Convert, Resize and Cut videos with VLC Media Player

VLC, the free and open source media player is great at playing media of even the most obscure formats. However, that is not all it can do. It can be used to easily convert videos from one format to the other. Converting videos with VLC media player is pretty fast and is in the league of most premium video converters in terms of quality. It can also be used to resize videos from one size to other for when you need to shrink videos to fit in your mobile devices. It can also serve as a quick video cutting tool.

Convert Videos with VLC Media Player

To convert videos with VLC media player, follow the steps given below:-

1) Open VLC media player.
2) Click on Media in the Menu bar.
3) In the dropdown menu, click on Convert/Save. Alternatively, you can directly press Ctrl+R to reach media options.

4) Click on the Add button on the right of the File selection box to load the video whose format you want to change.
5) In the following dialog box, click on browse to select the destination where your converted video will be.

6) In the profile selection option, select from a pre-configured profile of the output or customize it by clicking on the Settings icon on its right. You can select from a range of encapsulation, video and audio formats in the following dialog box if you wish to customize the output.
7) Click on Start to begin conversion.
8) VLC's progress bar will show progress. Do not close the player when it is converting videos as it will result in output video getting corrupted.

The speed with which VLC converts videos depends upon your computer's specifications. A faster computer converts faster while slower PCs take a lot of time. At the end of the conversion process, you will get the video in the format that you have selected in step 6.

Resize and shrink videos with VLC media player

Resizing the video involves making minor changes in the steps followed in conversion. While customizing the profile in step 6, go to the Video codec tab. Inside the Scale option, enter the desired width and height that you deem fit for your needs. After that, just convert the video as you normally would. This would result in the output video having the same dimensions that you specified. However, it is important to note that exact dimensions would only be achieved if the aspect ratio of the video is maintained. If the correct aspect ratio is not satisfied by your dimensions, VLC will take one of your dimension and change the other to satisfy it.

Cut videos with VLC media player

To crop videos with VLC media player, go to the menu bar and click on View menu. Inside it, check Advanced Controls. This will result in a few extra buttons over the normal toolbar. Play the video of your choice and press the record button (from the newly added buttons) at the point in the video from where you want to start. Then, again press this button when the video reaches the point at which you want to stop it. The cut video will automatically be saved in your Videos library. It is located at Libraries/Videos in Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista. In Windows XP, it is located at My Documents\My Videos. You can use the Frame by Frame button to get a high degree of accuracy. You need to install the newer versions of this program as older versions do not support this.

Ashampoo 3D CAD Pro 4

                 

Ashampoo 3D CAD Professional 4 is the ideal solution to plan, visualize and communicate your interior and exterior design ideas.

OS Requirement Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7

License Shareware File Size 978 MB

Version 4

Date Added Tue 30, 2013 at 02:15 pm

                 

Lock a Folder With Password Using Free Folder Protector

All of us have some files and folders that we consider private. They can be anything from our business documents to pictures of friends and family. These are files that we don't want other people using our computer to know about. As Windows offers no way to protect our private information, most of us get in awkward situations when these files are discovered by unwanted people.

Surely, you can store this information in a hidden folder. The only problem is that anyone can easily search the contents of a hidden folder using Windows Search itself.

The only viable solution is storing this content in a password protected folder so that only those people knowing the password of the folder can access it. There are many folder locking programs available online but the problem is that most of the good ones are paid. Even if you do manage to get a good free one, you will be looked at suspiciously when people see a folder locker in the list of your installed programs.

If you too find yourself in a similar situation, you can try Folder Protector, a password protector for Windows folders that is not only free but is also portable meaning that it does not need to be installed. Just click on the exe file and the program will start running. I have created this program based on suggestions and feature requests that I have received by email over the last two years.

Folder Protector

Folder Protector offers each user a protected folder that can only be opened by entering the password in FolderProtector. Unlike most security programs, Folder Protector is small in size (nearly 58KB) and does not show the folder that it is protecting. This gives an additional advantage that people who don't know the password do not have a target to try and hack their way into. As the software is portable, you can hide it or even delete it after protecting your folder and no one will have a clue that it was used. Then whenever you need to access protected files, you can re-download the program from this page, enter the password and access your protected files.

