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Topics for Class Five:
Review Assignments from Class 4
More with Photo Story: Transitions, Effects, & Customizing
Motion, and Adding Text Slides
In-Class Activity 1: Recording Audio Narration
In-Class Activity 2: Adding Music
Saving Files in Photo
Story 3
Questions about Photo Story 3
Assignments for Next Class:
* Reading Assignments
*
Blog Assignments
* Hands-On
Assignment 5
Review Assignments
from Class Four
Hands-On Assignment:
For this week's hands-on assignment, you should create a
personal digital story without narration using Photo Story 3, or
another program of your choice. This initial photo story should
contain a minimum of 10 images and no audio. Here are the steps
you should follow if you are just starting out using Photo Story
software:
* Select the images you would like to use for your digital
story. Place them all in a folder on your computer.
* Launch the Photo Story 3 software and select Begin a new
story.
* Next, import the images you want to use into Photo Story.
* Modify the image order, if necessary, by clicking and dragging
the image thumbnails in the timeline.
* Use the Edit feature to modify images and/or add any visual
effects.
* When you click Next, you may see a message that states that
some or all of your images have black borders. Determine whether
the black borders should be removed or left the way they are.
* Decide if text should be used over an image (such as for a
title slide), or if text slides should be created separately and
imported into the timeline.
* For this exercise, adding audio is optional, meaning you may
add and/or record audio if you want to, or leave it out for the
time being. We will cover adding audio in next week's class.
* Determine what type of motion (panning and zooming) you want
for each image and how how long each image should stay on the
screen. Make adjustments to the motion and duration of your
images by selecting Customize Motion.
* You should also decide whether or not you want to modify the
transitions that occur between images.
* For this exercise, you do not need to add any music to your
story and we will explore this feature in more detail in next
week's class. However, you may add music if you like.
* Remember to save your project file often. This file will have
the file extension: .wp3.
* You should use the default settings to finalize your digital
story, and this will save it as a Windows Media Video (.wmv)
file.
When you have created the .wmv file, you should upload it to any
online site where it will be accessible. If you don't already
have an online location, you can upload your file to YouTube or
Google's free Picasa Web Albums (where you get 1 GB of space).
Blog Assignment:
For this assignment, go to the course discussion blog and post a message in
which you first include the URL of the video file you created
for this week's hands-on assignment, and then post any questions
or comments you have about the process you went through in
completing this work.
More with Photo Story:
Transitions, Effects, &
Customizing Motion, plus Adding Text Slides
Working with Transitions
When you click on the Customize Motion tab, you will see
the Transition tab at the top of the window. Here you
will see 48 transitions that can be used when one image
changes to the next. You can also set the number of
seconds it will take for the transition to occur, with 1
second being the default length.
The CrossFade transition is used on all images by
default, but you can change the transition on any images
in your story. However, be careful that you don't overdo
this as too many transitions can be overwhelming and
detract from your story's message.
Adding Special Effects to
your Images
Special effects may be added to your images in Photo
Story 3, but like transitions, you should be careful
that you don't add so many effects that they detract
from the story itself.
1. Click on the Edit button below
the Image Viewer in the main Import and Arrange window.
2. Click on the Add Effect tab.
3. Select an effect to apply from the Effect pull-down
menu.
4. To apply the change to all of the pictures in your
story, click the checkbox next to the Apply the selected
effect to all of the pictures option.
5. Click the Save button to keep the changes.
6. Click the Close button to return to the Import and
Arrange screen.
Creating and Importing Separate
Text Slides
In class, we discussed the use of Title Slides and
Text Slides and even though they're related, they are in
fact two different things. But different people (and
different software programs) use the terms to mean
different things, which is why there can be some
confusion. For our course, it will probably help if
everyone reads and remembers the following:
The Title Slide is usually the first slide in a digital
story. It may be a slide with just text on a blank
background, or it can be text that appears on a
background that contains some stylistic elements or even
a photograph.
The Photo Story 3 software has a screen called "Add a
Title to Your Pictures" and this is often used to create
a slide that has text appearing over an image, and have
it serve as the first slide in your story. Take a look
at the story on the use of
Pinhole Cameras to see an example of this.
1. Select the image you want to add
text to in the timeline.
2. Type the text you want to add into the box provided.
3. Click the buttons above the textbox to arrange the
text on the image.
4. Click the Select Font button to make changes to the
font face, size, color, and style of your text.
We
also have explored the use of creating a
black slide in PowerPoint and adding text to
it.
Here are the steps for adding a black slide:
1) Launch PowerPoint;
2)
From the Insert Menu, choose New Slide;
3) From the Format menu, choose Background;
4)
Use the pull-down option at the bottom of
the Background box and click on the black
color;
5)
Click the Apply button;
6)
The entire slide should now be black. From
the File menu, choose Save As;
7) And from the Save as type pull-down menu,
scroll down to GIF or JPG to save the slide
as a graphic, rather than as a .ppt file.
8)
And then just import the slide into Photo
Story like you would any other graphic.
Take a look at
Van Gogh's Letters to Theo to see
how black text slides are used throughout a
digital story.
You can add a text slide at the
end of your story and use the customized motion to
create a rolling credits slide like you see at the end
of a movie. You can see an example of this by going to
the end of the digital story:
Almost Paradise.
