Believe it or not, the hardest thing about putting together one of these videos is the decisions that you will have to make - how many photos, which photos to use, the music, making sure to include at least 3 photos of Uncle Ed because there are 3 photos of Uncle Charlie, etc. If you're trying to put the photos into chronological order, you probably have no idea when the photos were taken, so you have to look at how many teeth Suzy was missing to determine how old she was, or try to remember what hair style was popular and when.
Not an easy chore, and one we really can't do for you. But we can take what you give us after you've made those decisions and turn it into a family treasure.
There are unlimited options on what you can do with a collection of photos - it's only limited to your imagination. But here are some tips on helping you put together the perfect MemoReel.
| How It's Done | Photographs and Display Duration | What Music to Use | Organizing Everything |
Unlike a lot of cheap software on the market today that will only do limited playback on some computers, our video editing system is specially configured to do this type of work for playback on video tape or DVD, which is universally available. We don't cut corners on quality because our videos are put together by human editors - people with keen eyes, ears, and an acute sense of timing, all essential qualities for making good decisions about putting a quality video together.
First off, try to give us 2 weeks to put everything together. We can do it in a shorter period than that, but it's best not to rush it.
Of course, it's mostly all done with computers. Almost all the photos are scanned into our editing system with a high-resolution scanner. With our specialized software we zoom in on the subject, if needed, and crop it so that the whole monitor is filled with an image if possible. The image is recorded directly to the computer's hard drive in a digital format, so no conversion is necessary.
Photos that will not fill the entire TV screen, such as school photos, are digitally cropped into "brushes", and placed over a background with a drop shadow for a pleasing effect. Our editing system allows us to do this fairly easily and is one of our specialties that other editing studios do not offer.
Photographs and display durations
The photos can be any size from "wallet" size to 8" x 10". We can do photos larger than 8" x 10" for an extra charge (see pricing page). We can also accept digital photos on a floppy disk or CD. Each photo is color corrected as much as possible and white and black levels are set for video usage. We will not harm your photos in any way, any changes that may be made to the image are done after they have been digitized.
As a rule, most videos of this type should be 15 minutes or less; 10 minutes is a good time. Most of the time, the photos should be displayed for 4-6 seconds or so, usually depending on the beat of the music. Using that as a guide, allow about 10-15 photos per minute of music. This is not a hard fast rule, we can make the duration of the photo last any length of time you would like, or fit any number of photos in any length of time (actually, 30 photos per second is the fastest we can do!).
Since most songs are 3-4 minutes each, it would take about 4 complete songs to fill 15 minutes. We can also use parts of songs, instead of the whole thing, but extra charges may apply for extra audio editing. We try to adhere to the U. S. copyright laws, so therefore most of the music we have on hand is what's called "buy-out" music, or music we have the rights to use as we like. This is mostly tasteful music that would go along with these types of videos, but you may have something more specific in mind that will fit your video better. In those cases, it is best to provide us with the music you would like to have.
We can accept music on CD, cassette tape, video tape, or mini disc. Digital formats are better since they are cleaner with less hiss and other noise.
We can fade the music in from any point and out at any point. We can use the first verse and the last verse and cut out the middle verse, with little or no notice (but audio editing charges would apply to this, it's not real simple). We can fade one song out while another song fades in.
Once you've decided on which photos and music to use, it's time for the really hard part - organizing everything. You may think I'm kidding, but this really is the hardest part. Normally you would want different groupings for the photos (girl pics, boy pics, together pics, friends, family, young, old, whatever) and a song to go with each group. But it's also okay to only have 1 group and several songs. Go ahead and put each group into it's own envelope or folder to keep everything separate, and number each photo in the order that you want it to be shown.
WARNING!! Be very careful about writing on the backs of photos with an ink pen. Photo paper is not very porous, therefore it takes a long time for ink from most ink pens to dry. If you lay a photo with wet ink on the back of it on top of another photo, the wet ink from the back of one photo will transfer to the front of the photo beneath it, ruining it. Pencils do not work well on photos, so it's best to either use a Sharpie® brand ink pen or write on a Post-It® and stick that to the photo. Also check to be sure your marker will not bleed through the paper, showing through the photo.
Write down all the titles, names, etc. that you would like added. Make sure the spelling is correct and it's legible. When you bring us all of this, we'll sit down with you and make sure we understand what you want your video to look like and do our very best to see that it's done this way.
