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By Geoffrey McLean,,
McLean Research Associates
I have an ongoing task to convert some slides and audio tape to
movies. After doing the first one, I thought it would be a great
idea to pass on. We all have old slides sitting in carousels or
photos by the dozens. My parents have photos, and my mother can't
remember who or what they are of. Wouldn't it be nice to leave your
heirs an audio recording describing the still? Well, you can and
here's how I do it.
First off you'll need either a CD or DVD burner... and yes you can
store them on a hard drive as well.
You'll need a scanner. Newer is better and faster. If you have
slides make sure it comes with a template (physical) to put the
slides in for scanning. Same goes for a photo (or make one
yourself). You may also want to obtain a calibrating program and/or
Kodak scanner calibration kit.
I tried various "free" packages for Windows but settled on
Pinnacle's Studio. Oh, I can hear people falling over now. Geoff is
using Windows? Well, the truth is I tried a couple of Linux
products, and one was hopeful, but it corrupted the stitching of the
video segments (I'll get to that in a minute).
I chose Studio because of price and the fact that it could deal with
still images. After you scan your pictures, you will need to record
your audio. I suggest using one of the many free or inexpensive
software recorders (ie Creative Play Center) and record each slide
separately. I highly recommend numbering the files - so that the
slide #3 is 03.jpg and the audio is 03.wav.
Once you are done creating the content - it's movie making time. I
believe that you can fit probably at least somewhere around 100
slides and 60 minutes worth of audio on a CD. But don't hold me to
that - your results may differ.
Now you have two different choices to make in how you want to go
about making the move: One way is to find a package that converts
the jpg to mpeg format (I use Linux to scan and make the mpegs using
jpeg2yuv and mpeg2enc). Although I have not researched it there are
bound to be converters for Windows as well.
Or, you can import the jpgs directly into Studio. In either case,
next add the audio files. Once you have all the sound in, simply
move the files onto the audio track in Studio. Next put the jpegs so
they align with the audio track. If you did mpegs, they should
already be aligned as you specified how many frames to make when you
created the mpegs. Joining the audio and video segments together is
known as stitching.
Now you can add transitional effects. Studio has a lot of
transitions. However, every transition carries a steep price in
terms of the final file size so the amount of pictures that can be
on a CD/DVD will fall dramatically. I have noticed that the History
Channel which does a lot of this sort of "movie" rarely uses
transitions. I do not either, but it is available if you want.