DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- DEC 2013
PHOTO FILMSTRIP
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DON'S FREEWARE CORNER 2013-12
PHOTO FILMSTRIP
©2014 Donald R. Snow
My Freeware Corner Notes are
printed in our Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group monthly
newsletter TAGGology and posted on my Family History Class Notes
webpage http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
, sometimes with updated information there.
PHOTOFILMSTRIP
Available from http://www.photofilmstrip.org
-- Click on the "en" (upper right-hand side) for English since it
defaults to German. Download and install the program on your
computer. Several video tutorials are at http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tutorial+photofilmstrip&qpvt=tutorial+photofilmstrip&FORM=VDRE
.
This is a very good and free program to make "Ken Burns"-style
videos of your photos. Ken Burns is the fellow who makes
many videos for PBS. He takes old still photos and by moving
around in them, they appear to be moving and they hold your
interest. You can make videos like that with your own photos
by using the free program Photo FilmStrip. First select the
photos you want in your video. You can include as many or as
few as you want, but keep in mind that each photo needs to be
shown for a few seconds for people to see it. I've found
that the timing is determined by the music or soundtrack when I
use one. The soundtrack, if you use one, needs to be in
either wav or mp3 format, since those are the only two formats the
program accepts. I've found music to use on the web, on
YouTube, on CDs, and other sources, and then recorded and edited
it for my videos using the freeware program Audacity -- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
-- which we discussed here in Sep 2013. You can record a
narration, if you want, and overdub it on music using
Audacity. The length of the soundtrack determines how long
your video will be. So divide the total time by the number
of photos to get an average length for each. Or, if you have
done a narration/description of each photo, note the time when you
want each photo to start. By subtracting the times you get
how long each photo has to be on the screen while the narration
describes it. Photo FilmStrip defaults to 5 seconds for each
photo, but you can set the length you want for each
individually. Photos with many people will probably require
longer times than ones with only one or two people. To get
the photos in the order I want, I put the photos in a folder and
number them as 10-[name], 20-[name], etc., so they sort in this
order. Leaving the gaps in the numbers allows me to put
other photos in the gaps by numbering there, if i want
later. Photo FilmStrip will take several image formats
including jpg's and tif's. I have also made title screens
for videos by using the text art features of the freeware word
processor LibreOffice and doing screenshots to jpg's of
them. When I have the photos in order and the soundtrack
ready, I open Photo FilmStrip and start a new project. The
setup screen asks for the aspect ratio to use and I usually use 4
x 3, rather than 16 x 9. The aspect ratio is the ratio of
width to height of the final video. On the setup screen it
asks for the length of the video or, if I'm using a soundtrack,
where the sound file is and that determines the length of the
video. You then copy and paste the photos in and they form a
"film strip" across the bottom of the screen. You can
drag-and-drop to move them around to change the order in the
filmstrip, if you want. Then click on the first photo in the
filmstrip and set its parameters, i.e. how long to show it on
screen, what rectangular part of the photo to start with and what
rectangular part to end with. Keep in mind that the final
video will have each image full screen so if you choose a smaller
rectangular area of the photo that part will be expanded to fill
the entire window. You can also add subtitles here and there
are several other settings you can experiment with such as fades
and rotations. You do this for each photo in the
filmstrip. When finished you "render" the video, which is
the process that takes the information you have selected for each
photo and forms the video. There is an option for Draft
rendering which takes much less time than the final High
Definition rendering, so you can see it and then go back and
change things to get them the way you want before doing the final
rendering. Change the default from PAL to NTSC since PAL is
used in Europe and NTSC is used in America. Once you get the
draft the way you want do a Medium or else High Definition
rendering. High Definition may take 30 minutes or more, but
gives you a nice final product. After you have rendered the
video and before you exit the program, save the project so you can
return and make changes when you want to later. If you don't
save the project, you will have the final video, but will have to
start over with the soundtrack and photos, if you want to make
changes later. We didn't learn that until after we had made
several videos. When we wanted to put in subtitles, we found
that we had to start over from the beginning since we hadn't saved
the projects, only the final videos. I usually use mp4/avi
format for the final video, but there are several other
options. The final video is called output.avi and the
subtitles will be in a file called output.srt in the same
folder. You can rename these two files, but change both
names to the same thing or else the subtitles won't show on the
video. And these two files have to be in the same folder to
show the video with the subtitles. The soundtrack is
included in the avi file. To show these videos I usually use
the freeware VLC -- http://www.videolan.org/
-- also discussed in these notes in Sep 2013. If you decide
you want to edit the video later, just open Photo FilmStrip and go
to the project again, make the changes, and re-render it.
I've now made several videos with this and it's fun and they seem
to hold people's attention in classes, family reunions,
presentations, etc. Once you do one video you'll have the
idea, so others will be easier to do You can probably think
of several videos you want to make, maybe even some Christmas
presents. Good luck. Enjoy.
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