And if you want your text slides
to have a little more pizzazz than just white text on a
black background, you might think about creating text
slides in PowerPoint's and adding different slide design
layouts. Take a look at
Picasso in His Own Words to see examples of
this.
Another Option:
Add a Blank Slide or Credits slide created in an Image
Editing Program
You might try
downloading any of the following slides to add to your
story or you may create similar slides in PowerPoint or
and image editing program like Photoshop Elements.
black slide
white slide
gradient slide 1
gradient slide 2
Questions about Photo
Story 3:
-
How long can the
Photo Story be?
I haven’t found a technical time limit and have seen stories
that are at least 12 or 13 minutes long. On a practical
note, we have discussed that stories should be about 5
minutes long, since some viewers’ attention span seems to
fade after that amount of time.
-
How many images can
you import into Photo Story 3?
I haven't actually tried it myself, but I read in
Papa John's Newsletter that you can use up to 300
images in a single Photo Story project.
-
What
issues or errors have occurred?
Not very often, but occasionally, one slide causes problems
and needs to be removed. And once in a while the program
says it can’t save the project or create the final video
file. These errors are usually fixed through trial and error
of deleting a few slides and reintroducing them back in. One
problem we have seen repeatedly is that file names that
contain unusual characters (such as #, &, or @ can generate
an error. The best advice is to name your files with only
"normal" characters, with no spaces, and dashes or
underscores, if you want to include a lot of information.
-
Here's an example of how
NOT to name a file:
Bernard Robin's 3rd Digital Story.doc
-
Here's an example of how you
SHOULD name a file: B-Robin-Story3.doc
-
Here's another example of how
NOT to name a file created with Photo
Story: PhotoStory1.wmv
-
Here's an example of how you
SHOULD name a file created with Photo
Story: BRobin-Story.wmv
In Class
Activities
click on the following links for information on these
topics:
Recording
and Adding Audio
Adding Music
Saving Files in Photo
Story 3
Saving the Project File in Photo Story 3 (.wp3)
When you are at a point
where you are satisfied with your progress, you should save the
project file. This will produce a .wp3 file, which can only be
opened with Microsoft Photo Story 3. It is important to save
this project file so that you can come back to the project later
and continue working on it.
Click on the Save Project button from any of the screens in
Photo Story and you will be prompted to save the project file.
As we discussed in class, be sure to pick a descriptive file
name, rather than the default file name the program offers, and
choose a location where the file will be easy for you to find.
The saved .wp3 file is
the actual work that you have put into the digital story
(picture editing, customized motion, transitions, narration,
music, etc). Remember that you should save this file as a
working copy so that you can open it again later and
continue working on it.
Saving your
Completed Story (.wmv)
When you are finished working on the story, you will need to
perform a final save that puts all of the elements of the
story together and allows you to view the finished piece.
This type of save will create a .wmv file (Windows Media
Video) that will be playable with Microsoft's Windows Media
Player.
In order to perform this final save, you must click the next
button until you reach the final screen--it will say Save
your story at the top left. At this point, you are able
to make some choices about how to save the complete story
from a series of options presented in a pull-down menu. Most
of the time, you will want to use the default setting:
Save your story for playback on a computer, as this will
give you the best quality.
One More Thing...
At the bottom left of the Save your story screen,
you should see a Settings button.
When you click on this button,
another screen pops up with several choices for the size (in
pixels) that you want your final story to be. I suggest that
you try either the 640x480 setting or the 800x600 setting
when you save your story. You may want to experiment with
other settings to see which setting works best with your
particular story.
Assignments for Next Class:
Reading Assignments
Review:
The Copyright and Digital Storytelling Page on the EUoDS
Website
http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/copyright.html
Hands-On Assignment 5:
For this week's hands-on assignment, you should add
narration and either computer-generated music or real music to
the digital story you created last week.
When you have created the
.wmv file, go to your personal blog and make a new post and add the video by
clicking on Blogger's Add Video button as shown below.
This will bring up a dialogue box where you should click on
Choose file button to select the video file you want to upload.
You will then need to give the video a title (please include
your name and some descriptive information, such as
"BRobin-Assignment4.wmv" and not simply leave the video named
"PhotoStory1.wmv") and agree to the upload conditions.
When the upload begins, a video player with the orange and white
Blogger log in the middle will appear in your blog window and
you will notice the words "Processing Video" at the bottom of
the window. It may take several minutes for the video to upload
completely, depending on how large the file is.
After the video has successfully been uploaded, the video player
should have a play button (a white arrow) in the middle,
indicating that the video can be played. You can click this
button to make sure the video plays properly, and if it does,
you should click the Publish Post button to complete the
process.
Your video should then be viewable in your blog, as shown in the
example below.
For more information
about uploading video with Blogger, go to:
How do I post a video to my blog?
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=67428
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If you want to, you may also upload your video to any online site where it will be accessible
electronically. If you
don't already have an online location, you can upload your file to YouTube or Google's free Picasa Web Albums
(where you get 1 GB of space).
A tutorial on uploading your video to YouTube and embedding the link in
your blog is located at:
http://courses.coe.uh.edu/brobin/resources/upload-videos/upload-videos.htm
Blog
Assignment 5:
Go to your personal blog and post a message in
which you first upload the new video file you created for this
week's hands-on assignment (or include the new URL) and then post any
questions or comments you have about the process you went
through in completing this work.
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