Contract For Commitment
Tips for Creating Your Photostory 3 Video
Photostory 3 is a fun and easy way turn a collection of photos and some music and into a fun vibrant video. The best thing about Photostory 3 is its a free download from Microsoft. (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx)
The Youth Leadership Forum Out Brief finale video shown at the closing ceremony was created with Photostory 3. You can review it http://paroylf.org
Microsoft has a good starter tutorial for using Photostory at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/tips/firststory.mspx
There is a also another good Photostory 3 tutorial at:
http://millie.furman.edu/mll/tutorials/photostory3/index.htm
You don’t need to be an expert in Photostory 3 to begin your Contract for Commitment, you may be able to jump right in get started. Regardless its good to practice a little on smaller projects before you begin your Contract for Commitment.
Below a suggestion on how to approach the Contract for Commitment project. Its not the only way to approach it and your welcome to try anything that works.
1. 1. Select your music. Determine the duration of your music. For example a song you select may be 3 minutes and 30 seconds long. Note you don't necessarily have to use music or a song, you can also record voice. Whichever audio form you choose, it should be the first building block of your project and its time duration be known.
2. 2. Decide upon on a time duration that you would like each photo to appear for. I recommend not showing any photos for more than 5 seconds. For the YLF finale video (see http://paroylf.org) we used a photo duration of 2 seconds. Once you have your music duration and decided upon a photo duration you can calculate the number of photos you need. For example if you’ve decided upon a 4-second duration for each photo and your music is 3 minutes and 30 seconds long (210 seconds) you will need to have 70 good photos. If you want to get really cool, try to pick a photo duration that matches the beat of the song!
223. Get good photos. One of the most common mistakes in taking good photos is failing to get close-up "in your face" photos versus far off photos of multiple people. Get close to your subject. Hold your camera still. Don't use the camera's zoom unless you absolutely have to. Your feet is the best zoom. Be careful of subjects in poorly lit rooms with bright open windows and lights behind them. You may to have to force your camera to use the flash in these situations. Use the shotgun approach, take many photos of the same thing and then pick the one that looks the best.
3. 4. Collect all your digital photos and store them in a single folder. Your photos need to be high resolution. If the photo is less then maybe 800x600 pixels in dimension or maybe less then 100KB in file size, its probably too small and won’t look good in your photo story. You may want to use a photo editing program like Photoshop Elements to clean up your photos. With a photo editing program you can crop, straighten, brighten and endless other cool things to make your photos look great.
4. 5. You’re now ready to begin your Contract for Commitment PhotoStory project. Start by adding just your first photo and then add your music. Your music will be attached to that first photo. You can then add additional photos. Note you will have to manually change the duration of each photo you add. After you’ve added all your photos you can then arrange them in different orders. You will need to view your project with the Preview button many times before it complete. Its fun to try to sync photos with words in the song or accents in the music. After all your photos are entered in the correct order and properly synced with the audio, you can then enhance them with customized motion and transitions. You can also tweak the time duration of your photos. For example, if all your photos are 4 second duration but you have a photo that's really really good, you may change its duration to 5 seconds and make a less exciting photo nearby 3 seconds. You'll still get about same end result.
5. 6. Once your project is complete and looks good in Preview you’re ready to create you final video product on the “Save your Story” screen of Photostory. Notice the Settings… button on this screen. Here you can adjust the resolution of your final product. I recommend using Profile for computers – 2 (640x480) or Profile for computers - 3 (800x600). If you used really good high resolution photos for your computer, use Profile for computers – 4 (1024x768).
6. 7. When you hit Next on the “Save your Story” screen, PhotoStory will begin to render your video. It could take a few minutes or an hour or longer depending on your computer and size of your project.
7. 8. Once you’re done you need to get us the video. The video is a file that ends in a .wmv extension. It may or may not be too large to email. The size restriction is based upon your email and our email size restrictions. I recommend you first try to email it to cystech@gmail.com. If the email bounces back to you, try using this website https://safeftp.msl.army.mil/. You can send very large files with it. Use the email address bob.greenberg@us.army.mil for New Recipient Email Address.
Any questions, please email me at bob.greenberg@us.army.mil.