You know a product has turned mainstream when you start seeing all kinds of options, sizes, extra features, colors, flavors – not unlike how Cornflakes now appears in 101 variations. Such is the case with Digital Picture frames. The other day, I saw one that even reports on the weather real time. And a few lets you crop, lighten, and add effects to your photos right on it (I prefer to edit the source photos on my PC before transporting my photos to a picture frame, ipod, flicker, etc).
Picture Frame designs - you will find one that will match any living room, from simple clear frames to this handsome, wood, fashion-statement designs like the Philips 6.5-Inch Digital Picture Frame.
Want your digital pictures to come alive and greet you when you return from the office? The Philips 9-Inch Digital Picture Frame has a programmable timer to turn on and off automatically according to your schedule (and save energy).
Wireless anyone? With a wi-fi picture frame you are able send pictures to the frame wirelessly. They make it easy to display an ever changing collection of pictures either from your home PC or a shared collection (like a Flickr account). The USA 10.4-Inch PU10WB 256MB Digital Picture Frame is Bluetooth enabled, but you need to fill in a form that comes in the box to receive your free bluetooth adapter that you can just plug into a USB port on your PC. You can then "beam up" photos from your PC to frame.
Sizes are available in a wide range too, from little keychain picture frame, to large 14 inch frames. You can now get a 12-Inch Digital Picture Frame for less than $200.
The feature I’m happiest to see is the ability to play video. The Opteka 8" Digital Picture Frame plays MP3 and video. A word of caution: edit your videos, keep the edited clips tight short, and entertaining. Watching slow, boring unedited footage on a digital picture frame is like watching grass grow.
While that makes it very easy to upload your videos on internet to share with your friends and family, you may want to take an extra step and edit it first. Watching unedited raw footage is like watching grass grow.
To turn your flip video clip into an entertaining movie with nifty transitions, special effects, titles and music, you need a video editing software. The movie-editing software that I highly recommend for busy and time-pressed folks like us is the free Microsoft Windows Movie Maker software that is already on your PC.
There are several reasons for choosing Windows Movie Maker:
It is very easy to use, and if you record with the flip video, I know EASY is very important to you.
It is rich in features: add music, pictures, titles and credits.
It comes included with a fun collection of nifty transitions and cool special effects.
It doesn't hang or crash on you. Video editing software is known to be big memory processing hogs and prone to crashing. Not this one.
It is FREE. It comes with your Windows XP or Windows Vista software, preinstalled in the factory.
Bottom line: You can turn slow-moving boring raw footage into cool home movies to impress your friends and family.
The video tutorial below shows you:
a quick big-picture overview of the software and
where to find the software on your Windows PC.
Now for an overview of how easy it is to use Windows Movie Maker. Click the video to see a quick demonstration on Read more
If you are a Costco member, there's a new service you may want to look into: Costco Video Transfer and Costco Film Transfer.
This service fills an important role, because it’s estimated that 700 million home movies are stashed away in closets and basements, many of them degrading away because of the limited life span of film and video. If you don’t believe me, here’s a video my father took over thirty years ago – I can’t even make out my mother’s face anymore. Do you have your wedding video stashed 'safely' in a closet in your bedroom? Don’t end up like this faceless bride video.
Costco charges $20 for a video transfer and takes about three weeks. You drop them off at the same place you drop your photos, but unlike their photos that get processed right on site, these video tapes and film reels are sent off to California. That’s why the service takes three weeks. Some customers are uncomfortable about that, some don’t realize they get shipped offsite, some are okay with that.
What do you get back after 3 weeks? You get back a gold-plated DVD and on the cover of the DVD box, they put little thumbnail photos of what’s on the DVD to help you identify it visually. When you play the DVD, you’ll see those thumbnails like on on-screen index. Click a thumbnail to start the video right at that scene.
One more caveat: This service is only for families who just want to pop their DVDs into their player and do not mind watching raw video footage. I personally cannot stand watching unedited raw video footage. It’s like watching grass grow. In my last post where I listed reasons why your friends and family don’t watch your videos, this is what I’m talking about.
If do you want to edit your videos, you want to transfer them to a hard drive, not to a DVD. This is because it’s very tricky to edit videos already burned on DVDs, and since the videos have been compressed for DVDs, the quality of your edited video will not be significantly inferior to if you were working with original source files on a hard drive. To transfer your videos to a hard drive, consider the options I listed in my post Transferring your videos to a hard drive.
