Easy way to make SL movies

I recently found a new program on Microsoft's site called PhotoStory 3. It appears to be an update to their movie maker software that comes with Windows XP. You need to have a "genuine" copy of XP to use it. I realize any MS product will cause flaming, but most of us already have XP and it is free and easy to use software.

It allows you to import photos and create a simple movie with them. Using the Snapshot to Disk feature in SL, I was able to whip up two short videos in a matter of minutes. Seriously, by selecting the defaults, you can have a little movie in 2 minutes.

Steps I took:

Take snapshots (to disk)
Open Photo Story 3
Select start new story
Imported snapshots
You can look at each pic,edit (rotate/crop), apply special effects or change the order of each one
Add a title to any or all of the pics
Record your narration (optional)
Change the motion and transition type (star wipe, etc) of how the image will be panned when shown
Add your own background music or use their music generator (makes great cheezy music)
Save the project so you can reedit it later
save the video with whatever size you choose

Video 1:

Our current house in Luo (14 snapshots), 1 minute 14 seconds, uses the cheezy generated music, 2.4 MB wmv file (800x600)

Video 2:

Our newly built house in Luo (13 snapshots), 1 minute 2 seconds, uses pre-recorded music, 2.1 MB wmv file (800x600)

I realize a lot of you here have professional editing equipment and such, but for a total noob at this, I was happy with the results. If you have found something better, please post it.

Also, if you make a movie and don't have any space to host it, you can email it to me at [email]sciatica@gmail.com[/email] and I will post it to my site for you.

or go to file, and click record movie. EITHER OR!

Have you actually tried to do that?

The problem I have with the recorded movies is that they always seem to skip frames and/or lag my local machine. They also take up a ton of space. This is just an alternative that allows you to compose a short film that doesn't need any complex editing. For the directors in the crowd, I am sure the ingame movie option is great, I have yet to figure out how to make it work well.

very cool idea Alan. you could make the sl version of La Jetée (12 Monkeys was based on it).

Thank you for the info, Alan. It seems to do a pretty good job at it, I'll definitely give it a shot.



- T -

btw. Nice house!

i was just thinking.... if you have Flash you could prolly do basically the same thing. the files might be a lil bit smaller or you could export it as a video when you're done. just a thought.

Thanks, Tito and Zuzi!

I didn't know 12 Monkeys, which is a great movie, was based on another film. I will definately look that one up. Flash is another good alternative to this. While Flash still costs money, I think there are some free, or really cheap, flash clones that could do this. Good idea.