Microsoft Photo Story is a free app that allows users to create visual stories (shows and presentations) from their digital photos. The software uses Ken Burns Effects on digital photos and allows adding narration, effects, transitions, and background music to create Windows Media Video movie files with pan and zoom effects. Once the photo story is created, it can be played on PC using Windows Media Player. Because the.wmv format is used, Windows Media Video Image (sub-set of Windows Media Video) is not compatible with the domestic DVD player, users who want to create DVD or CD need to use third party tools to convert to compatible DVD. (eg MPEG 2) format first.
Version 2 is included in Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition and Microsoft Digital Image Suite versions 9 and 10. It supports exporting photo stories as Video CDs. Version 3.0, although still downloadable free from Microsoft, removes Direct CD Video burning, but supports paid add-ons from Sonic Solutions to export and burn photo stories to DVDs.
The final free download version (3.0) includes the ability to generate randomly-generated background music from a combination of themes and also includes basic photo editing and touch features.
The latest version of Photo Story (3.1) is included with Microsoft Digital Image being discontinued. It restores the ability to burn video CDs using Sonic Burning machines.
To burn CDs or DVDs from files generated by version 3.0, users can purchase Sonic MyDVD DVD burning software or Sonic DVD for Photo Story 3 for Windows plug (which burns one DVD per Story). Third party tools, such as Media Coder, often do very poor (low-quality) jobs to convert Wmv files. Story Photos - Windows Movie Maker does a much better job of converting to a medium.avi format (though this would be about 30 times more large from the original wmv) to be used by many DVD Authoring packages as inputs. Compatible DVD compatible MPEG2 file sizes will typically be 5 to 6 times larger than the original.wmv file (or about 6 times smaller than avi).
Video Photo Story
History
Photo Story was originally based on Microsoft Research project in photo sharing. The main finding of the research is that people tell a better story as they move their hands, make gestures and point at their pictures. The prototype version of Early Photo Story encourages people to direct their images using the mouse, since the pointer affects the algorithm that produces the pan and zoom.
The same study shows that users do not like their sound and tend to record their narrations repeatedly. This makes the narration less spontaneous and the resulting story less appealing if people can not express themselves clearly. Therefore, the initial prototype has only one button, called "Oops!" button. Research shows that if there is OOPS! buttons available to cancel their actions, people will be convinced by its presence but will not use them unless they actually make mistakes during the narration.
Photo Story is not included with Windows XP, though it is and continues to be available as a free download for authenticated users.
Vista and Windows 7 both include Photo Story type applications (Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker), but some users still prefer the flexibility offered by the original.
Maps Photo Story
Limitations
The maximum number of images that can be imported in one batch is 200. The maximum image size is 72.300 (width) x 7200 (height) pixels. The maximum output resolution offered by Microsoft is 1024 x 768, but the 3rd party has developed a new output. Profiles 'profiles' which, if placed in the \ Photo Stories 3 folder for Windows \ Profiles \ 1033, can be selected at the time of output.
The single supported video output format is.wmv (using the Windows Media Video 9.1 Image codec, part of Windows Media Video). A single supported audio output format is AAC (Advanced Audio Coding).
The 'crop' and 'zoom' tools are set at the 4: 3 aspect ratio. To support 16: 9 widescreen output (which may be obtained at the time of output using a third-party profile), it is necessary to 'pre-distort' all imported images by adjusting high image up to 133.33%.
The charged 'Roxio' plug-in (now owned by Sony) allows users to 'burn' the full story into DVD or CD. Sonic MyDVD (v5.5 or higher) is required if you want to edit the disc and add more stories or movies.
The user should avoid the 'crop' or 'zoom' size under the desired output resolution - ideally, it stops at twice the size of the output. If less trimming or zooming is required, a significantly better result will be achieved by resizing the original in some third-party applications (eg PaintShop Pro, PhotoShop) first.
Photo Story is not officially supported on Vista or Windows 7 platforms, although it downloads and installs both on 32-bit and 64-bit Vista and Windows 7.
References
External links
- Photo Story 3 in the Microsoft Download Center
- Photo Story 2 LE in Microsoft Download Center
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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