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© 2006 by Rick Altman. All Rights Reserved.
Last month,we shared both our frustration and our fascination with the challenges of creating digital video productions for distribution on DVD. The frustration is with trying to use PowerPoint for this task; the satisfaction is in finding other software that does the job better.
To recap, here are the deficiencies that sent us lookingbeyond PowerPoint:
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And we found two programs, Pro Show Producer from Photodex and Adobe’s Premiere Elements, that together cover off practically every requirement that we defined:
You can read the first installment in our Editorial Archive. Here is an overview of a typical workflow for a project that will result in a DVD with photos and video footage set to music.
Figure 1: This simple folder structure can save you a lot of hair might otherwise be torn out. |
Because advanced video creation software uses media by reference (instead of trying to import it), it is essential that you organize your work diligently. This isn’t hard to do, just easily overlooked. On our system, Drive G is where we create our videos, and for a project like a promo for a seminar, we recommend the simple folder structure shown in Figure 1: a folder for audio clips, one for video footage, one for photos and other still images, and one for any handiwork needed in an image-editing or drawing program (i.e., if you needed to create a complex transparency in Photoshop or a Powerclip in CorelDRAW, the result would go in the images folder, but the native application file would be stored in the work folder).
Motion video requires more pre-production work than still photos so our best advice is to take care of it first if your project has any. We find the $99 Premiere Elements a handy one-stop shop for capturing video from Firewire or USB sources, trimming and editing, adding transitions, and tweaking audio. Export all video clips as uncompressed AVI files – 720 x 480 resolution (if in North America or another NTSC country; 720 x 576 if in a country that uses the PAL standard), 29.97 frames per second, full RGB color palette, and audio set at 16-bit, 48,000 Hz (CD quality).
These settings imply two things: 1) you will have tremendous flexibility to use this video, able to place it in high-fidelity projects or downsample it for delivery across the web; and 2) it will take up gobs of hard drive space, about 100MB for 30 seconds of video. If your work involves motion video, get used to the fact that you will need a much larger hard drive.
It is likely that the video you capture with Premiere will be in AVI format, and if you follow our recommendation, you will be exporting your final clips in AVI format. Therefore, you will want a naming scheme that enables you to keep this all straight, and possibly one additional folder inaddition to video clips: raw or captured footage.
Figure 2: This abstract photo will appear to magically turn into the more literal one. In fact, it is a simple fade between a heavily stylized photo and the original image. |
Let the creativity begin! Here is where you assemble all of the pieces, creating meaningful imagery, evocative integration of sound and music, and elegant transitions between passages. While we are using Pro Show Producer as our grand central station software, these steps are generic enough to be applicable to other programs, as well. And if you want to follow along, you can do so with the free trial version available at the Photodex website.
Our first idea is to begin with an abstract photo that gradually morphs into a literal one. We took the photo into Corel Photo-Paint and applied the “sketchpad” filter to it. We created one with soft lines and one with a more defined outline. Figure 2 shows the two abstracts and the original photo staged on PSP’s timeline. The top-left window is a simple window for browsing folders while the file window below that shows the files in the selected folder. Note the three files with checkmarks, indicating their inclusion in the slide show. In the timeline, the AB icons indicate a fade transition between the two photos with a three-second duration.
Figure 3: To pan a photo in Pro Show, you can either dial in X and Y coordinates or grab the photo with your mouse and move it. The left image is the starting point, the right one the ending point. |
We could probably leave these three photos as is and have an effective intro to the slide show, but few things create energy more than simple motion. Adding a pan effect to a photo is many times easier than it is in PowerPoint – you double-click the photo and work a simple dialog box, either numerically or visually, to adjust pan, zoom, and rotation. However, we are creating a pan across three photos, so we need to make sure that as one photo fades into another, the pan of the second photo picks up where the first one left off. Figure 3 shows the Motion and Effects dialog box, from which synchronizing the panning of these three photos took about five minutes.
PSP only has one audio track but also allows you to apply audio to any slide, allowing for simple voice-overs. We found a two-minute copyright-free audio clip of up-tempo instrumental modern music to use as the background soundtrack. Placing it is as simple as finding it in the audio folder and dragging it to the timeline. We then added a blank slide to the beginning, so the first image could fade in.
Figure 4: This photo will pan so far, the woman leaves the image. This is done to have a flat background to place other content, but care must be taken not to pan too fast. We devote eight seconds to this pan. |
Now for the grist of the slide show: a series of photos, each one with a subtle zoom and/or pan, persisting on screen for four seconds, and then softly fading into the next one. Commonly referred to as the “KenBurns” effect—in honor of the noted documentarian who first employed the effect—the only way you can go wrong with this type of transition is if you try to zoom a very long way in a short period or if you yo-yo your audience with a zoom-in, followed by a zoom-out, then a zoom-in, etc.
Figure 4 shows Slide 11 in the operating room. Across an eight-second span, this photo will zoom in and pan to the right far enough to remove the woman from view entirely. This is a technique that we employ often when we want a backdrop for other images – this coastline will now serve as a background for our video clips.
Figure 5: Pro Show Producer allows you to layer one object atop another, including video. So when the coastline photo finishes its pan, this video clip takes centerstage. |
Figure 5 shows the ability of Pro Show Producer (but not Gold or the lighter versions) to overlay one image atop another. This is the first of five elements that will gradually work their way from left to right. The first two are video clips with their own audio tracks, and PSP will automatically lower the level of the main audio track when they play.
