Now that you have spent the last several weeks compiling, and editing your story, how do you share it with friends and family? If your story is pictures, without movies, a scrapbook would be perfect. It is personalized, tells a story, but alas, no way to embed a movie. Now is when you need think about sharing online, DVD or both?
Authoring a home movie on a DVD is a fantastic way to share memories with family. You can all sit on the couch with a bowl of popcorn while your kids pretend they actually remember those scenes from when they were babies.
DVD’s of your year in review also make a great gift for out of town family. If you want to really get on their good side, include a folder of photo .jpg files from throughout the year. That is true sharing. Giving them the actual files means that they can print out the photos themselves, or use them in their own movie.
The difficult part of this process is the authoring of the DVD. “What’s that?” you ask? “I already know how to burn a DVD.” Authoring a DVD is an entirely different process. Burning a DVD means writing data to a disc. No problem, just drag the data onto the blank disc in your finder window (or something else if you’re on a PC).
But if you want that disc to play in your DVD player as a movie, you need to author it using a program such as Roxio Toast, iDVD, or Nero.
My number one tip on authoring is to make a disc image first. Any DVD authoring software should let you do this. Your computer will read the .img file exactly the same as it would read a DVD inserted into the drive. You can use the DVD player on the computer to play the file and make sure it works properly before burning it to a disc.
The other alternative is sharing online. True, it’s not the same as sharing your movie on a DVD, but you can share with your friends and family from across the country. Just make sure your computer has gobs of RAM to compress the movie into a high resolution web version. And I mean gobs and gobs of RAM.
When sharing online, make sure to weigh your options based on file restrictions, price, and privacy. Most online sharing sites allow you to share up to a 20 minute movie, which is about the most anyone would want to watch on a computer. File restrictions probably won’t affect your 20 minute home movie unless you are trying to upload a 1080p masterpiece with some huge effects. Some common ways of sharing home movies for free are YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo.
YouTube has increased their privacy options. You can now share a private link with up to 25 people. Vimeo allows you to password protect your video. Facebook has tons of privacy options for your video, but they can be a bit confusing. You can adjust your privacy settings for the video “application” and for the video itself. Seeing as Facebook changes their privacy options with dizzying frequency, it’s probably not your most private option.
Whatever you do, don’t email your movie. You are much better off uploading to a sharing site and emailing the link rather than the movie itself, unless your intention is to answer a bunch of phone calls from family members unable to play the movie.
However you decide to share your home movie, encourage family and friends to comment on it. It’s nice to know that someone watched your hours of hard work. Who knows, perhaps one of them will want to be your filmmaker next time, so you don’t have to hold the camera.
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