much better than the blank screen. is there a way to caption the pics to let us know what locations we are looking at?
Today's production was supposed to be a quick proof of concept test (supposed to be except I was up until 2:45am this morning learning the best way to output the movie that didn't generate a gigabyte-sized file).
What I think we can do, assuming this initial test seems to present few problems for everyone, is put together the different parts and then allow other folks to create movies or collaborate on some joint projects. Captioning is an option with Picasa, which is the original form of the slideshow, but it was far too time consuming for me to get into.
For this test, I downloaded the individual photos from various threads, randomly assembled them into the free Picasa application, and chose (this time) to create a movie. That outputs an .AVI file with no soundtrack (Picasa doesn't offer this option yet). I then loaded that file into Video Edit Magic 4.4, which I honestly chose mostly because it came towards the top of the Google search and I just wanted to see if I could pull this off. Before I register it for $70, I'd want people to tell me if they like this kind of thing, can see the movies okay, or if they have a better option for me to consider, that would be great too. Video Edit let me import the AVI file and then I could drag and drop the soundtrack onto it (I picked two songs quickly - they don't really match all that well, but again, it's a beta test). I then exported the finished production as a Quicktime .MOV file (which created the best looking file under 150 megabytes, the limit Dailymotion has for uploads.) I then uploaded the movie to Dailymotion, which then converted it into a format we could embed on the news banner.
Here are some pros and cons to the way I did this:
PROS
Picasa allows anyone to create an album and quickly upload files to the service, and they can be accessed and shared with others.
Picasa permits project collaboration - one person's uploaded file could be captioned by someone else.
Picasa is free.
Picasa is simple and relatively easy to use.
Picasa's movie generation has the built-in "Ken Burns"-effect (the guy who does all of the PBS documentaries that show slow panning across static photos).
Video Edit Magic was so intuitive, I only had to read three help screens to answer some questions.
CONS
I had to use three different software packages/services to pull this off (not including Dailymotion).
Picasa's slideshow option, which we started with, doesn't appear to work for a large percentage of our residents.
Using Picasa and Video Edit Magic to build the movie is not efficient - one package that could produce the movie and embed a soundtrack would be easier.
The multiple format conversions degrade the video quality, although not by as much as Dailymotion itself which heavily compresses the video.
I am not sure yet what impact an embedded video player on the home page has on dial-up users.I am certain there are others out there with more experience using these kinds of software packages than I, so hopefully we'll hear some great input on these issues.
