellcheck your tags and cross-reference them with Amazon and Freedb. 7. MP3jamFor digital natives, the place to discover new music isn't Spotify or iTunes: it's YouTube. Artists haven't been slow to notice that, and as a result you'll find music on YouTube that isn't available anywhere else – not to mention endless covers, tributes, live versions and parodies, as well as music from undiscovered new artists. That's a lot of audio – more than 20 million tracks – and YouTube doesn't always make it easy to discover. MP3jam is designed to help you find exactly what you want among YouTube's ever-growing library of content, and it can download the audio to your PC too. 8. FreeMake Audio ConverterIn an ideal world, every audio player or device would recognise every kind of audio file. Unfortunately this isn't that world, but you can get closer to it with Freemake's Free Audio Converter. It has a music player that can handle more than 40 different audio formats, and it can also convert from one to another – so if you need to convert your FLACs into MP3 or AAC, convert Ogg Vorbis to Windows Media, compress music to save space or merge multiple tracks together for gap-free listening, Free Audio Converter can do the job quickly and without fuss. 9. Foobar2000If you're looking for a fast, flexible and really powerful music player for Windows, you really ought to check out Foobar2000. It supports all the key formats – MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and many more – and can rip audio CDs, plus it has excellent tagging capabilities, a customisable user interface, gapless playback and customisable keyboard shortcuts. The available extensions add all kinds of features: fancy decoding 8-bit Atari chiptunes, decoding Nintendo sound files or adding the same reverb that PlayStation games use? It's a little over the top for just playing the odd Taylor Swift track, but it's a great app. 10. AudacityIf you make music as well as listen to it, or if you want to convert old analogue formats into shiny digital files, then Audacity should definitely be part of your audio arsenal. It can record and export in a ton of different file formats, remove unwanted noise, clicks and hisses, adjust frequencies, add fades, cut and paste waveforms and use both VST and Audio Unit effect plugins. It's particularly good for jobs such as digitising vinyl records (the filters do a great job of removing unwanted turntable rumble) and mastering audio files for production. We're amazed it's free. |
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