Thursday 12 May 2011

How To Create a Microsoft Photo Story Movie

If you’re tired of just sticking all your digital pictures in your computer hard drive and now you finally have time to organize them, one of your best options is to create a Microsoft Photo Story movie. This application is so user-friendly that you could sit down and efficiently use it to organize your photos even if you feel you’re not much of a techie. To make your undertaking even easier, read on for some basic guidelines for creating your own Microsoft Photo Story movie:

* Open a file. Of course, you should start by opening your Microsoft Photo Story application in your computer. Then, click on the option, “begin a new story”.
* Import all the pictures that you will use. Open the folders that contain the pictures that you want to include in your Photo Story movie. You can include a maximum of 300 photos in your project, with file types such as .jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .gif, and most other image file types. Here’s a tip: to select multiple pictures from one folder, hold on “ctrl” while you’re clicking the mouse. After you’ve imported the pictures, you can see them film-strip style at the bottom of the screen. You can arrange the sequence of the pictures by clicking and dragging on individual pictures along the film strip.
* Add captions. Add a title page and ending page to your Photo Story project. You can also add captions to the pictures. Another option is for you to record your voice and narrate the story instead. A maximum of five minutes narration is available for every picture.
* Customize the effects. Another feature that you could work with is determining the effects you will use for your Photo Story project. Do this by using the custom motion tool. Through this tool, you can determine the entrance and transition of the pictures.
* Add background music. Music automatically gives more appeal to any Photo Story movie, and the great thing is that it’s very easy to incorporate in your project. You can use any of the following audio file types: mp3, wav, or wma. Use the “select music” button and choose the music file that you want to use. You can actually assign a specific music file to one picture or to a group of pictures. Of course, you could also assign one music file to play throughout the duration of your entire project.
* Save your project. Once you’re done with all the editing, save it to your computer hard-drive and convert it to .wmv (or Windows Media Video) file.


Microsoft Photo Story movie is really very easy and straightforward to use, and you could realistically come up with a professional looking project in a little over 30 minutes. So if you have one free weekend afternoon, take the time to organize those image files so you could finally show them to your friends! You could even upload your project to your website, but do be careful about copyright infringement, especially with regards to the music that you use. Have fun!

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