Download Folder Protector

Download for Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Download for Windows XP


How to use Folder Protector?
When you run Folder Protector for the first time, the program will ask you for a password that you want to use. Enter a password that you can remember as this will be the password to your protected folder.

After entering the password, the program will open a folder named SecuredFILES. This is your protected folder. You can add all your private files in this folder. This folder is located at the Desktop. After adding all your files, you may close this folder.

Then, you can use the menu in the program to lock your folder. To lock the folder, type lock as your action. After successfully locking the folder, FolderProtector will display that the folder is locked.

Unlocking the protected folder is easy. Just type unlock as your action. Then the program will ask you to enter your password. Upon successfully entering the password, the program will display the contents of your protected folder.

Changing the Password: Just type change as your action. The program will ask you for your current password. Upon successful entry of the current password, the program will ask for your new password and change it instantly.

Acknowledgment: This software has been made possible only through the suggestions of readers of this blog, especially Ernell Albert Galido for his idea of using a menu based interface.

Windows Compatibility: This program has been successfully tested on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Support and Development
I will continue to develop this software further. So, your suggestions are invited. If you face any problem while using this software, you can use our support page and expect a quick reply.

Blender 2.65a

              

Blender is an open-source application that allows you to create a wide range of 2D and 3D models. It provides professional modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing tools.

OS Requirement Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7

License Open Source File Size 33.6mb

Version 2.65a

Date Added Wed 10, 2013 at 03:33 pm

                 

Convert PDF to Word and Word to PDF with Free Software

PDF and Word (.doc and .docx) are two document formats most computer users encounter on a frequent basis. PDF files have advantages of being platform independent, hard to edit and smaller in size. Word documents on the other hand are easy to edit, format and read on devices that support them. While both of these formats have their advantages, many users have felt the need to convert one to the other to take advantage of the other's features.

There are many paid software and tools that support this conversion, but most of them are too expensive. There are many free online conversion tools as well but either they result in low quality conversion with lots of missing resources or take too much time due to server limitations. Most of these online tools limit the size of files you can convert. Also, many people are not comfortable with uploading their personal files on a third party server.

In this situation, the only solution to obtain high quality conversion from one format to the other and that too quickly is using a program installed on your PC. There are many free software that support this but the problem with most of them is that they do not offer high quality conversion and result in lots of missing resources. However, there are certain free products that offer quick and high quality conversion from PDF to Word and vice versa. This article contains some such software.

In this article:
1. Convert PDF to Word
2. Convert Word to PDF

Convert PDF to Word

Open Office
The basic version of Open Office that you download from OpenOffice.org lacks PDF operability. To add PDF functionality to Open Office, you will need to install the PDF Import extension. If you have older versions of Open Office, you can use the older version of this extension. LibreOffice, an office suite descended from Open Office has this extension included by default.

While Open Office does not support direct conversion of PDF files to Word documents, you can use an indirect method to achieve this conversion. To do this, open any PDF document in Open Office Draw and copy all its elements with Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C. Now open Open Office Writer and press Ctrl+V and then save the file as a Word document. In this way, you can get a Word document of your PDF file with remarkable accuracy.

You can also directly edit the PDF file with Open Office Draw just as easily as a Word document.

UniPDF
UniPDF is a small free utility that lets you convert PDF files to Word documents with speed and accuracy. It also offers conversion of PDF files to RTF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, HTML and plain text. While it lacks a plethora of features, it is good at what it promises to do; convert PDF files.

Both of these programs run on Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. It is interesting to note that PDF to word conversion is possible only if the PDF file is not a scanned image and was created as a text document.

Online Tools
While the above mentioned offline tools will be enough for most conversion needs, it is always good to have a few options. These online tools provide accurate and fast conversion from PDF to Word.

ConvertFiles: Limits the file size to 250 MB. Offers high quality conversion with OCR support.
ConvertOnlineFree: Limits the file size to 30 MB. Is a good option but lacks OCR support.

Convert Word to PDF

Open Office can be effectively used for this purpose. Just open a Word Document in Open Office Writer and use its Export as PDF option to immediately get a PDF version. Similarly, you can use Open Office to convert XLS and PPT files to PDF as well.

Synfig 0.63.05

                                        

A powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software application.

