New Year’s Resolutions | Editing Your Christmas Photos & Video

We’re on track to meet our first New Year’s Resolution: doing something with our photos and video from Christmas. Today we’ll fine tune the storyboard we began on Tuesday to create a full movie.

Here are the steps we are going to take:

1. Decide which software you will use for editing
2. Determine titles for the project and for the individual days
3. Select music
4. Edit the project together in the timeline
5. Decide where the movie will be shown
6. Encode and share your project

Step 1 – Software

There are a lot of decent software options for editing your movie. If this is your first attempt, go with the most user friendly. I started years ago on iMovie, which is free on your Mac. I’ve heard good things about Premiere Elements. Whatever you decide to use, find their forums on the web before you even get started. Trust me, you’ll need them.

Step 2 – Titles

Start thinking about the titles for your project. You should already have all your media assembled from Tuesday, so titles should be pretty simple. I make custom titles in Apple Motion, but for your first attempt I recommend going with the simplest titles your software enables.

Titles can be a big time draw on your project. Let me save you a little time. Go with a simple font like Arial the first time. It is the most easily viewed in large and small fonts, on tv’s, computer monitors, and even projectors. Don’t use a lot of motion or fancy effects in the title on your first attempt.

I used a Star Wars effect on the first title of the very first movie I created. I spent over 20 hours trying to perfectly align and time the text with the music. That could have easily been my last project.

The main point is to use your titles to enhance your story. Think of your titles as your affordable narrator.

Step 3 – Music

For this project I went with some jazzy Christmas music. Think about where the project will be shown. If it’s in the privacy of your family room, you can probably get away with using the music you downloaded from iTunes. If it will be broadcast at all (think web sharing), I would go with licensed music.

I tend to steer clear of lyrics in most instances because I want my viewers focused on the story of my movie, not the lyrics. But that’s a personal preference.

Make sure, if possible, to slightly lower the volume of your music during your video scenes. Unless, of course, the audio in your video scene is horrible. For instance, let’s say you shot video of your kids having a snowball fight, but you shot it through the living room window while the tv was on. I’d leave out the audio.

Step 4 – Editing in the timeline

Now this is where it all comes together. Your storyboard is going to come to life. I envisioned my story as beginning with a main title showing samples of some of the photos and video clips within the movie. My story will then be told with a separate title for each day. This is a lot more titles than I normally use, but in this case it makes sense.

You can edit your project in one of two ways. Either populate your timeline with your media first and add the titles and music after, or add title then appropriate media, title/media and continue on from there. This depends on what is simplest in your particular software.

I use Final Cut Pro, which is quite versatile, but by no means a beginner program.

Here are some things to consider as you build your project

• use photos and video
• motion of the media
• transitions
• those darned portrait photos

Using both photos and video adds so much to a project. Some things just look better in photos (think low-light). Some things are better in video (think Christmas caroling). Why not combine them to help tell your story?

Adding some motion to your photos adds a lot more interest to the project. Try and keep it simple though, to avoid seasickness in your viewers. My early projects included lots of spinning photos just because I knew how to do it and thought it looked cool. After multiple complaints I eased up on the spinny stuff.

Use of transitions is similar to motion of the media. A little goes a long way. Try to stick with the same transition for most scenes; this makes it less noticeable. If you’re going with a fun theme, you can go a little crazy. If you’re going for a sentimental feel I’d stick with fades and cross dissolves.

Portrait (vertical) photos were the bane of my existence for years. I can’t stand the look of portrait photos over a black background. Did you ever notice that you don’t see many portrait photos on tv? They are super zoomed in so they take up the whole screen (which means they have to be a zillion megapixel photo) or they are shown over an animated background. You pretty much never ever see portrait photos over a black background in a professional setting. I decided to go with an animated background in my project.

Here is my finished movie:

Obviously, I didn’t show every day of Advent for my YouTube sample. I thought you’d probably lose interest after a couple of minutes.

Step 5 – Decide where it will be shown

Mine will be shown on YouTube, AppleTV, and DVD. I’ll probably also upload it to my CloudFire account so it goes to my Facebook friends.

Step 6 – Encode and Share

I’ll send my project to Compressor to encode for the various options. Do not try and upload a DVD version to YouTube, or burn a DVD with a YouTube version. Won’t work. The reason I mentioned CloudFire is that I can use a better resolution there than I can on YouTube. For that site, I’ll probably upload the AppleTV version.

Whether your photos are award-worthy or your video is a YouTube sensation, they are your story. Use your photos, videos and titles together to tell the story of your Christmas holiday.