I'm going to make a small presentation of some pictures taken on a company trip. In short, it is going to be a rather simple slide show, with the pictures synchronized to the beat of a music track (using Eye of the Tiger, so this just
have to be good :boxing:). My first idea was to try Windows Movie Maker. I've never used it before, but from what I've heard it's pretty simple - and it turned out to be easy as well.
My first problem was that I noticed that the latest version of Windows Movie Maker (now "Windows Live Movie Maker, version 2011"...) doesn't have the time line mode - which makes it a pain to get proper synching between the music and the pictures. Luckily, I found I could download an older version (version 6.1), which has the time line. Problem solved.
The next challenge was that I didn't find it as smooth and easy to set up the presentation the way I want. Basically, I want to create a series of time frames mapped/in synch with the music, and when I have that I would like to fill every time frame with different pictures (and be able to move pictures around without changing the duration of the time frames). The way I do it now, is that I have all the pictures in a line, and drag them to be as long/short as a small piece of the music. If I then decide that I want to move a picture, it seems that the duration follows the picture, and I will have to re-synch the whole line affected by moving that one picture.
So, questions:- Does somebody with experience with Windows Movie maker have any tips for me to make this job a bit easier?
- Or is there perhaps some other piece of software that is better suited for this kind of task? It would (preferable) have to be free, as I only need it for this one thing (and it ought to be ready for this weekend).
If you're trying to synch pictures with music I'd have thought Flash might be easier. I know a fairly decent looking movie editor just got made open source but can't for the life of me remember what it was. I was going to check it out.
Dl the trail of Adobe premier mate really easy to use. I used movie make and managed timing ok but premier is much better.
I think its a 30 day trail.
@BrotherTobious: I have Adobe Premier a try. It for sure is a very powerful program. Lots of really cool features :D But for my use right now, it is a bit too advanced. I understand the basics, but there are way too many options, features, stuff to click on etc. I often found myself in the situation that I had clicked some kind of short-cut key by accident, and now isn't able to click on the stuff I'd like to etc... If I had a week or two to play around with it, it would be great, but I won't have time in just a couple of days.
@T-Bag: interested to hear if you remember what it is :)
And btw: I've also just tried out Video Spin (from Pinnacle Studio), but I found that one to be utter crap. So for now at least, it's back to Movie Maker.
From my brief search...
Virtualdub
Avidemux
Wax