By tweaking the durations of the slides and their transitions, it is quite simple to end the slide show precisely when the audiotrack ends. Of course, you could just fade the audio so it would fit in any duration, but that doesn’t exactly allow for a dramatic or a flashy ending. With the cool photo of a personalized license plate (a Honda coupe sporting PPTDiva), it was an ideal opportunity to end the show on the strong up-beat that ends the audio track.
This two-minute video is eminently distributable, in the following ways:
In addition to the two main programs described here, we have benefited from the following utility programs:
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SNAG-IT: No self-respecting software trainer can get bywithout the ability to capture screen images or create video of a program being driven, and Snag-It from TechSmith is our choice. www.techsmith.com
KINOMA PRODUCER: To create videos in unusual formats, like for an iPod or a Palm, you need an intelligent video encoder. This handy suite from Kinoma does just that, and for a very friendly price of just $30. Output on our Treo 650 is remarkably sharp, good enough for us to use to show videos to prospective clients without having to schlep our notebook PC around. www.kinoma.com
AUDACITY: An excellent wave file editor, and completely free. http://audacity.sourceforge.net
ANY SOUND RECORDER: Little is more frustrating than buying a song from iTunes and then not being able to use it in a slide show, where a Wave or MP3 file format is required. This affordable program records anything your sound card plays, including iTunes songs, and lets you save it as a CD-quality Wave file. We wrote about this in March and you can find it in our Editorial Archive. http://www.any-sound-recorder.com
ACDSee Photo Manager: Sifting through hundreds of digitalphotos requires a powerful organizing and viewing tool and this is the one we have chosen for the past three years. www.acdsystems.com
CorelDraw Graphics Suite: For a fraction of the price of Adobe Photoshop, you get an excellent image-editing program and a best-of-breed vector drawing program. The perfect creative suite for digital movie makers. www.corel.com
Copyright 2006, All rights reserved. Have an opinion? Share it with the Corel community at the Graphics Unleashed Discussion Forum. There is already quite a bit of discussion about this story. Join in.
May 2007: As simple as possible, but not simpler... · April 2007: Killer Keystrokes · March 2007: Resolution Confusion · January 2007: Fearless Forecasts for 2007 · November 2006: Epiphanies at PowerPoint Live 2006 · August 2006: Escaping Death by PowerPoint · July 2006: Notes from the Floor of InfoComm · June 2006: Beyond PowerPoint--Making Movies for Business and Pleasure, Part II · May 2006: Beyond PowerPoint--From Photos to DVDs · April 2006: It’s Your Music!--Overcoming the oppressive restrictions of iTunes · March 2006: CorelDraw X3—A few must-haves and a few missed opportunities, all in all, a credible upgrade · February 2006: Making Windows Inhabitable · January 2006: Fearless Forecasts for 2006 · September 2005: Just What is a Background Anyway? · August 2005: Meet David Dobson, Corel's New CEO · July 2005: Community, Blind Dates. and Albert Einstein: An Interview with the PowerPoint Live Conference Host · June 2005: CorelWorld 2005: Image Editors, Executive Appearances, and Krispy Kremes · May 2005: As Adobe's Shadow Grows, Is Corel Better off or Worse? · March 2005: Delivering Your Presentation: How Close to the Source Can You Get? · February 2005: Digital Photography: The Killer App of this Generation Part II · January 2005: Digital Photography: The Killer App of this Generation · November 2004: A Killer Deal for Corel Or Another Distraction? · September 2004: The Scourge that is Kazaa and AOL Instant Messenger · August 2004: The Golden Triangle: Presenter, Audience, and Slides · July 2004: A Blast from the Past: How Fast is Fast Enough? · June 2004: Guilty Pleasures · May 2004: A Personal Wish List for PowerPoint 12 · April 2004: Eyedropping: Version 12 makes a good tool even better... · March 2004: Deadly Sins Of Modern PowerPoint Usage · February 2004: Is the even-numbered curse finally over? · January 2004: Another take on Achieving Absence of Ugliness · November 2003: What can we do it again??--Debut of PowerPoint Live Leaves Unquenchable Thirst with the Host · September 2003: Corel Corp. Has a New Custodian · July 2003: Candor and Contrition at CorelWORLD · June 2003: What a Long, Great Trip It’s Been! · May 2003: The Boat that Corel is Missing · April 2003: No Fooling...Is Corel Breaking Up? · March 2003: The Annual Design-a-Brochure Contest · February 2003: Symbolism is Everything · January 2003: Mania, Our Semi-Annual Pilgrimage to Holland · October 2002: On Creativity, Problem-Solving, and Paper Bags · July 2002: CorelDRAW 11: Surprise, Surprise... · May 2002: The Sound of Silence: What does it mean when a company plays its cards so close to its chest? · April 2002: The Art and Science of Presentation Graphics--Creating for the Screen Has its own Challenges · March 2002: CorelDRAW 11: What kind of personality and attitude should a software program have today? · February 2002: Oy, my aching fingers... · December 2001: Digital Photography · November 2001: Can we say goodbye to the Rolls Royce Mentality? · October 2001: An Unforgettable Week: The drama that unfolded around CorelWORLD · August-September 2001: The Art of Paragraphics: New-age ingredients for success with Corel VENTURA · July 2001: Your Very Own Interface: How to make Corel applications read your mind · June 2001: Fighting the Font Wars: How to stay sane with your sans · May 2001--Turning the Key at Nicholas-Applegate · April 2001--A Modest Proposal for Reviving VENTURA Publisher
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