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Top Ten Video Tools

Play, create, and distribute video clips with these popular tools.

By Max Green, PCWorld   

When it comes to editing video clips, few of us initially think of using our PCs. After all, a video capture card is required for most tasks, and the learning curve is steep. But there are ways to successfully use your PC to play, create, and distribute video clips over the Web. Below are FileWorld's most popular tools for this, and only one of them requires a video capture card. Give them a try!

1. Indeo Video Drivers: Ramp up your video playback with Intel's latest drivers. The drivers support Indeo video codecs 4 and 5. They also support audio codec 2.5 (decode only) and plug-ins for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. (Free)

2. WebCam 2000: Serve up live images to the Web from any video-capture device connected to your computer. WebCam 2000 can serve pictures in either JPEG or .bmp format. New features in this version include text captions, adjustable JPEG compression, and image overlays. (Free)

3. SmartVid Video File Converter: This video file converter supports Microsoft's Video for Windows AVI format and Apple's QuickTime MOV format. It includes both 8- and 16-bit sample sizes. (Shareware)

4. Multimedia Xplorer: View images, sounds, videos, and icons. The program provides a Windows Explorer-style interface with full drag-and-drop support. It includes an image converter (which can be run in batch mode), a slide show editor, a start-up/shutdown logo changer, a file finder, an icon extractor, and more. (Shareware)

5. AviEtc: This file viewer controls the speed, volume, and size of AVI files. You can play segment loops and export the AVI files as a sequence of bitmaps. (Shareware)

6. Microsoft Camcorder: Record PC actions, procedures, and sounds as demos or tutorials. (Freeware)

7. Windows Video Center: This AVI player features a faster refresh rate than the Media Player in Windows 3.1. (Shareware)

8. Gotcha: Need a closed-circuit video camera? This motion-activated program creates video files of events that occur over extended periods and doesn't record the inactivity between events. (Shareware)

9. Dr. John's Movie Player: Play bitmap movie files created by pasting a series of individual small bitmaps into one long bitmap image. The process is like creating a film strip. (Shareware)

10. PicMail: Capture and send video e-mail messages over the Internet. PicMail uses advanced video compression techniques to keep the file size small with minimal loss of video or audio quality. Note: Your recipient will need to use identical software to play your message. (Shareware)