Digital Philatelic Workshop

The winner of the APS President’s YouTube Challenge is “Discover Peru with Stamps” by Henry Marquez. Henry is a member of the Peru Philatelic Study Circle.

Janet Klug, WE Think

(continuation of the article Video for YouTube Without a CameraPart 1)

Adding Voice-overs and Sound in Windows Movie Maker is our third step in preparing a philatelic video for YouTube.

You can add sounds, music or voice to your movie. Voice takes presidence, and you will have to fiddle a bit to get all three on the same slide, so let’s just concentrate on adding the voice-over.

1. Just above the timeline and to the left are a few icons.
2. The second one is a microphone.
3. Click on that to get the ‘Narrate Timeline’ feature.
4. The center work space of your screen will have a sliding bar for input level and a button to begin narration.
5. Make sure you have a microphone plugged into the appropriate slot in your computer, and that it functions properly. (This can be tested in the Control Panel / Sounds area of your computer).
6. Click the ‘Begin Narration’ button and start the voice over for the first slide.
7. When you have finished the narration for the first slide, click the ‘Finish Narration’ button.
8. A box will come up for you to save this narration.


Adding Sound to your Philatelic Movie.

9. Give your slide a name such as ‘Slide 1′ or something similar. Continue narrating each slide.
10. When you have finished the narration: adjust the timeline so the narration and the length the slides each stay visible match.
11. It’s a bit of fiddling. You can watch your progress by clicking the ‘Play’ button (the large first round button under the video screen at the right).
12. If your narration doesn’t sound loud enough: Click on the narration in the audio/music area below the slides in the timeline.
13. Right click the mouse on one of the sound file blocks.
14. A pop-up menu will appear.
15. Click ‘Volume.’ A slide control will appear.
16. Move the curser over to the highest volume setting (to the right). That should fix the volume problem.
17. When you think you are finished with the video, play it.
18. Go to the toolbar at the top of the screen.
19. Click ‘Play’
20. Click ‘Play Timeline.’
21. If you are not satisfied, go back and fix what needs to be fixed.
22. If you are satisfied, save the file.
23. On the toolbar at the top of the screen, click ‘File.’
24. A drop-down box appears.
25. Click ‘Save Movie File.’
26. Another box appears. The easiest one to work with is ‘Save to My Computer.’
27. Click that to highlight, then click ‘Next.’
28. Give the movie a name.
29. Set the location where the file will go (‘My Videos’ is the default).
30. Click ‘Next’.
31. Click ‘Next’ again on the screen that appears.
32. The movie will begin to save.

This could take several minutes. In the meantime, we’ll get ready to add our movie to YouTube next.

Posting your philatelic movie to YouTube is very simple.

You’ll need to open a new account on You Tube if you do not already have one. Just follow the directions by filling in your name, e-mail address and password. It’s free!

1. When you account page comes up, click on “Upload.”
2. A new screen will appear.
3. Click the “Browse” button.
4. Your video should be in Documents / My Videos if you used the default setting when saving the movie.
5. Select your stamp collecting movie.
6. Click the “Upload” button that is highlighted below the “Browse” button.
7. Your movie will begin uploading.

Adding Video to YouTube

This takes quite some time. Use that time to fill in the boxes where you tell a little bit about your philatelic movie and offer key words (separated by a comma) so that people can search for and find your video. Save that to YouTube as well.

Once the video has been uploaded, it takes a while longer for it to become available, but YouTube will send you an e-mail when it is all set to view.

You can easily put a link to FaceBook and other social network sites like MySpace by clicking the appropriate buttons that are on the same page as your video.

This is all free, too, so it is a great way to promote your philatelic video, your subject and our wonderful hobby of stamp collecting.

Janet Klug, WE Think

Making the Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation is the first step in preparing a philatelic movie for YouTube.

This is a set of step-by-step instructions for making a video for YouTube without using a video camera. You will need Microsoft PowerPoint software and Windows XP or Vista. If you don’t know how to use PowerPoint, read the help files (2003 or 2007) or use the wizard to help you create your first PowerPoint presentation.

1. Write the script for your program.
2. Collect the images you will use and put both into a file on the desk top where you can find it when you need it.
3. Note on your script what images need to be where within the script.
4. Open the PowerPoint software and make the program, following your script.
5. When you have completed the program, you need to save it. (Here is where it is different from saving a regular PowerPoint presentation.)
6. Click “File” on the toolbar.
7. Then click “Save As…”
8. You will be presented with a box.
9. At the bottom of the box is a drop-down menu that says “Save as Type”.
10. A blank box that has a “down” arrow behind it appears.
11. Click the down arrow.
12. Scroll down to where it says “PNG Portable Network Graphics Format (png)”.
13. Click that.
14. Give your file a name.
15. Then click “Save.”

Saving PowerPoint as a .png.

So now a bit of warning. PowerPoint allows for animated gif images and all sorts of fancy fade in and fade out techniques. Don’t use them. PNG does not support them, and all you will have are plain slides that don’t do anything fancy. But you can fancy it up in the next step.

Making the movie using Windows Movie Maker (How-to Center) is our second step in preparing our philatelic video for YouTube.

1. Open Windows Movie Maker. (If you have Windows XP or Vista, you have this software.)
2. Click the ‘Start’ button. It is at the bottom left.
3. Then click ‘All Programs’ in the box that pops up.
4. Open Movie Maker.
5. On the left side there is a list of tasks.
6. The first section is labeled ‘Capture Video’.
7. Click ‘Import Pictures’.
8. The ‘Import Pictures’ box will open.
9. Find the .png file you just made and open it.
10. Highlight all of the slides you want to include in your movie.
11. Click the ‘Import’ button at the lower right.
12. All of your PowerPoint slides will magically appear in the box at the center of the screen.
13. Now all you have to do is drag each slide down to the timeline at the bottom of the screen. (Or, you can highlight all of them and drag all of them into the timeline at one time.)

Importing Slides into Movie Maker.

You can adjust the length of time the slide stays visible by clicking on the edge of one of the slides that are in the timeline and dragging the edge to the right (to add more time) or to the left (to subtract time).

Don’t worry too much about this until you start doing the voice-overs. That is the next step and we’ll do that in the next article.

(continuation of this article Video for YouTube Without a Camera Part 2)