Slideshow/video to be shown during visitation at my brothers funeral.

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Charles1941

Newbie Joined: Apr 28, 2016 19:46 Messages: 7 Offline

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Dec 01, 2018 11:55

For the first time I am trying to put together a video of photos of my brothers life for his funeral. He has terminal cancer and only has a few months. I have no experience doing this and have only seen one funeral with a short slideshow that kept repeating. I think I will use the motion slideshow in Power Director 16. I have photos of hiim up to university and photos of trips he has taken in the last 5 years with his children and grandchildren as well as hunting and fishing photos. He is 79. I have about 700+ photos to choose from.

The video will be displayed on a TV

My questions are:

1 Length min/max
2 number of photos per segment to keep it interesting. How do you chose the right photos. To me I like them all.

3 order you would arrange the photo segments.
4 Do you insert tiltes for each segment
5 Do you use music and if so what type.
6 Anything else I need to know.

Appreciate any help I can get.

Charles Frogley

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 03, 2018 14:03

Hi Charles

I'm very sorry to hear about your brother, and I think it's wonderful that you want to put together the story of his life for everyone to see when honoring his life.

Honestly, I don't think there are any "right" or "wrong" ways to do this, and I imagine you may find your true preferences once you really get into the heart of the editing process and are seeing all of the photos.

While it makes sense to go chronologically, if this is going to be playing while people are coming and going, it might be better to have photos from different times appear sequentially. That way, people who stop and watch for only a couple of minutes will still get a sense of your brother's life story through the years.

I think you can put in some music, but it will likely be playing back only softly at the service - unless he liked loud music, then maybe you should crank it up a bit

In my personal opinion, titles aren't a requirement - although if you feel that showing the date, place, or people will bring added meaning, then by all means do. Especially if the event is particularly memorable, or maybe even when the context of a picture is not quite clear. I'd say in general though, just let the photos do the communicating.

I also think a 5 second duration with gently gliding/fading pictures is ideal, maybe longer for some specific photos with many people in them, or of special days.

When you've finished with the Slideshow Creator, choose the Advanced Editing option to place the content on the main PD timeline, and that's where you can make any additional edits like changing specific durations or adding titles.

I don't know how long the duration should be, and I actually think it's fine if it's so long no one would actually view the entire video at the event, as long as there's interesting content throughout. If there are a few pics that are truly special, go ahead and sprinkle them in a few times each so people watching for a short time will still have a good chance of seeing them.

You may find that friends or family members want a copy of your work to view on their own, and an easy way to do that (rather than buring lots of discs) would be to upload it to YouTube and make it Unlisted. That way, nobody can search for it or watch it unless they have the link from you. You could also make it public to share your brother's life with everyone. You can even change the privacy setting at any point.

Those are my thoughts, and I wish you peace and serenity on your journey. Take care.

-Ron

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