Tezza

Affinity Photo is about the only paid image editor I would consider jumping to now, so bummed I missed that sale! But $80.00 (aud) full price is not too bad. They also have Publisher and Design, you can switch between using them using their StudioLink technology, real handy for desktop publishing and a great alternative to Microsoft's products which I already own but have 2007 version, very tempted to get Photo and Publisher.

A cheap bundle of Film, video and audio production ebooks, PDF's etc. About 5 relate specifically to audio production for film/video but the other books also deal with audio as part of the process as well. Could be of interest if you are looking at composing for movies or on set recording of sound, effects etc. Also good as being a reference library for understanding the process of film making. https://www.humblebundle.com/books/become-filmmaker-focal-press-books?linkID=&mcID=102:5ef243204eff3e2dfc72c269:ot:5df2dc6fd8a09ee6231fcfa7:1&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020_06_24_becomefilmmakerfocalpress_bookbundle&linkID=&utm_content=cta_button

I am not a fan of Paintshop Pro, I always found it to be slow and cumbersome unless things have changed. I use the latest version of the free GIMP for all my image editing now. It's a bit unintuitive to start with but I did all the training for it so now it feels like normal to me.

I like XLN stuff but my last recollection with them is that they only do the stub installer type install on to your DAW. So you have to put an installer on your DAW and then install direct from the internet directly to your DAW. Not possible for me with my poor internet and too expensive. I like to get the full program installed to my laptop at a place of good internet and then transfer it in whole to my DAW when I get home. I think this is still the case.

Careful, your slipping into an Australian accent.

If your young and fit, with the right amount of pressure, you should be able to make the distance to deliver the magic milk. But for some of the older guys around here, well, lets just say it's not an in-gene-ious solution.

That is something I have nightmares about, not to mention all the authorizations, serial numbers and passwords that come with it. These days, plugins and instruments have to fight to get on my offline DAW. They get trialed first on my laptop where they are downloaded, I have trial projects there if they pass that test, they will then go to the offline DAW with the other projects and if they are good, I will then buy and download them on to my backup external SSD, which is plugged in to the DAW just to put them on together with the serials/passwords in one folder. Then I can re-install them from that drive. Since I never update either the operating system or the plugins/instruments on my offline DAW, I can do a fresh install every 1 or 2 years. I will update the primary DAW software occasionally during this period if there are significant features. When I do the fresh install, that is the time I might look around to see whether it is necessary to upgrade the plugins/instruments or DAW software. This doesn't work well with the stub installer type programs though. Those that put a small executable on your drive and then you can only install the program to your hard drive direct from the internet. I don't have the internet speed to support that anyway so I just don't use those programs.

I'm thinking of getting home instead of pro. I can't see anything in pro that I need on my offline DAW and I've checked all my software but it just says "Windows 10" as the requirement, no specification for home or pro. From memory, going back to windows XP I was running home then when I had my little video production business, the thinking then was that Home was better because there was not so much bloat or memory requirement, it was seen as a leaner, faster operating system to pro. Perhaps this doesn't matter as much today with the 64 bit systems and massive ram capability.

I think it is more of a case of the "most popular daw with our readers" or "the daw we want to sell more of" rather than the "best daw".

I like S-Gear, it's got a more polished "amp" sound straight out of the box that seems to fit nicely in any mix quickly, even with my midi guitars. It's also easy to use and set up but I don't use the effects. I can get a similar sound from guitar rig, almost there, but it takes a lot of mic, ir and eq tweaking just trying to copy S-Gears sound that comes straight out of the box from S-Gear. I also use single coil and humbucker to crunch/distortion but I don't do metal sounds.

