Tools 2.0

We are setting up this section to provide information about the various tools recommended for adoption in the iSchool Portal site.

With so many multimedia content to be compiled, edited and managed, before they are being uploaded onto the iSchool Portal site, we think it would be helpful for us to start a separate section on this site, so that we can share our experience using these tools, iSchool Portal users can also share their experience in the Forum site with problems and tips in using these tools..

While there are a lot of tools available for Mac users, e.g. GarageBand, of course (part of iLife), majority of our users are on the Windows platform, so we will share our tools used in this platform.

Audio Editing Tools
For Audio Editing tools, you can use the free Audacity, which works on Windows, Mac OS and Linux; You can convert just about any audio file to MP3 by opening it in Audacity and then Save in the MP3 format. To do so, you must also download and install the (free) LAME MP3 encoder (instructions here), which works with Audacity. There are several tutorials for Audacity on the web.

Windows only: Adobe Audition (you can download a free trial version) which has evolved from Cool Edit Pro, and it’s a robust, feature-rich program. It has an awesome multitrack interface.

Windows and Mac: Pro Tools from DigiDesign (a division of Avid) gets rave reviews from serious audio geeks. Pro Tools 7.3 runs on the Intel Macs.

Windows only: Sound Forge (list US$300) and Sound Forge Audio Studio (list US$70) from Sony (formerly from Sonic Foundry). Sound Forge Audio Studio is very easy to use, but it does not do true multitrack editing.