From Camcorder Tape to Photo Story

[PapaJohn]

Here's a link to a pilot concept test.... to see what you get if you take a
frame grab every 5 seconds from a widescreen camcorder video file, batch
distort the images with IrfanView so Photo Story 3 will re-distort them when
rendering the video to a widescreen format, render the story with a custom
high definiition profile of 1280x720 pixels, and then put it on the mydeo
streaming service.

There was absolutely no editing done... the audio has it's snaps, crackles
and pops... PS3 was allowed to use it's default settings of 5 seconds per
pix, with dissolve transitions between each, and whatever panning/zooming it
decided.

http://www.mydeo.com/videorequest.asp?XID=43807&CID=60378

167 frames of the 14 minute camcorder clip, combined with the actual audio,
is what you see in this pilot video.... I put it out at this point in it's
raw state to show that the process has merit... it's an easy cookie-cutter
process it get it from the camcorder tape to this point.

From this point on, the editing of the pictures and the story will shape it
into the final.... holiday greeting. How to do this process is the subject
of my newsletter this
week.

 

[PapaJohn]

I did a little tweaking and changed the link to

http://www.mydeo.com/videorequest.asp?XID=46899&CID=60426

in brief, the steps to make such a story are:

1 - rip the audio from the captured file and put aside to add to the story
2 - assuming NTSC footage, apply a speed-up effect in Movie Maker to make
the clip(s) play 149.67857 times faster than normal... that'll be just the
right speed to be able to do frame grabs that go into Photo Story 3 at the
default of 5 second durations.... render the clip
3 - extract all frames of the rendered clip to individual BMP files
4 - distort the BMP files as PS3 doesn't have a feature to make widescreen
stories (see my Photo Story 3 > Import Pictures page)... drop them as a
batch into PS3 and save the story using a custom widescreen high-def profile
5 - put the story online.... my sample is on the mydeo service and is a
streaming file...

Now that I have the concept down pat, the next ones will look better....
this one was a test project for my current newsletter...

 

[PapaJohn]

the second project using this method is lots better, but took a bit more
work as I tweaked the motion settings of each picture...

it's the ferry ride on the Grand Canal in Venice from the bus station to St.
Marks.... the link to it is on

http://www.papajohn.org/Venice.html