Vegas is about CPU, ram and hard disk management, the card isn't that relevant because Vegas runs without hardware GPU acceleration support just fine and from my experience runs better with hardware acceleration switched off. That's how I've used it in the past. Vegas's implementation of using the GPU for hardware acceleration has a dodgy history and it depends on what version you are using. For 17, the official recommendations are: NVIDIA For hardware rendering (NVEnc): NVIDIA® GeForce 9XX series or higher with 4 GB AMD/ATI AMD/ATI® Radeon with 4 GB and VCE 3.0 or higher (Radeon Pro series with 8 GB for HDR and 32 bit projects) Intel Intel® GPU HD Graphics 530 series or higher Some claim that AMD cards work better because their Open CL implementation is better. I've read all the same forum posts as you probably have, "this card works" and "this one doesn't". It appears that GPU ram may have become more important with Vegas and depending on what codecs you are using might do final renders faster on certain cards. Perhaps this has become more important with 4k work which I don't do. With Vegas, I just leave GPU hardware acceleration switched off. As you have mentioned it, I might switch it on to see what happens. Hitfilm loves a big fat gaming card and is very reliant on the GPU for it's effects and compositing, it also has a 3d working space in compositing if you want, so needs a 3d card, I think the only NLE that can do this. Davinci also likes lots of GPU RAM. I would say that these days, a card with at least 4g GPU ram would be a good starting point for a video workstation. But if you are using Vegas and plan to use that only, it's probably the quickest to use out there with a crap card and hardware acceleration turned off. 2d performance is not that relevant these days since all cards have great 2d performance. I use a Nvidia GTX 1060 with 6gb ram but that's mainly because the guy down the road had one for sale and I partly swapped something for it so it was a cheap addition as these cards can become quite expensive. Don't need to upgrade the card for what I do. It was also the turbo version which is really quiet at low use, I've yet to hear it really rev up. I was hesitant to put it in because of noise but it's been fine, still can use DAW with no noise, it's only when under pressure that there may be a murmur but that never happens when using the computer as a DAW. I had planned on getting a 3 - 4 gig card because that was what I worked out the sweet spot was for my finances and meeting the requirements for Davinci and Hitfilm. Also, Gamers are always updating so these cards are plentiful and available second hand on Ebay or Gumtree for cheaper. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it, just get a 4gig Nvidia or AMD gaming card with a nice fan that's not too noisy at low use and you should be right. That will mean you can try out any NLE you want if you decide to try other NLE's. If you can get a bigger one do that. If you are trying to match specific codecs that you use with either Nvidia's CUDA/Open GL or AMD's Open CL/Open GL technology then follow the necessary path, I don't know that there will be a massive difference though unless the specific codec you want to use absolutely will not work with a particular technology, that is sometimes the case. These cards are big so you will need a full tower case to house them.

Coming up as $79.00 AUD, typical! I think I will stick with my plan to register my free Windows 10 upgrade from 7 (through media creation tool) in my Microsoft Account and then reinstall it after the guts upgrade.

With your system, you wouldn't need to use a graphics card at all to run Cakewalk on 2 screens easily. The onboard graphics would be more than adequate. I have usually run my dedicated DAW's like that, only got a card for Hitfilm and Davinci editing. But if your an occasional gamer then I guess a dedicated card would be better. Whether you have a card at all or not won't worry Cakewalk.

Drowned Dog

Exactly what I am doing this morning, putting software, serials, passwords etc on to a spreadsheet. I've discovered stuff on my computer that I bought over a year ago and have never even used or even authorized.

I've always found that windows works great as an offline operating system. Never had any problems with it in 20 years. This is why I run an offline computer with all my DAW, video editing, multi-media and critical applications on it. No anti-virus and all Lan etc disabled. I use a KVM switch and laptop docking port, so all my internet browsing and work, light software processing etc is done on the laptop. I press a button and I am on the other offline computer using the same monitor and keyboard/mouse. Very compact 2 computer system.

Thanks Mathew, I was referring just to the Ashampoo bundle, the topic of this thread, not Humble Bundles in general. I've clarified my post by inserting the words " these Ashampoo" in my post. I have used Humble Bundle a number of times and got great programs from it. So far, in this bundle, I've looked at these two: Win Optimizer 18 I'm not normally into these sorts of windows optimizing programs and didn't think I would like it. It's great. There are about 37 separate modules for addressing things like dead registry entries and files, duplicate files, resource hogs etc, deleting garbage, managing services etc. It does a really good job making it easy. My laptop was playing up a bit because the 128gig "C" drive was full to red. I couldn't find where all the big files were. I was putting off addressing the problem because it was an elusive one. Using this, I found everything and reclaimed a massive 60gig in a very short time, also cleaned everything up and fully deleted the half deleted rubbish on my system and removed their registry keys. Now the laptop is back to speedy again. It's also a nice psychological feeling, knowing your computer has had a decent clean. This program will be staying on my laptop. PDF Pro 2 A very nice PDF reader and editor all in one that also installs a virtual PDF printer to print to PDF from any application. Has a thin menu at the top so doesn't get in the way of the document. I previously had 3 PDF freeware software programs on my computer to cover the things that I need from a PDF reader/editor application (and still wasn't getting everything I need). I've also used professional ones like Nitro and Foxit pro but I didn't like them much. I use a lot of PDF production in creating various documents for circulation. All the other PDF programs have now been deleted and I have all the functionality I need from the PDF Pro 2. This will be staying on my laptop. I am pleased I got the bundle just from these 2 programs alone. I'm a bit surprised because I've never looked at Ashampoo products before, I assumed they were for beginners but these 2 are definitely not entry level, you can use them more simply or go deeper. I'll look at the others.

