Software To Design, Create, & Edit
A lot of this software is cross-platform. If it isn't, chances are there's an analog with a different name.
Some software has breakout pages for pro-tips and tutorials.
Software To Design, Create, & Edit
| Ableton Live | Audio editor and music composer - great for mixtapes |
| Adobe After Effects (AE) | VFX, Compositing, Motion Graphics |
| Adobe Audition (AU) | Audio Editing |
| Adobe Bridge (BR) | Local file management, batching, renaming |
| Adobe InDesign (ID) | Making decks, presentations, making books, making portfolios |
| Adobe Lightroom (LR) | Raw editing and photo library mgmt/ cloud services |
| Adobe Media Encoder (AME) | Export, watch-folders, transcode |
| Adobe Photoshop (PS) | Photo editing, still compositing |
| Adobe Premiere Pro (PR) | Video Editing, Titles, Color |
| Apple Keynote |
Making decks and presentations, but you can use it for a lot of things |
| Apple Pages |
Contemporary ClarisWorks.
It's just like Office or Google Docs except you don't have to pay for it and your data isn't being tracked 🙃 |
| Avid |
Video NLE Software
I’ve never used it, and it's never been a requirement or a desired software for any company or project I’ve worked on. I’ve only seen it in the wild once or twice. That said: it is used for feature film and documentaries and sometimes tour dorks use it to edit their show before they throw it into Disguise 🤢 |
| BMD DaVinci / Resolve |
Great and free video NLE and color software, but I need ADLs (Adobe Dynamic Link) too much. My need to have things colored does not outweigh the need for me to easily speak with After Effects.
EDLs (Edit Decision Lists) are a pain in the ass that should be done by the editor’s assistant’s assistants. Good luck verifying any speed ramps!! The BMD universe and Adobe CC interpret speed ramping differently. The solve is to either bake the ramp before an EDL, or do your color before your ramp! |
| EXIFTOOL |
A command line file auditing tool.
Very similar to FFPROBE, which is FFMPEG’s auditing tool. Slightly different. I tend to use EXIF to pull metadata details from video files so I can remember what lens was on the camera, or what aperture, etc. |
| FFMPEG / FFPROBE | Command line/terminal transcode, packaging of audio and video files. Very powerful. Faster than AME but steep learning curve for non-code folks. |
| Immersive Designer Pro (IDP) |
A dongle locked x64 only projection engineering tool. It’s pretty great, but it is Windows only and x64, so you can’t run it on ARM or Apple Silicone (even using Parallels).
Much of these tools can be manually rebuilt in Vectorworks with one massive piece missing: you can NDI or spout/syphon into IDP for real time previz and mapping tests. Very powerful. Every few months I try to run this on Paralells and it continues not to work (April 2023, last checked). |
| iZotope RX Audio Editor | Noise removal, steam creation, audio swiss army knife. Pricey but best in class utilities. |
| Jokyo HAP Encoder | A proprietary new version of the HAP encoder. It is an evolutionary version of the OG Vidvox HAP → Disguise HAP. Jokyo’s encoder is much better with banding and noise within gradients and introduces a new HAP format as well (HAPr). The tweakable options with Jokyo are superior as well. Can recommend. |
| Neat DeNoise | A great video / photo denoise tool (plugin for AE/PR), get its own section in software because it's so good. |
| Omnigraffle | A paid drawing app that is great for flow charts, system diagrams, projector rasters, etc. Better than drawing manually in Vectorworks, but harder than drawing automatically in Vectorworks (using ConnectCAD). |
| ShutterEncoder | A front end GUI (or “top”) for FFMPEG, FFPROBE, EXIFTOOL and more. Very good. Will do the trick for 90% of use cases. Thanks Melinda Sihalath for this one. |
| Sketchup (SKP) | A simpler tool for CAD that was free for at least a decade before it was sold by Google to another company. Lots of Millenials know how to use it. There is a free “viewer” companion app. |
| Topaz Video Enhance AI | A+ video upscale and restoration tool |
| Vectorworks (VWX) |
CAD for theatrical and event design (but also for architecture, landscaping things). There is a free “viewer” companion app.
Really good for projection engineering even if you're doing it manually (the built-in projector tools are not so thorough) |
Software To Display, Interact, & Perform
Projection Mapping & Blending, Pixel & LED mapping
I use it for those things, but also:
Load-Testing
Quick + Dirty Media Review
Quick + Dirty Media Audits
Software For Data, Numbers, & Management
Super powerful spreadsheet adjacent tool that's great for managing all kinds of data. Kanban, Gantt, Automation, Calendars. Really great.
I've heard it called "a better smarsheet" but I don't know what that is.
Software For Communications
Software Utilities
Enterprise screenshare tool with really low latency used for Post Production work (and good for almost everything else, too).
Mac OS level shortcut that allows you to use hotkeys to arrange application windows. Very good, but some Magnet shortcuts have conflicts with specific software, like After Effects. This automatically disables Magnet shortcuts when that is the active app. This is rare! I believe conflicts can be avoided, but it is a manual process of cross checking between apps. I’ll update here if/when I figure out a smarter way to fix that.
Another bug is that Adobe Illustrator will work dumb slow in some cases with Magnet enabled.
Mac OS level shortcut application that allows you prompt for browser selection for any link clicked on the OS level, or to set rules to open specific browsers, or do specific actions based on a link type.
Here’s some rules I set up so that all things google happen in Firefox. This means that I can be logged into G-Suite in Firefox, but not use it for anything except for G-Suite (except google.com for searching). If logged out of Google in Safari, this prevents Google from tracking my searches against my email data. I originally created this information with Google Docs and I’m surprised I haven’t got a DDS agfp9jadgm’;dgz aefdsii ///// shutdown /s /
