Little

This started out as a simple idea, but then all projects do I suppose. I wanted to try putting together a slide show using some of the tools I have now. I have lots of tools, lots of ideas, but time? Well…

The photos were edited in LightZone. It is a photo editor that has methods and tools that are at least recognizable to people who have had some darkroom or traditional film and photo experience. I find the workflow for normal manipulation tasks faster and more intuitive for me, but for now, I haven’t used it for the type of photos where it would really shine.

But, the point of this entry is the little slideshow. I started out trying Apple’s Keynote to make it. I found though that while I could put music behind the slides, I couldn’t set the timing unless I recorded an audio, which then removes the music. Without recording a narration, I was limited to one timing choice for all slides and one transition method. That works for simple projects, but it wasn’t what I wanted to try for this one. I played with iDVD but it is very focused on producing DVDs and not on the type of video I needed for YouTube. In the end, I used iMovie. That would have been fine, but to put music on the internet, it needs to be “copyright safe” meaning it has to be available for this type of use. I searched around on the Internet Archive and found a concert with music I could use, but it was part of a longer performance. So, I loaded up GarageBand and edited it down to what I wanted. After several tries at getting the timing right, I finally succeeded in producing a reasonable video for YouTube.

The good thing, I guess, is I learned some simple things about the tools, although the tools were not as simple as they could be. Next time, I’ll be able to spend more time on the “experience” than the mechanics so it will be easier.