Making a Christmas Gift.
With new software, digital cameras, scanners and writable DVD's there are some pretty cool things you can do with all this technology. One of them is making a photograph story DVD. Occasionally you see these displayed at weddings. For some reason photos always seem less accessible when they are stored away in a photo album or on a computer. I decided this past weekend to put together a photo story DVD as a gift to my parents, while Susan went into Boston with her Mom. I had tried to make one of these in the past with a another Microsoft product called Microsoft Movie Maker but I was disappointed with the picture quality of the final result.
By coincidence I found a product called Microsoft Photo Story 3 which makes it fairly easy to create these Photo DVD's. So I thought I would give the new software a try. The software was fairly easy to use. Although the software is free to make the Photo Story, you actually have to pay $20 for another plugin software for Sonic to actually burn the Photo Story too a DVD. This I thought was pretty cheese on the part of Microsoft. Wait until they spend 4 hours making something they can't do anything with and them tell them the have to pay to really get something usefull. Unlike the Mac OS which comes with this type of software as part of the operating systems. After having invested 1/2 day making the photo story and being some what satisfied with the results I decided to buy the software so that I could actually burn the DVD. What good is a photo story gift for my mom and dad if the only way they could view it is on my computer.
The software allows you to import pictures, set the starting and finishing animation frames. This animation really brings your pictures to life. You can also overlay music, photo transitions and effects to really allow you to create a complete story or photo essay. The software also includes the ability to auto correct the color and contrast which in some cases can really sharpen your photos. I was really impressed with the visual resolution and sound of the final DVD.
The DVD I created was really focused on my immediate family. I would love to create one of the broader family that we could play at our Christmas Eve dinner at Tia Gloria's. It is too late for this year but maybe next year. I think all of us would find it very entertaining to see each others photos from 10, 20 or even 30 years ago in a DVD photo story. I am glad to do the leg work, but I need everyone to contribute their photos. If you don't have a scanner, just let me borrow your photo album for a couple of weeks. If you do scan the pictures and upload them to a website like flickr and then send me the web address to the pictures you would like to include.
Lets talk more about it at Christmas Eve. I will bring Avo's Photo Story DVD. It is her gift but hopefully she won't mind showing it to everyone else. See you at Christmas Eve.
By coincidence I found a product called Microsoft Photo Story 3 which makes it fairly easy to create these Photo DVD's. So I thought I would give the new software a try. The software was fairly easy to use. Although the software is free to make the Photo Story, you actually have to pay $20 for another plugin software for Sonic to actually burn the Photo Story too a DVD. This I thought was pretty cheese on the part of Microsoft. Wait until they spend 4 hours making something they can't do anything with and them tell them the have to pay to really get something usefull. Unlike the Mac OS which comes with this type of software as part of the operating systems. After having invested 1/2 day making the photo story and being some what satisfied with the results I decided to buy the software so that I could actually burn the DVD. What good is a photo story gift for my mom and dad if the only way they could view it is on my computer.
The software allows you to import pictures, set the starting and finishing animation frames. This animation really brings your pictures to life. You can also overlay music, photo transitions and effects to really allow you to create a complete story or photo essay. The software also includes the ability to auto correct the color and contrast which in some cases can really sharpen your photos. I was really impressed with the visual resolution and sound of the final DVD.
The DVD I created was really focused on my immediate family. I would love to create one of the broader family that we could play at our Christmas Eve dinner at Tia Gloria's. It is too late for this year but maybe next year. I think all of us would find it very entertaining to see each others photos from 10, 20 or even 30 years ago in a DVD photo story. I am glad to do the leg work, but I need everyone to contribute their photos. If you don't have a scanner, just let me borrow your photo album for a couple of weeks. If you do scan the pictures and upload them to a website like flickr and then send me the web address to the pictures you would like to include.
Lets talk more about it at Christmas Eve. I will bring Avo's Photo Story DVD. It is her gift but hopefully she won't mind showing it to everyone else. See you at Christmas Eve.
posted by Carlos at 10:19 PM
1 Comments:
Sounds good, its the only way any of the Ferreira's can get into the movie buisness :)
tony
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