Photos to Slides to Video Oh My!
I only wanted to share some garden photos with FB friends. I’ve had a subscription to Smilebox for years. Smilebox makes it super easy to send batches of pictures to people via email. I love the fact that I can “gift” selected friends with an animated slide presentation that includes music (that I can choose, btw). Plus, recipients are able to keep the photos after watching the creation. Smilebox makes everything super easy and convenient.
The problem is that after I created my Smilebox presentation to post on FB, I discovered that it takes WAY to long to upload. No one is going to click and wait 8 seconds (or however long it was) to see garden photos. Phooey! Click to see how frustrating. (If you were VERY patient, you got to see my original creation which took about 25 minutes or so to put together in Smilebox, and that’s only because my personal photos are disastrously disorganized.)
This Nitty Gritty Gal is tenacious. I sort of know about Slideshare. They didn’t provide enough info on their website to sell me. I mean, I couldn’t tell how much storage I’d get, if I could add my own music, etc. I investigated Animato, but free accounts limit you to 30 seconds and they don’t allow you to use your own music. So, I found this fab blog post with great info about lots of the different “mediums” to use for creating slide presentations. Robin Good, the author, rates them all. (Note that the post was from 2009, but still relevant today.)
In the end, I recreated my Smilebox presentation, using Powerpoint. And, I opened a free MyBrainshark account. Now I just have to convert one of my itunes songs to MP3 in order for it to play during my presentation. Ugh!
