Whether you’ve just got back from a holiday where you took hundreds of great photos, or you just want to show your friends a few photos of your dog, you may want to use pictures and music to make a great video. This may seem like something really hard to accomplish, but even if you’re inexperienced, you can create great videos in minutes. Let’s look at how to make a video with pictures and music.
How to Make a Video with Pictures and Music: Windows PC
Although several companies offer video slide show or video editing services, you can instantly create a custom video in Windows Live Movie Maker using your pictures. In addition to using only pictures and audio, the program includes a collection of transitions and special effects to make your video more engaging. After you create the video, you can watch it on your computer and download it from the official Microsoft website.
Step 1
Import all the pictures and video files that you want to add in the slideshow by clicking the “Add Photos and Videos” button seen on the Home button.
Step 2
Click and drag the thumbnail images one by one to your chosen location on the Storyboard window to organize the pictures in your preferred order.
Step 3
Now click the “Add Music” button on the home menu, click the “Add Music” option in the drop-down menu, and then put the song you want to play in the background of the video. By default, the music will appear at the beginning of the video. To change the position, click and drag the song to the desired location. You can even crop the song by right-clicking the music and using Set Start Point and Set End Point. Repeat this process for each additional track you want to insert into the video slide show.
Step 4
Insert fading effects to each track to make a smooth transition between the songs in the video. To include fading effects, select the “Options” menu and use the Fade In or Fade Out drop-down lists to choose your desired speed, like Slow, Fast or Medium.
Step 5
Add a transition effect for all images to prevent the slide show from looking jerky. Select the Animations toolbar and choose a transition effect for the preview. To add the effect to a single image in the slide show, highlight the image, then select the effect you want. You can even add the same effect to every frame in the video by selecting the transition and choosing the “Apply to All” option on the toolbar.
Step 6
Select the Visual Effects toolbar if you want to add some additional effects. To add an effect to a single image, select the thumbnail of the image and then select the visual effect you want to add. To add the visual effect to all images, select the effect and then select the “Apply to all” option.
Step 7
Save your creation as a video file by clicking the “Movie Maker” button, select the “Save Movie” option and choose “For Computer”.
Step 8
Provide a file name for the video file and then choose your desired folder location to save the video. Click the “Save” option to finish the process.
Tips:
– When the work is done, the WMV file will be saved to your selected folder location.
– You can even upload your video file to the Internet right away from Windows Movie Maker. Click the “Movie Maker” button, choose “Publish Movie” and choose one of the options available, such as Facebook, YouTube or Flickr.
– If you want to copy the created video to an empty DVD, use Windows DVD Maker, which comes with Windows 7 OS.
How to Make a Video with Pictures and Music: Mac OS X
iMovie is a software program that comes pre-installed on every new Mac computer. It provides a simple yet professional way to create video slideshows of your pictures, videos, and music files. Now create your own video with pictures and music with iMovie by following the simple steps below.
Step 1
iMovie works great with iPhoto. It’s recommended that you drag and drop images from the iPhoto folder into your iMovie project. If you can’t find an existing library in iPhoto, create one and bring the pictures into iPhoto first. To insert videos, you can go to the Events Library or File/Import, then drag and drop selected videos into the pane.
Step 2
After the pictures and videos are added to the iMovie video project, you can start up the raw video simply by pressing the space bar on your keyboard. Then you can make changes to clips and transition effects. For example, if you mouse over a clip or the double arrow button and select the Settings icon, you can access clip changes, transition adjustments, video modifications, and more.
Step 3
Music helps set the mood of your video slideshow. Adding music to iMovie Videos is as easy as adding pictures and videos. So click the audio icon in the lower-right corner and drag and drop the selected audio track into the area. More than one music track can be inserted into the video, but iMovie can’t record multiple music files. If necessary, you may need to merge multiple music files using an external sound editor before inserting them into the iMovie video slideshow. You can even add audio effects and use an equalizer to optimize the sound.
Step 4
iMovie offers several ways to share your videos. For those who share their videos on online websites, iMovie lets you upload directly to YouTube, Vimeo, MobileMe Gallery, CNN iReport, Facebook, and more. If you choose to share your video using the Media Browser, you’ll get the video in other Mac applications like iWeb. It’s a nice idea to upload videos to iTunes so you can stream them instantly and conveniently with your portable gadgets like iPhone, iPad and iPod.
How to Make a Video with Pictures and Music: Online Services
With the help of an online video or slide show creator, you can create a great-looking video with your pictures and music. There are many such websites on the Internet, such as freemake.com, animoto.com, photosnack.com, kizoa.com, etc. Most of these sites offer a free service, while some may charge a few dollars, and some offer to create professional-quality videos for you without charging a cent.
