maybe start with the wedding invitation
then do maybe 6 seconds per still pix
i do many video montages
i scan it to media pool
200 dpi
i think it looks great when it's just a still
i also use pan/crop to give it motion
but only maybe 50% of the time
also, put some borders around some of the pictures
also, cookie cutter---circle glow is nice on some shots
this way you change the variety of the shots
and finally, include some subliminal messages to hire you for more montages
good luck
sb

check out the Pixelan Spice master plugin for Vegas. you can do some nice soft transitions and edge effects with them.

vinmangraphics, sonicboom, cheesehole. Thanks for the suggestions. Gives me some things to think about as I start scanning.

SB, your list will be a big help. 200dpi is easy scanning. Very fast. Also, you're right, I gotta get me an subliminal msg or two in there. I only charged $25 extra for this montage so I need to have the sublim msg say something like, "and if you like this montage, and decide to hire this guy, you will agree to pay him $100 more for this hard-to-do extra." (smile)

The hardest part of this montage for me is going to be making words float diagonally across the screen while the montage is running. Vegas keyframing and myself don't get along too well, and this will be a learning opportunity, but, I sure wish VV had a preset for making titles move diagonally, and all I had to do is choose the speed, glow characteristics, fade, etc. Anyway, can't have it all.

Thanks again for the ideas. I Welcome any more. Really appreciate it.

You can take a look at a couple of samples of what you can do with stills, corporate rather than wedding, at www.kolbokorp.com sample pages 1 and 2. There is a PowerPoint presentation style example and a full frame sample of a theme park tour. They are there to help clients see what can be done.

K

i just did the exact same type of dvd for a wedding. they told me to do some sort of a "nature theme". i went over to our local walking trail and shot twelve minutes of a small creek. i used that (complete with the sounds of the water) as both the background for the dvd menu, and the background for the video. i then just used a good transition, and looped the music as needed. it went over fantastic! everyone loved it.

as a bonus i now have a piece of stock footage (the water) that i can use again sometime.

hope this helps.

-craig

Another idea that I have used for pictures that span time is to use a current photo (preferably a head shot) as the backdrop and pan into it very slowly. Then overlay this with a small (1/4 size) inset of a baby photo, and a growing up photo or two in alternate corners. Then use a slow page peel (about 2 or 3 seconds) to go to the next full screen photo.

For example: I recently did a video yearbook for our local school. I had a recent picture of each graduate and three growing up shots. Since I wanted each shot to be 6 seconds (1 sec fade in – 4 secs on screen – 1 second fade out) I made the background shot about 24 seconds. It started alone for 3 seconds with the slow pan, then I faded in a baby picture in the upper left of the screen, as it faded out I faded in a growing up shot at the middle right of the screen and as that faded out I faded in an almost recent shot in the lower left of the screen. This provided a nice zig zag flow for the viewer's eyes to follow. I also added the name of the student at the bottom for the duration of the 3 overlays. The remainder of the time after the last inset faded was used for the page peel to the next shot. I found that a slow page peel really gives it the feeling that you're browsing through a photo album.

BTW, if you're not into key framing, you could always use a Push transition to make the text scroll into the screen (e.g., Push Right or Push Left). The duration of the transition will, of course, determine how slow the text scrolls. This is what I used in VideoFactory before I upgraded to VV.

Just an idea... ;-)

jr

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am not going to get to start on the photo montage until about Wednesday. I need to look into those "push" transitions. Can they be altered so the text comes in diagnoally and floats diagonally across the screen? That would be a big plus.

I agree that you should use subtle pans and zooms, but it's also nice to leave a photo still every few shots. Also, go ahead and put the music on the timeline while you're editing so you can time the transitions to the tempo and follow the flow of the song.

You can check out a montage we did with vegas at www.blue7media.com on the samples page. We charge $4/photo, so yeah it usually ends up being a little more than $25. :-)

Luxo

2Road-

I think you hit the nail on the head... You need to understand keyframing better. Concentrate on learning it. It really is not that difficult, motion and time. VV3 in particular makes it easy.

Try it. If/when you get stuck, post a question.

