This week we are continuing our discussion of open source software that aims to replace or eliminate the need to pay outlandish prices for commercial software. Previously we discussed biggies like replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, Photoshop with GIMP/Paint.NET, and tools for protecting your computer from viruses, spyware, and for working with PDFs. The focus this week will be on audio/video editing and DVD authoring

Audio Editing:

•The premier tool for open source audio editing has to be audacity from audacity.sourceforge.net. Audacity offers nearly studio level power. It can record audio from microphones, mixers, or with some audio cards, from audio streams. It can dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings, record up to 16 channels at once, and provides level meters to monitor levels before, during, and after recordings. It can record and edit WAV, AIFF, AU, Ogg Vorgis and MPEG audio formats quickly and easily. You can quickly edit large files and edit and mix an unlimited number of tracks, as well as apply numerous effects, like changing pitch, frequencies, tempo, remove static, hiss, hum or other background noise. You can also add Echo, Phase, Wahwah and reverse effects. All in all, this is a very powerful and complete audio mixing software package, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

•If you are just looking to convert from one format to another, MediaCoder, from mediacoder.sourceforge.net/, is a great tool. It allows quick and simple conversion between most common audio and video formats.

•If you just want a tool to quickly cut out a chunk of your favorite song, or even build your own remix, consider mp3DirectCut, available from mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html. It's a fast and powerful tool cut, copy, paste or change the volume of your favorite tracks.

Video Editing:

•Again in this category, we'll start out with something that is probably overkill for most people. Jahshaka, from jahshaka.org/, touts itself as "Powering the new Hollywood" and its goal is to provide real-time video editing and effects. This is a very powerful suite of video tools, so if you are simply looking to edito out a few seconds from your family vacation videos, this probably isn't the tool for you. However, if you want special effects, and fine-grained control over your final video masterpiece, you may want to give it a try.

•Windows and OSX both come with a free video tool, for OSX its called iMovie and for Windows folks, it's Movie Maker. Both programs offer basic video editor tools, subtitles, and clipping. iMovie is hands-down the better application between the two.

•Another great tool I came across and played a bit with as ZS4, a simple but powerful tool to edit your videos. You can download it from www.zs4.net/. If offers some nice tools like layering, looping, fading and rotating of video streams.

DVD authoring:

•DVDFlick, www.dvdflick.net, is an easy-to-use application that allows you to combine multiple video files with custom audio tracks, subtitles and menus to create your own DVD playable on a regular DVD player.

•Another great tool is DVD Styler, from www.dvdstyler.org. It has a clean interface with all the required tools to build great home DVDs.

Next week I'll wrap up this series with a few general tools to help you get the most out of your computer.