Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch
la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.
I don’t do a lot of video editing. When I do, it is almost always simple things like cropping frames from the beginning or end. Other edits I often make are cutting out scenes from videos. I’m interested in filming the grandson hitting a home run, not the pitcher throwing the ball.
Avidemux is open source video editing software. It can do basic editing tasks and supports all the major video formats. It is very fast because it does one thing differently than most other editors. It doesn’t re‑encode video unless you are changing the file format. This saves a lot of time when you save your edited file. Most people save their files in the same format they started with.
The interface looks a little “clunky” because there isn’t a timeline like most video editors. After you have loaded your video to edit, you simply set a start and end marker. Then cut out what you don’t want. You can either save the clip to a new video or delete it completely.
There are several transformations and filters you can apply to your videos.
• crop
• resize
• add black borders
• vertical flip
• rotate
• reduce noise
• sharpen and blur
You can also extract and save only video or sound. I have not tested this function as I have other programs that this.
Avidemux is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is available for Windows, Linux, Mac and PC‑BSD. You can download at this link.
If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.