I've done lots of montage videos including a family geneology video that was a bit hit. You got some good advice here and my suggestion would be to cool it with the slick transitions (that's what makes it cheesy) and stick to subtle fades that really go with the music. And yes, learn keyframing so you can do zoom and pans. That's important. You can do some really nice stuff with photos by zooming and panning, and people forget they're stills.

Also, I would suggest you learn cropping in VV and not have the edges of photos show. That way it looks like a movie rather than... well, a bunch of photos.

And here's a tip if you have LOTS of photos to scan like I did:
It can get pretty confusing figuring out which photo goes where, so you have to be organized. The first thing you do after sorting the photos is to xerox them in proof-sheet style (a bunch on a page) and then label each one. Give them the same name you're going to call the corresponding scans. That way you'll see at a glance which jpg goes where in your video.

Keep those pans slow and take your time on each photo - the tendency is to get the montage over and done with too quickly. Look how long people actually look at a photo in their hands. It might seem a drag to you to spend 30+ seconds per picture, but it won't be a drag to the people in the picture because they're studying all the details.

Keep the transitions simple, unless you want some fx like turning pages of a edding book. Start your photos in still mode for a few seconds before panning - its very hard to see what is happening if you transition from one moving photo to another moving photo. Don't use the same panning moves over and over. Try zooming in on one photo then zooming out on the next then zooming back in...this works well in transition and it keeps the viewer oriented as to where they are currently "zoomed". You can include rotation during the panning, but not too much and not consistently, else it looks like a badly editted VH1 special.

I love doing still montages, since I'm a photographer first. Watch how people look at pics. They look at the whole thing first, then they zoom in on various parts and look around. Its fanstastic to be able to do that for them while they watch it on a TV.

Lots of great advise here! I'd just reiterate that seeing the edges of photographs on a boring background really detracts from a moving experience (in my opinion). The person who had a background track of a stream has the right idea perhaps. I did a similar thing once with baby photos, where I took a very long scan of a Winnie The Pooh collage (it was an 8x20 photo) and slowly panned it from left to right behind baby photos that faded in overtop.

My advise is to scan larger rather than smaller (200dpi), crop in, and pan. If the subject of the photo is a particular person or group, start with them and zoom back if there's a nice background. Just do it slowly enough to prevent anyone getting sick! :) And to avoid the feeling that you're getting sucked into the TV, alternate between slow zoom-ins and zoom-outs with a soft transition between. The length of time a photo should be shown depends on how much detail you want the viewer to ingest!

Take care,

-Doug

Nick-At-Nite was on last night as I was heading upstairs.

The opening to the show Cheers is an excellent example of how to treat still images in video. They're doing additional stuff like displaying name credits, but the entire sequence is a collection of still illustrations assembled in a way to minimize the fact that it is STILL imagery.

Everybody has probably seen it, but if you want to refresh your memory - according to the schedule on nickatnight.com - the next time Cheers is on, is tomorrow (Tuesday 8/6/2002) at 10:00pm (eastern).

- vin

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I'm printing these out for when I get started. Luxo, your samples are excellent. On that photo montage the zooms are so smooth that it looks like you taped the pictured while zooming. By the way, these posts are exactly what I needed, i.e., good practical info with some examples. Can't beat the VV user base. No way.

Something I might do is cut together a seperate montage of clips from the wedding day and apply some sepia tone or some filter that kind of washes the image out, maybe even one of those film effects, maybe blow up the image so that it becomes distorted and pixelated and add a subtle gaussian blur and some light effects or some glow affects, and it's a great time to use all those "throwaway shots"--you know the ones that you thought were framed poorly or too shakey...that's the stuff that, when slowed down and affected, makes for some really cool, dreamy, background video. (It makes it "look" like a memory) Then layer the stills and do the usual crop, pan, and zoom effects that work well with that, but maybe experiment with blending the edges into the background, maybe give them some transparency and maybe even add some more filters and lighting effects, whatever seems to look good. I don't know, just an idea...Never did any of this with vegas video as I use it mostly for mixing audio, but I'm sure it all can be done. Hope this helps!