When you get these Ashampoo programs on Humble Bundle, they are just the stub installers for the programs which then install directly on your computer from the web, which I don't like. They are also 32 bit programs which I also do not like. I'll have a play with them and see what they are like. My initial impressions are that they are more an entry level/freeware type of program, that is, there may well be freeware programs the same as them or better.

I beg for forgiveness and bend the knee to the King. Hopefully his grace can extend mercy in my case.

Yes, I've just discovered that, It puts the Humble Bundle subscription in with your order and it looks like you have to press that button to add to your cart but you just need to press the amount button and then as you say scroll down to the payment buttons and select one of those and it goes through. Some useful products here. Whoops, didn't see Larry's post before mine. Now what to do?

Get all the software you need to make your computer do everything from optimizing photos and videos to create the best sounds and way more. Titles include Ashampoo SoundStage Pro, Ashampoo Cinemagraph, Ashampoo Video Optimizer Pro, and more. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be anyway to get this bundle without also having to subscribe to Humble Choice for an extra $27.00 https://www.humblebundle.com/software/software-bundle-3?linkID=&mcID=102:5ed6afabdca1ce1d0d74cc62:ot:5df2dc6fd8a09ee6231fcfa7:1&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020_06_03_softwarebundle3&linkID=&utm_content=cta_button

Reminds me of back in the day as well, I didn't use an SG, I had a Les Paul but I sure beat the hell out of that chord your playing, up and down the neck it went.

I think the Soundforge audio studio and all their "studio" stuff is 16bit. Correction: it has 32 bit 384khz capabilities, I think it is just their video "studio" stuff that has 16 bit audio. It's not a multitracker, mono or stereo only, I'll see what the main differences are between it and the pro version.

Yes, the site and their marketing philosophy is very "hard sell" constantly offering things and directing you to promo videos for things, inundated with upselling emails etc. I agree, it's very off putting, they are their own worst enemy in that regard. However, all those things can be gotten rid of and it doesn't detract from the usefulness of what they have created. I had a song that I had difficulty putting a middle eight to, trialing the different chords and moving to something different using these midi files did achieve a breakthrough in that case. Not something I would use all the time but I think the concept has it's place as another tool. It also means I don't have to play the keyboard all the time to get something happening. It's sort of in line with what I've been doing anyway, synthing in long chords and then chopping them to bits to create piano, horns, bass etc. Probably most useful to those with limited musical knowledge that might not already have completed or semi-completed songs.

I stumbled on this but it doesn't show on their home page, nevertheless, the sale does work if you are into midi packs of chords. They are doing a sale bundle with some other things all for $27.00. This is what is included: ---------------------------------------------------------- Unison Midi Chord pack. ($67.00) 1,200+ Total MIDI Files (have all the fundamental chords & progressions in existence right at your fingertips) Individual Chords & Full Progressions (chain your own chords together or use the pre-made, proven chord progressions) Drag & Drop Ready (we've done all the hard work for you) Key Labeled & Organized (no wasting time sifting through folders or doing guesswork to find what you want) 15 Page In-Depth Walkthrough PDF (uncover tips & tricks on basic music theory and how to best use the pack) 100% Royalty Free (all money you earn from music you make with the Unison MIDI Chord Pack is yours to keep) Made For All Genres Of Music (the chords & progressions inside the Unison MIDI Chord Pack are essential to all pro-level music) Usable With Any Sound (unlike audio loops, you can play all the chords & progressions with your favorite instruments & synths) Compatible With All DAW's (plus both Mac & PC) Unison Theory Blueprint PDF ($47 Value). This bonus is the ultimate guide to writing melodies in any genre of music even if you don't know music theory. Unison MIDI Secrets PDF ($27 value). This is a distillation of 25 of our best MIDI secrets that you can use to take your MIDI game to the next level. Unison Loop Pack ($67 Value). This bonus is what you can use to quickly start a track in any genre. Inside you'll find 200 fully loaded genre-specific drum loops. ------------------------------------------------------- I've not used midi packs of chords before but I found it useful as another tool to grab to supplement your song, for inspiration or to quickly make new songs. Might be useful for some people and especially useful for people with limited music theory background. I don't know how long the sale lasts. https://web.unison.audio/midi-chord-pack?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqtmSucTb6QIV2gW3AB01KQWYEAEYAiAAEgI9NfD_BwE