Recommended Software

I only list products here which I truly believe to be top quality or super convenient.
Disclaimer: the links to hosting services are the only affiliate links to compensate for my hosting costs.

Updated on 29 October 2024

DaVinci Resolve video editor

This video and audio editor by BlackMagic Design can easily rival Adobe AfterEffects and Adobe Premiere, all rolled in one. It is becoming a standard in the film industry and the possibilities are enormous. The great thing is that the software is free. However, if you want more power, especially the Fusion effects, you may want to opt for the Studio version, currently priced at $320 one-time payment, no subscription or hidden costs. The AI engine to scale up videos or image sequences is simply phenomenal, so if you have older videos at lower resolutions, it is certainly worthwhile to try this out.
Some experience with video editing is a plus, though. This is not an easy tool to learn if you never worked with a video editor or nodes. But there are various YouTube videos and manuals that can help you on your way. BlackMagic Design is in fact a hardware company creating specialised panels and equipment for film and audio studios. When you buy a hardware product, you get the Studio version for free.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Gigapixel AI image upscaler

This software created by Topaz Labs is great to upscale images up to 600%. It uses artificial intelligence to recognize the content to upscale the images without artefacts. I often use Gigapixels AI to upscale 3D rendered images to 4K. That way, I can render at a lower resolution so that it goes much faster. The software can upscale a huge amount of images in one go, although this largely depends on the power of your computer. Having a NVDIA GTX 3080 video card is no luxury with this software (see also bigjpg below).
Gigapixel does have problems with hair and fur in photographs, though. Especially when you enlarge bigger than 4x. I saw no big changes in quality in recent updates. Still, it is a great tool.
https://www.topazlabs.com/gigapixel-ai

Bigjpg.com online image upscaler

bigjpg.com does the same as Gigapixels AI. The difference is that this is an online tool so the power of your computer doesn’t matter so much. It can scale up to 800% in one go. This software is free although for convenience you can take a 6 month subscription $10 (at this time of writing) to work faster.
The quality isn’t as good as Gigapixels but it comes close.
bigjpg.com

CloudBerry Explorer

I really love to use CloudBerry Explorer to manage my S3 Amazon files.  For Windows, this is the best application I have come across so far. It’s versatile, efficient to use and it has all the whistles and bells you need. The interface is clear, it feels like you know it already when you open it the first time.  I actually started out with S3 Browser and although it isn’t bad, CloudBerry does a better job.
Read all about it here: https://www.msp360.com/explorer/
Note: the AWS console has improved a lot over the years, so you might not necessarily need this application if you are computer savvy.

Videojs – Open source video/audio player

No license fees, freedom to do with the player what you want. Many plugins available. It is a little harder  to set up than JW Player but once it works, it’s a great player with many free options, including support for AWS KMS encryption, VAST advertising (if that is your thing), all for free. There are also plugins for WordPress and Joomla that ship with this video player if you don’t want to make your hands dirty with coding. Just type videojs in the repository of the CMS you are using.
More info: videojs.com

DreamHost Hosting

My dear old friend DreamHost. I’m using this hosting provider to test my websites for over 13 years now. It has its own panel which has much improved over the years. There was a period when I wasn’t too happy with the speed of the server but is improved a lot as well (as far as shared hosting goes). They added support for CloudFlare and a host of other speed improving options.
Support is very good and it has a one-click install applications section including blockbusters like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.
Miracle Tutorials gives you a onetime $50 discount on your first DreamHost account.

Read all about it here or click the image.

 

Royalty free music libraries

List of music libraries (no affiliate links here):

www.istockphoto.com/audio.php
www.soundrangers.com
www.stockmusic.net
www.stock20.com/commerce
www.musicalley.com
www.musicloops.com
www.podsafeaudio.com
blog.blogtalkradio.com/blogtalkradio/17-places-to-find-podsafe-music
www.partnersinrhyme.com
wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Directories
www.royaltyfreemusic.com
https://pro.jamendo.com/en/
https://freemusicarchive.org/
https://freesound.org/
https://mixkit.co/