Good work Luxo!
Who is the singer and the song?
Regards,
Max

My nephew's a huge Star Wars fan, and I made him a photomontage of stills from the star wars website.

Since I did mine for free (and your $25 isn't much better), time was of the essence to do this efficiently.

Here's a quick way to create a highly stylized photomontage for 10 or 1000 images:

1. In "Preferences...Editing", set the "New still image length" to the number of seconds you want to show each still. This way, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll already be the right length. -- I used 4 seconds, but you may want to use more so people can absorb the images

2. In "Preferences...Editing", check the "Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added" box and set the "Cut to overlap conversion...Amount" to the number of seconds you want the images to overlap. Now, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll be transitioned. You can leave the transitions as dissolves for a classy feel, or simply drag whatever transition you want at a particular part over the dissolve... Simple drag-n-drop. -- I used 1 second for the 4 second images, choose this base on the tempo of your music

3. Now go the Explorer, select ALL the images you want to include, and drag-n-drop the batch onto the timeline. -- You may want to pre-number the pics in the order you want them to appear

Now, if you want to stylize the montage quickly, and want to deal with those awful black borders around portait images dispayled in a landscape monitor, you can do the following:

4. Duplicate the track & then hide the duplicate

5. For track 1, go into track motion and size the frame down so you have a black border all the way around the image - the size of the broder is up to you. Hold down the alt key while resizing a corner to resize about the center. (basically zoom out)

6. Now hide track1 & unhide track 2.

7. For track 2, go into track motion & resize the frame larger, so that your narrowest picture can fill the whole frame (basically zoomed in). Don't forget the alt key!

8. Assign the following track FX to track 2:
- Black and White, 0.750
- Gaussian Blur, .02x.02
(You've now created a blurry, desaturated version of your foreground image, a perect background to elimnate those black borders)

9. Add a layer in between 1&2 and insert a Solid Color Generated event of all black for the entire length of the montage. Set the Level of this layer to 25% -- This will darken the background and thereby highlight the foreground image.

10. Now unhide track 1 & you should have a highly stylized (yet simply done) photomontage. -- Make sure layer 1's compositing mode is 'source alpha' -- Just add music & you're done!

Obviously, you can play with the desaturation & blur levels, or create your own effects for the background.

This is simple enough that it's roughly the same effort for 10 pics or 1000 pics - just scanning time & render time is the issue.

Here's the Star Wars Montage so you can see the effect (needless to say it looks much better on video):

Low: Windows Media - 100Kbps
High: Windows Media - 256Kbps

Enjoy!

- Jon

Shredder:

That looks fantastic! And, it's an easy recipe.

///d@

thnx for sharing the info
it looked great
i will try to superimpose a few pix on my next montage
looks great
sb

Wow do I feel inadequate. That looks great. Thanks for sharing that with us. Please forgive me if I put your technique and style to work. Thanks again.

K

Don't recall any1 mentioning this in the above threads, or maybe i just missed it..
but..
#1 IMPORTANT TIP to video montages (so i say)

I use to scan pics, then crop them down in photoshop to crop to display at 655x480 (ntsc) - which took a lot of time.

Then i figured out - scan the pics at whatever the highest res (optical) your scanner has (don't worry about shapes/sizes of pics). When you dump the pic on your timeline, bring up the Event/Pan Crop screen. RIGHT CLICK on the picture (in pan/crop window) select MATCH OUTPUT ASPECT from pop up menu. BAM... your all set!
Get familar with keyframing and panning/zooming/scaling & you will be putting out Dateline/VH1-behind the music etc quality montages!!

Remember to keep a good balance/flow going throughout your timeline.
Example: If you zoom in on a photo - remember, the next zoom u use, should be going OUT.
Same goes with Left & Right.

Easy money baby!

-tadpole

"Luxo, your samples are excellent. On that photo montage the zooms are so smooth that it looks like you taped the pictured while zooming."

Thanks, people often ask if we shot that with a video camera, but of course we didn't and the praise should go to SF for making such an awesome crop/pan tool.

Supercoach, the singer in the photo montage is Gillian Welch, and the singer in the wedding sample is Kate Rusby. Two of the finest.

Luxo