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  3. Media Creation Software & Computers

Media Creation Software & Computers

Lyons New Media Centre houses high-end media editing computers, fully loaded with media creation software, available to any current McMaster student, staff or faculty member. Most of which are in the main area of the Centre and two are located within Edit Studios L415 & L416 (bookable online), and one is in the bookable Media Classroom for instructors to use.

Media Creation Software & Computers

Software

Media Creation Software

The Adobe Creative Cloud suite is available on all computers in Lyons New Media Centre. The following apps are available:

  • Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader DC & Acrobat Distiller - PDF creation, editing and reading
  • After Effects - visual effects & motion graphics
  • Animate - interactive animations (formerly Flash Professional)
  • Audition - audio recording, editing
  • Bridge - file organization
  • Character Animator - animate 2D characters
  • Dreamweaver - web design
  • Edge Animate - creating interactive web designs (formerly Edge)
  • Extension Manager - works with select Adobe programs to manage free and paid extensions from Adobe Exchange marketplace
  • Flash Builder Premium - game and application development
  • Fuse - develop human characters
  • Illustrator - graphics creation (especially vector graphics)
  • InDesign - page layout creations for magazines, posters, etc. for print design
  • Lightroom Classic - organize, view and edit large numbers of images/photos
  • Media Encoder - convert video files to various formats
  • Muse - web design/creation without needing code
  • Photoshop - graphics creation/photo manipulation
  • Prelude - is used in combination with Premiere to add metadata to video files
  • Premiere Pro - video editing
  • Spark - visual profiler for Flash content
  • SpeedGrade - colour grading on video footage

The one exception is that the computer in the Audio Recording Booth only has Audacity and Adobe Audition.

Outside of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, we also have several stand-alone products for use:

  • Articulate (Presenter - addon for PowerPoint, Engage & Quizmaker) - available in Edit Studio L415 only; presentation software
  • Audacity - open source, audio creation/editing
  • Blender - open source, 3D creation
  • Camtasia - available in Edit Studios L415 & L416, as well as the instructor's station computer in the classroom (instructor use only); screen capturing and video editing software; also good for creating captions for video
  • Comic Life - comic/graphic novel-creation 
  • Cura - open source, 3D printer slicing program
  • Discord (only on gaming PCs) - gamer chat system (similar to Slack)
  • GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) - open source, graphics creation/editing (parallel to Photoshop)
  • Inkscape - open source, graphics creation/editing (parallel to Illustrator)
  • OBS Studio - available only on gaming PCs; screen capturing software, specifically for gaming
  • QuickTime - media player
  • Unity - cross-platform game engine (available in the two Edit Studios & main Centre computers)
  • Windows Media Player - media player

Related Spaces

Lyons New Media Centre

Hardware/Computers

Media Creation Hardware

Most of our computers are Hewlett Packard Z1s with 32 GB of memory and 1 TB of storage, running Windows 10. Each has a large monitor, standard keyboard & mouse, CD drive, and SD card reader & webcam all built-in.

Another computer (not an HP Z1) is housed in the bookable Audio Recording Booth, used solely for recording purposes. Adobe Creative Cloud and Audacity have been installed on this computer and has a high-end condenser microphone connected to it via an Audio Fuse control box.

USB microphones which plug into the computers in the Edit Studios may be borrowed from the Help Desk in Lyons New Media Centre. There are a couple of varieties, but all of them are condensor mics, and pop-filters are available for some of them.

Headphones are also available for loan at the Help Desk.

This equipment is solely for use within Lyons.

Users are expected to provide their own USB drives or portable hard drives. Lyons New Media Centre does not provide this for users. Other options may also include cloud storage, but users are expected to have their own accounts for such storage (eg. Google Drive, Dropbox, etc).

Although our computers have large storage spaces, it is not recommended to save files on them indefinitely. There is no guarantee that files will be there longer than a day, nor that anyone else may not have access to them. Remember that these are public computers and anyone has access to them.

Lyons is not liable for any loss of files or information left on our computers.

Although the resources within Lyons New Media Centre are available to anyone on campus, it is considered to be a media lab. Misuse of the computer workstations may result in users being asked to move to another location.

  • The computers are for media creation and education purposes only. All other usage should be taken to the computers in other areas of the library.
  • These computer workstations are not equipped with plugs for external devices such as laptops. Please consider using the laptop bar at the far end of the Centre (near the windows) to plug in and use laptops.

Fun Fact: There are 15 computers in the Centre for a campus population of nearly 40,000, and is the only location on campus where any McMaster user can access some of the high-end specialty media software (such as Adobe Creative Cloud software).
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