If you are wondering about gift what to do about giving this holiday season, why not try to make something in our Digital Media Lab? Stop by the 2nd floor Tech Desk or call 847-324-3179 to book your spot.
The library has tons of cool software that just needs to add your imagination to the mix. If you are interested in music try composing a tune with GarageBand, Adobe Audition CS6, or Logic Pro 9 (with Mainstage plugin). The library has M-Audio Oxygen 61-key USB/MIDI controller keyboard attached to the computer, but there is a Washburn Electric Guitar RX-22 and Simmons Electronic Drum Set SDMP1 available as well. All of the DML stations have Yeti Pro Microphones with pop filter attached and Bose Speakers. For more control over the recording power there are separate Shure Microphones (the SM 57 -vocal and instrumental and the SM 58 -vocal) and Beyerdynamic Pro headphones.
New to the SPL tech collection is the super cool Nessie Microphone that SPL card holders can actually check out and take home to record high quality sound (song vocals or podcasts).
If you are a movie maker then we have good news for you too! DML has a green screen painted on the wall, or if you prefer to shoot your movie at another location there is a portable green screen for checkout. Just don’t forget a Flip Mino camera too. When it comes to video editing software for beginners there is iMovie of course, but there are Adobe After Effects CS6, Final Cut Pro (versions 7 and 10) and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 for advanced users. There are additional plugins that work with Final Cut Pro such as: Cinema Tools, Color, Compressor, Motion, and Soundtrack Pro. And plugins for Adobe Premiere Pro are: SpeedGrade and Media Encoder.
Need inspiration?
Here is a short video that one of our patrons has submitted for Skokie in Motion 2013.
Click here to view the embedded video.
If you have old family videos still stored on VHS tapes (that your parents cannot watch because who watches VHS tapes nowadays?) why not come in and use the DML to digitize all of them – burn them on a DVD or save them in the cloud for easier access on all of your devices (and make mom and dad happy too)?
If you have old photos that are in dire need of restoration or digitization don’t worry, the library has an Epson Perfection V750-M Pro Scanner that will enable you to scan super high resolution images. The scanner also handles negatives. So if your aunt Molly happens to have tons of slides of her trip to Chile (from what feels like gazillion years ago) why not create her a nice photo slideshow she can enjoy and view on her new iPad?
For your photo editing needs there are: Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 (beginners), Adobe Photoshop CS 6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Adobe Illustrator CS 6, Autodesk Sketchbook Express, Anime Studio Debut, Manga Studio EX 4, and Blender. Do not forget to ask about the Intuos5 tablet for easier drawing and the Cintiq13HD (for the more serious designers).
Use Screenflow (3.0.8 -> User Guide ) to record your project progress or create tutorials to share on YouTube.
Another important thing worth emphasizing is to save all of your work somewhere online (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, etc.) or check out a Lacie or Seagate hard drive from the library (and save often as you go).
To use all of this you should be familiar with Mac computers because all this software is on Macs. If you do not know how then we suggest enrolling in free classes (offered here at the library) to learn how to do some of this cool content creation.
Also, the library has a ton of books that are easy to follow (in print and online) and there are two main databases (Lynda.com and Atomic Training) that offer video tutorials (and are now available to access with SPL Card from outside of the library).
Remember we do have a separate DML for kids too (grades 1-8) located at the Youth Lab just in case they are interested in creating a cool video or audio project or a drawing as a gift.
>> For the list of other tech items at the DML click here.
Happy Holidays from SPL!