OS Requirement Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7

License Freeware File Size 28.8 MB

Version 0.63.05

Date Added Wed 10, 2013 at 03:28 pm

                           

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows Computers

While most of us are already aware of obvious keyboard shortcuts like “Alt+F4” and “Ctrl+C”, there are some obscure shortcuts which most of us tend to overlook. These keyboard shortcuts are not only useful for the average PC user but for advanced users as well. This article contains many such amazing keyboard shortcuts which if used properly could save a lot of time and effort. So let's get started.

Windows key+D: This shortcut is the keyboard equivalent of “Show the Desktop”. It is useful for quickly minimizing every open window when someone walks in and you are doing some private work.

Ctrl+Shift+Esc: This shortcut directly starts the task manager. While Alt+Ctrl+Del used to bring up the Task Manager in Windows XP and earlier versions, in Windows 8 and Windows 7, it just brings up the lock this computer screen.

Ctrl+Click: This shortcut is useful for opening a link in a background tab. This is useful when you have to load a page without leaving the current one.

Alt+Print Screen: takes the screenshot of the current active window as opposed to just Print Screen which takes the screenshot of the entire screen.

Shift+Click for Yes to All and No to All: If you have a lot of dialog boxes asking yes and no question, just shift+click Yes or No on one to yes all or no all.

Ctrl+C on an error dialog box to copy its contents: Suppose your computer is giving an error message and you want to copy its contents to send to the support guy, what do you do? Just press Ctrl+C while the dialog box is highlighted and its contents will be copied to your clipboard.

Ctrl+T: This keyboard shortcut opens a new tab in internet browsers.

Ctrl+Shift+T: Reopens the last closed tab.

Ctrl+Shift+N: This shortcut opens a new incognito window in Google Chrome.

Ctrl+Shift+P: Opens a new private window in Mozilla Firefox.

Alt+Enter after writing the domain name in the address bar of your browser to insert .com automatically.

Shift+Enter inserts .net domain name extension.

Ctrl+W: This shortcut closes the current tab in your browser quickly.

Ctrl+Backspace: This shortcut deletes the last word you have typed. It is useful in case you typed in a wrong word and want to delete it quickly.

Ctrl+Left or Right Arrow key: This shortcut allows you to move the cursor one word at a time instead of the default one character at a time.

Ctrl++: This shortcut allows you to zoom in web pages in web browsers. Useful when text on a web page is too small to read properly. Ctrl+Scroll wheel can also zoom in documents, file thumbnails and icons in Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Ctrl+-: This shortcut does the reverse of the previous shortcut.

Ctrl+0: Reset the webpage's zoom.

Windows key+M: Minimizes all the open windows.

Ctrl+L: This shortcut allows you to quickly jump to the address bar of your web browser.

Windows key+Pause/Break: Quickly open the system properties dialog box.

Ctrl+Shift+Delete: This shortcut opens the option to delete your browser's history, cookies, cache and other details that it stores while you browse the internet. This shortcut is extremely useful for the privacy conscious.

Windows Key+L: This shortcut locks your computer.

Ctrl+H: makes the history appear.

CTRL+B: Bold CTRL+U: Underline CTRL+I: Italic.

Alt+Select: This shortcut allows you to select rectangular blocks of text in Word processors, something that is not possible with simple select.

F2: Allows you to rename the selected file.

Holding Shift while inserting a device with removable storage prevents automatic run.

Ctrl+F: This keyboard shortcut opens the Find option in any program.

Ctrl+S: If you are working on a software and want to quickly save your progress, this shortcut will come in handy.

Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End: Useful for quickly going to the top and bottom of a page.

Ctrl+P: Useful for printing the current page.

Space Bar: While viewing a web page in a browser, pressing space bar moves the page down.

Alt+Tab: Useful for quickly cycling between running applications. Press along with Shift to cycle backwards.

Ctrl+Tab: Cycle between tabs in your browser.

Ctrl+F5: Clears the cache and refreshes the current tab.

Shift+Right click: Open alternate right click options.

Alt+Double click: Open the file's properties. Alt+Enter can also be used for this.


These are some keyboard shortcuts that I found extremely useful. If you know some more useful keyboard shortcuts, do mention them in the comments.