Last week was our daughter's 16th birthday and I decided to put a slide show together for her. I’d seen some queued up and synced to music and wanted to go that route.
I discovered that our computer has the program “Windows Live Movie Maker” on it so I monkeyed around with it one afternoon. It’s surprisingly easy – you just import the music .mp3 file, drag a bunch of photos in and then start arranging them. You can edit how long a photo is visible, the method the photos transition and if you want pan/zoom “animation” in the photo. You can also, of course, use video clips, but I’m just a still photo guy so that wasn’t an option for me.
Below is a link to the fruits of my labors. It’s on my photobucket account because Youtube wouldn’t play the audio sound track. The song I used is copyrighted and youtube is able to recognize that fact when you upload the video and blocks you from broadcasting the sountrack.
Great job!
That was way cool Mike! Thanks for sharing....
I didn't know anyone in those pictures, but it looked like they were always having fun.
I've played a little with that program, but never more than a few minutes. I'll have to give it another try.
My Grandson turned 16 last July; they grow up quick, don't they. My 3 kids' 16th birthdays are but faded memories. Hug them tight every chance you get.
Dugger
WOW
:star:
Way to go my brother.
She, much like my (15 1/2 year old) daughter, is beautiful, ... all of a sudden.
How long did this 3 minute product (project) take you to prepare?
I have tons of video footage that I hope to be able to edit for each of my 3 kids (15, 12, and 9 years old now) (girl, boy, boy).
I started with Katie Ott (we call her that (1) because all of a sudden there are so many Katie's, and (2) it is my hope that it will stick as her nickname in case she ever decides to take another's last name later in life).
My first five minutes of video editing seemed to take hours, and she still hasn't left the hospital yet.... Ugh.
Thanks also for the Youtube tip. You went to photobucket. I wonder if dropbox will work too?
Anyway, excellent work. And thanks very much for sharing, this will be my project this year too, August 13 is my deadline.
Brad
Well done, enjoyed.
Outstanding.
Love it.
Larry P
Thanks guys. Not having any talents whatsoever such as Keith’s fine woodworking skills or Kent’s ability to render attractive images on canvas of that vast wasteland that neither Mexico nor Oklahoma even wanted, I couldn’t make Allison a handmade gift like a jewelry box or a painting of a tree. So this was the next best thing with my limited abilities and the resources at hand -about a billion photos I’ve taken of her and the people in her life.
Back to the subject of the Movie Maker program, I think it will have great potential for making fade in/ fade out clips of “then and now” historical photos. Jerry Penry comes to mind with his many excursions to historic tri stations and WWII aircraft crash sites.
The short “movie” below is a fade overlay of photos taken on May 7, 1911 and May 7, 2011. The 1911 photo is the first group of automobiles about to depart on a drive along the newly opened Bend to Burns road and the 2011 photo is of a group of us in the same spot about to retrace the old road. The building on the far left is the only one that survives from 1911
It was made by overlaying the photos in Photoshop and then running the transparency slider bar from 0% to 100% and back again on the top photo. I used some free video screen capture software I’d read about here on beerleg, my favorite DIY resource.
Thanks Mike about your comments about me!
But, if you practice this photo manipulation for as long as I have been cutting wood, you are going to be an expert doing it.
Really!
Keith
Brad, it initially took four hours to get all the media into the project and get a handle on what the he!! was going on. Then I tinkered with it the rest of the week after work, finding a better photo that fit the lyrics, trying to sync certain photos with the lyrics, tweaking it here and there. I lost track of the time for all that. Probably another four hours.
The program is fairly simplistic and, not being a video guy, I don't know if you can just jab in short vignettes of longer vids or what. I bet Daryl Moistner would have some good recommendations for video editing software. He could tell you how to have the kids piloting Star Wars X wing fighters, driving chariots in the Roman Colosseum or just about anything under the sun. Good luck.
Something interesting about the fade sequence of 1911 to 2011 and back to 1911 is that none of us at the historical society had noticed that the 1911 cars are lined up diagonally across the street, in an echelon formation of sorts. It’s an iconic photo of early Downtown Bend, with lots of the early movers and shakers in it, and I used it when I set up the 2011 shot.
That evening when I lined everything up and ran the animation for the first time it became apparent that our 2011 rigs fade in along the far curb behind the 1911 cars and then the 1911 cars re-emerge from the past lined up across the middle of the road in front of us. You’d need a brigade of flaggers to do that now.
A lot of love and pride in your girl comes through, fine job. Art should move the patron and you did that many times, my favorite was the one where she is laying her head on gramma's (?) chest, could be on display in any photo competition and have seen worse hanging on some gallery walls.
I have zero talent in either photography or computer art, any attempt on my part would be a series of poorly lighted out of focus blurs. I guess we could play 'what the heck was that?', once again very well done.
