Inside the House of Baldwin

My brother, Jason, alerted me to this nifty software that allows you to do multiple pans on a photo. I spent all last night playing with it by creating a slideshow of random photos that I found from 2006.

These are some thoughts I have about this software. First some downsides: I imported the pics randomly and found that it was a little annoying to try to move them around on the timeline, so I just left them where they were. There are no other transitions than cross-fade, which are inserted automatically with the pics. There is no fade in or fade out. The audio was not too bad to work with, but it would have been easier to work with the way iMovie allows you to.

The upside: I love being able to do multiple pans within a photo. It was lots of fun and makes for more interesting effects. You have more control over your pans versus Ken Burns in iMovie and you don’t mess the entire slideshow up if you change the length of a particular photo. It seemed a little harder to mess things up in here than in iMovie, which is a given with any project.

However, what is with the file sizes? It was a mere 7 minute slideshow with nothing more than photos, one title, transitions and two song files. A DV export was 1.5 GB and the web export was 60 MB. I imported the DV file into Final Cut and exported to a 320×240 using the compression settings given to Brad by Podtech for web viewing. Usually a file like this one would be about 7 MB. It was 28 MB! Ouch!

Jason uses this software to do pans in individual photos, he then exports those individual photos to DV files, and then imports them into iMovie. You can then move the photos about easier and use the cool Slick transitions. Plus, the audio is easier to work with.

After making lots of slideshows and videos, I have found that you cannot make exactly what you want without using a combination of software programs. One will not give you everything. It’s sad but true. Many thanks to Jason for keeping me up on the latest and greatest.

P.S. Yes, there are some red-eyes…but that is because iPhoto does not fix all red-eyes. You have to take some pics into Photoshop to fix the red-eyes, and I wasn’t in the mood to do so. Just another example of not being able to use one program for everything. Sigh.