Mixed way to start the decade
Ok, fine, I give in, I’ll call it the next decade. Even though, there was no year 0 in the current calendar we observe.
I have spent the first 2 days of the year (and much of the last day of last year) sick and in bed. Still feeling pretty blah today, but hopefully this is the tail end. Not the best way to start the new year.
On a lighter note. Before I started my holiday vacation, I had finished my 2009 slideshow. (As always, previous year’s are here.) In previous years, I have always used Windows Movie Maker. This, quite honestly, isn’t that great of software, but it let me do what I wanted. This year, Since I am running Windows 7, I started to try out Windows Live Movie Maker. However, this is truly awful and just not usable compared with even the previous versions. So I had to start looking for some other software to use.
The very first software I tried was Adobe Premiere Elements. However, this didn’t last very long since the first problem was that this software would not load my photos (saying that they were too large). The second problem was that there was a tag added to the videos saying that the trial version was being used. This also wasn’t very helpful.
Next, I also tried out Pinnacle VideoSpin. This isn’t terrible software, but it isn’t that great either. I was actually able to create a working version of the slideshow and post it using VideoSpin. However, this version didn’t have any video effects and was difficult to match the transitions to the music.
However, a friend then suggested I try out Sony Vegas. I downloaded the trial for the cheaper Movie Studio HD. At first, it was not looking promising. The software would crash about every minute or so. However, functionally, this software did more than any of the last software ever did, so I stuck with it and realized if I resized my pictures the crashing went away. (For the resizing, I just use VBScripts with Adobe Photoshop.) After that, building the slideshow went quickly. There are a lot of great features in the software. The one I used the most though was the ability to use markers. These were snap points I could set in the video by pressing the m button as its playing. Then I can line up the transitions to those points and know that the transitions are aligned with the music. I plan on buying this software for future year’s use as well since I liked it so much.
With that, here is a link to a 720p download of the movie. (I also have a link to a 1080p HD version as well if interested.)
... as well as a lower quality preview:
