I’ve always been one of those moms who takes oodles of pictures and videos of the kids, download them to my computer, and then never do anything with them. I don’t upload them for my family and friends to see, I rarely make prints, and scrapbook album making online or off is so not my thing. Figures that my wedding photos from 15 years ago are still in the box and not in an album.
Now that I’ve discovered muvee Reveal thanks to a review copy from Family Review Network, I no longer have an excuse. Instead, I now have software that easily combines MP3 music files with videos and pictures to make pretty darn professional looking movies.
Here’s a sample, "Just an old cowpoke... National Western Stockshow 2006, Stick Horse Rodeo":
How I made a movie with muvee Reveal
I took pictures and videos I had shot a couple of year’s ago of Nathan at the National Western Stockshow and combined it with an old hillbilly tune.
This was my third try making a “muvee” and the first using both video and still pictures. I found that picking a short song, “Cowpoke” by The Texas Plainsmen, helped determine pacing and the length of the piece. Then I downloaded pictures and video and put it in the order I wanted.
muvee Reveal comes with editing tools like automatic brightness, color correction, rotate image, red eye reduction, focus in on specific details, and image sequence. I only played around with a few things, but everything was very intuitive and easy to use.
After, I picked the style of muvee, in this case “simple” because I liked its effects and textures. I played around with using sepia tone, but felt the video got too washed out. (Click here to see some styles.) I was able to further customize the muvee by coming up with a title and picking a Western looking typeface for it.
I could have created captions, done a voiceover, and added end credits, too. Then again, I think it turned out pretty good for only my third try of making a video using muvee Reveal. The more you experiment with it and play with the features, the better your work will be. But be warned, you could spend all day working on your muvee, but you’ll be having fun, too.
Share your muvees
muvee Reveal works with shwup.com so you can export and share your muvee directly with friends and family using a private online album. From there, you can save it publicly to Facebook, TypePad, Blogger, iGoogle, Netvibes, or grab the code and embed it like I did above.
You can also transfer muvees to your iPod, phone, DVD (great way to make presents for the grandparents) and play it on your PSP. Also, if you shoot HD video, you can transfer it from your AVCHD and HDV camcorders so you can enjoy muvees in High Definition on your large screen television.
Try muvee Reveal for free
Not only is muvee Reveal a terrific tool for family movies, but it’s a great way to make muvees for class projects, to do video for your blog, or make one for a workplace presentation. muvee Reveal has given me a new reason to take more videos and pictures and do more creative things for family and blog projects.
I highly recommend trying muvee Reveal with the free 15-day trial or purchasing it for $59.95. It would make a great present for the young (or not so young) wanna be Steven Spielburg in your life, too.
