3D Mini Clips

3D Mini Clips

  12:44:00 AM    Science Lover

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Some of the best animations and 3D clips on the Web, all in one place – it’s like Youtube in 3D!

Recently, movie-goers across the world have been wowed by the special effects in debutant director Neil Blomkamp’s new science fiction film, District 9. However, this is not Blomkamp’s first attempt at the medium. He had previously showcased his talents in a short film that was quite popular on the Internet, called Alive in Jo’burg.

The Web is a great medium for upcoming film-makers to show off what they are capable of, with several short films and fan fiction earning great praise. This becomes a platform for newcomers to be able to get their movie seen by thousands of people and commented on, thus earning valuable feedback and perhaps getting the eye of a producer.

In the niche of 3D films, one of the best sites to check out such new talents is 3D Mini Clips. As the name suggests, the site hosts only videos and short films that make use of extensive 3D animation and special effects – and most of them are a treat to watch!

The top-rated video (a list of which can be seen at the right of the home page) on the site, ‘World Builder’ by Branit VFX, is a must-see for the incredible effects in it. It’s a seven-minute clip, but every second is unmissable.
 
On the left, there’s a listing of all the genres of videos: Architecture, Artistic, Commercial, Composition, Fantasy, Full Movies, Funny, Movie Trailers, Music Videos, Photo Realistic, Portfolios, Product Prototypes, Sci-Fi, Short Movies, Simulations, Special FX, Video Games.

The main page itself shows the latest video additions, with a chronological listing of the new videos. Separate tabs for ‘Top Videos’ and ‘New Videos’ take you to specialized pages for the same, and the ‘Random Videos’ tab will throw up clip after clip for your enjoyment.

If you are someone who enjoys 3D effects in movies, 3D Mini Clips is a must-visit.

Rating: 4.5/5

Site: www.3dminiclips.com
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MP3 Quality Modifier

MP3 Quality Modifier

  8:12:00 PM    Science Lover

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Great sound quality at small file sizes – perfect for your phone!


A lot of mobile phones are getting to be quite capable of playing back audio as well as standalone portable music players. Sony’s Walkman series and Nokia’s XPressMusic series of phones have sold like hot cakes recently.

The problem for a music lover, though, is fitting his entire collection into the small amount of disk space available. A lot of these phones do not support memory cards of more than 4-8GB, with some incapable of reading a card over 2GB. Alternately, a few handsets tend to get quite slow when a lot of data is stored on them.

Of course, managing a lot of music is also difficult on the smaller MP3 players, such as the iPod Shuffle, the Creative Zen Stone, etc. So space management has become an issue for music aficionados.

A great tool to try out is the MP3 Quality Modifier, which promises to take your music files and greatly compress their file sizes with minimal quality loss.

The standalone program – taking just 323KB of disk space itself – opens up to a window with a simple interface. First, you have to use the two buttons in the toolbar to add the MP3 files or a folder that you want to compress.

Once the files are listed in the main pane at the middle (complete with filename, song title, album, artist, bitrate and size), you can select or deselect which ones you want to edit.

Two sections at the bottom determine the kind of compression your file will go through. The ‘Bitrate’ section lets you select the type of mode (variable, constant, average), rate in kbps, and a preset (misspelt as ‘present’, and having four options: high quality, portable, compromise, very low quality). If you don’t know what you are doing when it comes to music editing, using these presets can be very handy.

The ‘Modus’ section gives you the option of figuring out the kind of output (mono, joint stereo, stereo and dual channels) and sample frequency – both of which can be adjusted directly through the preset.

Finally, choose a destination folder to save the newly-edited files to, and you’re done. Hit the ‘Start Process’ in the top toolbar and let the program do the rest. Quick, easy and very handy!

Rating: 3.5/5
Download: www.inspire-soft.net/?nav=soft_mp3qualitymodifier
Direct Download: www.inspire-soft.net/files/MP3QualityModifier1.0.zip
Size: 315.63KB

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WinCDEmu : Mounting a disc image was never so easy – just double-click and you’re done!

WinCDEmu : Mounting a disc image was never so easy – just double-click and you’re done!

  10:12:00 PM    Science Lover

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If you play video games on your PC on a regular basis, you are bound to need a disc-mounting tool.

Honestly, playing a game off its ISO image loaded on your hard disk is so much faster than playing the same through its DVD. Disc images also go a long way in preserving your DVD – and when you are buying a game for around Rs 1,000, you want to make sure the disc lasts for as long as it can!

So after you create a disc image, how do you load it up on to your computer? The normal course is to use a ‘mounting’ tool such as Daemon Tools or Alcohol.

These programs create a virtual optical disc drive on your computer and load, or ‘mount’, the disc image onto it. The final product is as good as having a DVD in a drive! But the process to use Daemon Tools and Alcohol is long and tedious.

First, you have to run the program; then create a virtual drive through a series of three clicks; and then go on to load the image through a further four clicks. Things have got to be simpler than this, right? Well, that’s where WinCDEmu comes in.

Cutting out all the various steps in mounting a disc image, this software works automatically to give you the most streamlined interface possible. All you have to do is install the program and double-click your ISO image for the program to automatically create a virtual drive and load up the image.

It’s really that simple! And the tedious process of unmounting a disc and getting rid of the virtual drive has also been cut down: just right click the virtual drive, hit ‘eject’ and you’re done.

Supporting ISO, CUE, BIN, RAW and IMG file formats, the application can create an unlimited number of virtual drives at a time. A must-have for any gamer!

Rating: 5/5
Download: wincdemu.sysprogs.org
Direct Download: biznetnetworks.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/wincdemu/WinCDEmu-2.2.exe
Size: 782.10 KB

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