Anyway, whichever option you choose, digitizing your videos is the only way to stop the video degradation is important, so don’t wait to transfer your home videos and film, and if you are a Costco member, you've one fewer excuse to wait.
My friend John just gave me a bunch of his father's 16-mm and Super-8 film reels to digitize. His summer project is to edit the video into a DVD for a family reunion. I made a comment about how his siblings must appreciate the work and love that go into a project like this and he laughed. "We've gone on a cruise together, vacationed in Africa, Europe, and I've made some beautiful DVDs for all of us but no one watches them except my wife and I".
His comment reminded me of my own similar experience in the past. My parents are abroad and I made beautiful videos of the children to send them. After many cross-atlantic calls to get them to watch it, they finally did and my dad fell asleep in the middle of it. How insulting. Don't they love their grandchildren enough to watch to the end of the video?
Why don't friends and family watch your videos? I have a few ideas, and it's got nothing to do with whether they love you or not.
1. Home videos are usually long and boring. To the parents, 10 minutes video footage of watching baby eat his peas is darling, to others it's like watching grass grow, death by boredom. Suggestion: Make your videos short and sweet, 3 minutes maximum. Even your 7-day European tour, check out my post on keeping your finished movies 3 minutes or less.
2. Got no humor. Have you noticed that the successful TV commercials are the ones with humor? Same thing with YouTube videos that get millions of views, they are very funny. Like this video on How To Hug a Baby (a Guide for Ambitious Dogs). Suggestion: Turn on your funny bone. Got not funny bone? Find humor videos on the web, watch how they do it.
3. No documentaries please. We play reporter with the video camera, capturing every blow, every turn our marathoner makes, every step up Heartbreak Hill (Boston Marathon), all the way until he disappears into the shower stall. Is this video for the archives or for entertainment? Suggestion: If it's to share with friends and families, I suggest it's more entertaining to capture more details about a specific incident than a long stretch of the event. That's why the Charlie Bit Me video got virally passed around to millions of viewers. Long generalities makes a good historical archive, detailed video clip of an emotion, an incident, an experience makes a good story.
4. It's not on their errand path. How many harried families take a breather, sit down and pop in their old home movies to reminisce? The DVD is much easier to pop into a player but it still takes tearing away from your normal routine to sit down for a home movie. It's not the natural errand path of busy families. Suggestion: Send it by email. I don't mean the actual large video file (or you'll lose even more friends and family), I mean the link to the video that you post on the web. That's just one option, there are many ways to share your video today, be versatile if you want your families and friends to watch your video.
Happy video editing. Remember, keep it short, keep it funny, keep it tight, make it easy for them to watch, and you'll have friends and families raving and asking for more. To do all that, you will need to know how to do simple video editing. If you've been intimidated with that in the past, don't. Today's software, such as Windows Movie Maker (free), and camcorders such as the Flip Video, for example, make the process a lot simpler and quicker. Also many video tutorials out there to guide you every step of the way.
The simplest video editing is when you take out the editing completely. It's rare, but on occassion, you shoot a short snippet that's so perfect you want to share it as is. Like this video of Charlie biting big brother's finger.
This short video about a toothy baby, Charlie, who bites his big brother, has been viewed on YouTube over 12 million times. The video made us chuckle, but if you were Charlie's parents, would you be concerned that the whole world knows about your 2 children by face?
I'll admit that I put my kids, nieces, nephews on YouTube all the time. And I'm not worried. Why? Because, according to Wikipedia, there are over 77 million videos available for viewing on YouTube. I figure the chances that my baby son's music video is going to become another Charlie, or even be viewed by my friends or family, is pretty slim.
There are precaution available to you if you are still concerned about sharing your videos on YouTube. When you first upload your file to YouTube, you will be asked to select from Broadcast Options - Public or Private. By choosing Private you will restrict your video so that it can only be viewed by you and up to 25 other people).
But then your son won't get to be as famous as Charlie…
Electronic greeting cards are getting too corny. Do you even open the ones you get? A typed-up Valentine's Day message just does not feel quite personal. For this Valentine's Day, try sending your sweetheart a message with Sketchcast.com. Sketchcast is an internet drawing application that lets you get creative and romantic with a pen and an eraser. Best of all, it's in your hand-writing. Now, that's personal. And therefore romantic.
Here are 3 Valentine's Day sketchcast to start off your creative juices flowing.
