microsoft

Make Movie with image files – PhotoStory 3

HanaDaddy Leave a comment

Initial Screen

Microsoft provides several useful freeware utilities in its download website. PowerToy series is the most renounced utilities, but also there are some user friendly multimedia softwares such as PhotoStory 3.

PhotoStory 3 is a wizard program that let users to create a wmv movie file with a set of images.
You can

  • edit , rotate, or enhance image quality
  • apply special image effect.
  • insert text message at the position you want (top , middle, bottom , left, right , center)
  • define custom motion or transition effect. The program automatically set transition upon importing images.
  • record and insert your narrative voice anywhere you want.
  • set a background music using an existing music file or a generated music from a predefined set of customs musics.

It is very user friendly and provides preview button in each step for easier preview.

Selecting images
Selecting Images

Here is the sample file that I made LINK It’s only about 1 MB. Enjoy. 🙂

Here is the website for you to download PhotoStory 3.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Read More

Microsoft Power Toys

HanaDaddy 1 Comment

Well, these goodies do not come with the default Windows XP. They are created by the developers and they are free. That’s why there is no support from Microsoft for these products. By the way, according to the link, these will only work with Windows XP, not Vista.

There are several great useful utilities that can be downloaded and setup separately. I think some of them are very useful.

Here are the ones that I like

1. Tweak UI. As the name of the program explains, you can tweak many default properties of your Windows system. (Default user UI, Explorer Settings, Logon – Auto logon, Desktop Icons, Mouse Settings.) It is very useful.

Tweak UI

2. Alt-Tab Replacement.
It is a wonderful replacement of traditional ALT-TAB Taskswitcher, indeed. Small preview image appears in the left side when you move onto the next application.The background color is depend on the Desktop Color defined in the Display option of the Control panel.
TaskSwitch in Action
Download TaskswitchPowertoySetup.exe

Some more of the interests are

  • ClearType Tuner : When installed, it will help to display the fonts in more distinct and clear way. It is a great help for the people who use labtop with small screens.
  • Virtual Desktop Manager: When you have at least 10 or more applications running at the same time, you do feel that your screen is very small and tight and hoping for a larger monitor. But you can solve the limited desktop space by using the Virtual Desktop Manager. You can have several desktops and you can switch each desktop easily. Later in the upcoming blog entry, I will discuss more about the other Virtual Desktop applications that I have used. PowerToy’s Virtual Desktop Manager is nice, but not the best.
  • Image Resizer: This is a very useful and simple utility to resize images that you can access it through the shortcut resize menu in the right mouse click popup menu.

So please go ahead and try for yourself!

Read More