Links

A collection of links that we sometimes find useful, and maybe you, as a budding animatographer, may find useful as well!

Note: links will open in a new tab/window.

Slideshow related sites:

• West Coast Animatographers — our cousin group up in Vancouver, BC.

Music Resources:

"Creative commons" music is music you are allowed to use in your shows usually for free. The artist indicates what their requirements are; usually it's just a matter that you must give them credit in your production. Some will request that their music only be used for non-commercial purposes (and that you'll contact them to arrange a fee for commercial use).
See creativecommons.org for more information about CC licensing (it's not just music).

Below are some sites that have "free" music resources. Read licensing/usage requirements, since each one may be a little different.

• Free Music Archive - a large collection of many styles of music.
• Audio Farm - a large collection of many styles of music organized by artists.
• OpSound - library site tracking links to CC music. The site does not host the music itself, but gives you links to artists' sites.
• YouTube Audio Library - a library of music and sound effects. The music can be searched by desired mood, instrument, etc.
• Facebook Sound Collection - a library of music and sound effects. The music can be searched by desired genre, mood, duration, type of vocals, etc. (Note: it's not totally clear if they allow your use of the music ONLY for video that will be published to Facebook)

Other Audio Resources:

• Audio Network — A stock music site based in the UK, allows you to buy different levels of licensing so you can be sure you have the right to use the music in your productions ("for personal use" or "home production" -- which covers posting to sites like YouTube). A good search engine to allow you to find music based on genres, "feeling", tempos, lengths, etc. Being stock music it will NOT have pop culture tunes. However, if you play enough samples, you fill find the music is familiar since it is found in a LOT of documentaries on BBC, CBC, and PBS shows.
• Audacity — if you need to do some real sound editing, consider Audacity -- it's free(!!) and quite capable. (remember, ProShow is NOT a sound editing application! it can do basic splices and joins, but for effects, etc. consider a proper sound editing application)
  • Download Audacity
  • Audacity Manual and tutorials
• CBC Radio 3 - a great source of music from Canadian artists, often with links to the artist's web page, or sites where you can buy their music.
• Facebook Sound Collection - a source of free (and royalty free) music, with rights owned by Facebook for people who want to create videos for posting on Facebook and Instagram.
• Your local library! Many public libraries have CD collections, sometimes thousands of them. You can often sign out many at a time and find just the track you need fora show. While this is not the route to go if you will use your show for profit, for shows that are just for family and friends, it's a viable option.

Web Resources:

• Adobe's Video Player — (for flash video -- it's free!) if you do your own web development, you might want to consider using this flash player instead of the one that ProShow inserts for you, I have found the Adobe one to be more stable and offers more playback control. If you are not web-page savvy, then stick with the pages that proshow generates for you.
• Wheel of Color — This site is intended for web developers and graphic artists, but allows you to take a colour and find complimentary colors to go with it (in designing caption colour combinations)
• Da Font — You can add emotion and action to your captions with different fonts. This site has literally hundrends of free fonts available to download.
• FontSpring is a commercial font site that has fonts for sale, but they do offer many nice ones for free.
• IgniteMotion has a collection of free video backgrounds that can be used for both personal and commercial use. Many of the clips are loopable.
• IgniteHD, a companion site for IgniteMotion has a collection of free stock video and photos. For when you need that clip of a sunset for your show?