This first one, is just a simple I love You. But I dare say your sweetheart has not seen it expressed this way. Read more
This flip video is so simple to use folks are leaving their fancy camcorders at home and taking this one in their pockets instead. It even comes with a bicycle attachment so you can record your biking tour vistas.
The flip video went from a no-name to beat Sony's camcorder. It's not just it's simplicity to record (press red button to start, press again to stop), it's the simplicity of uploading to your PC. Confession time, how many of us have shoe boxes of video cassettes or mini-DVs in our closets, because we haven't figured out yet how to upload them to our PC to edit and share it with friends and family? With the flip video, you, errrh, flip the USB cable and plug it into your USB slot on your PC. Just like that. Play the video below to see demo.
Prices of these Flip Videos (now in designer colors) have dropped again at least $20 at Amazon.
Watch the video below to see a review by USA Today.
I never buy a gadget without checking out what users say about it. Click here to check out what Flip Video users sayabout this really simple gadget.
I recorded this scene at my work place. It was a weekend afternoon and I had to go into work for something I don't even remember anymore. Anyway, I brought my two kids in and they played some fooz ball while I worked. Then I gave them each a dollar bill to choose whatever they wanted from the vending machine. She wanted Twizzlers. I happened to have my video camcorder.
This video should be required classroom material for any college psychology class. How about you? Did you get the Twizzlers of your life or did someone talk you into having something else instead?
When families think of making home movies, they think of one style of movie chronichling an event from start to finish. I like to think there are 3 types of home movies:
Video stories
Video vignettes
Photoshows
What’s a Video Story?
A video story is a 3 to 5-minute video that covers a significant event in your family life, the "major event" of the year. Examples are graduations, family trip to Hawaii, a retirement party and big holiday events. A video story is a well-choreographed sequence with a beginning, middle and end. I like to include more details, close-up interviews, more contemplative scenes, etc. Aim to do 1 video story a year.
What’s a Video Vignette?
A video vignette is about 1-3 minutes long. Vignettes are not stories with beginning, middle, and end. They capture small moments of our lives. It’s the little everyday things that usually just pass by and are remembered no more yet they are the little things that make your lives rich and precious. Examples are a child’s first attempt at riding a bike, house renovation, junior’s first haircut, a swim meet, Grandma teaching your daughter how to knit, etc. Aim to do 2 video vignettes a year.
And a photoshow, what’s that?
A photoshow is a lot of fun and easy, easy to make with the right software. A photoshow is a bunch of photos strung together into a movie-like video with music, captions, transitions and special effects. They take minutes to do and bring back the memory to life just as powerfully. If you have not created a photo show before, there is a link at the end of this article to a video tutorial on how to create photo shows in minutes. The software is even free if you are a Comcast Internet subscribier.
There are several reasons why you want your collection to have a variety of video stories, vignettes and photoshows: vignettes and photoshows are a lot quicker to do if you are time-pressed, a variety of short and longer videos keep the audience excited, and finally, the variety stimulates your creativity instead of getting stuck on one style.
Almost all my video editing projects involves adding soundtrack. Soundtrack does a lot to engage the viewer emotionally. After years of making movies for friends and family, I found that I was reusing the same soundtrack a little too often. How to tell? When even your friends and family notice. But it’s not easy to find new soundtrack that is free and that I can use legally.
I was very happy therefore to discover www.SpliceMusic.com. Every sound on Splice is automatically covered with the creative commons attribution license. What this means is that as long as you give credit back to where you found it on SpliceMusic, you can legally use it for your video editing projects for free. All you have to do is give credit where credit is due and you are in the clear.
Once you find the free soundtrack you want, you can download it as an MP3 file. You can then use a video editing software to add the MP3 file to your movie projects. If video editing is new to you, an excellent free video editing software we recommend is Windows Movie Maker by Microsoft.
But SpliceMusic is more than a collection of free soundtracks. It’s a free online sound mixer as well. You can start with a soundtrack, trim it, repeat it into a rhythmic pattern, add more soundtracks and compose a unique sound effect for your home movies.
This video below demos this fun process of finding and mixing soundtracks.
digital picture frame kodak digital picture frame philips digital picture frame
What do you get back after 3 weeks? You get back a gold-plated DVD and on the cover of the DVD box, they put little thumbnail photos of what’s on the DVD to help you identify it visually. When you play the DVD, you’ll see those thumbnails like on on-screen index. Click a thumbnail to start the video right at that scene.
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