How To Create A Video Or SlideShow With PhotoStage: It's Easy, Fun and Free

Creating a video or slideshow with Photostage is easy and fun. Photostage is very similar to Windows PhotoStory except that the latter can only accept pictures and images whereas Photostage can edit both pictures and video clips.

You can create a video or slideshow in 4 simple steps:

1. Assemble your pictures, images or video clips
2. Add effects to your assembled slides
3. Build your video or slideshow
4. Save and share your video or slideshow.

1. Assemble your pictures, images or video clips

• You start your story by adding files to it. Photostage makes it easy: either click the "Insert slides" button, or select File -> Insert slides from the menu. In the browse window that opens select the pictures, images and video files that make up your story.
• Add and assemble the files in the order you want them to be played. In Photostage, you can select multiple slides at once: select the first slide, press the Shift key and left-click on the last slide you want to select. You can also highlight all the files by pressing Ctrl + A.
• Check the file list on the right side of the interface. It contains all the files you have inserted onto the timeline.
• If you wish to remove a slide, select the slide or file to highlight it and click the "Delete slides" button. You can also remove slides from the right-click context menu of the slide on a timeline. Once it is deleted, you can't undo what you have just deleted. If your wish to include that slide, you will have to insert it back to the timeline.
• You can preview your work at anytime by clicking the "Play" button (>) beneath the preview screen. Don't worry if the video quality is not so good, it's just a live preview. The quality of the video will be excellent when you finally build your video or slideshow.

• You can set up slide length or viewing duration by either changing value in the "Length:" field or from the "Options" field in the browser. The default value is set at 5 seconds.
• From the "Effect" list, Photostage offers only 2 transition effects: fade and cross-fade. These are the commonly used effects for most basic home videos and they are more than adequate to give your slideshow a smooth and professional look.
• Sound narration can be added to a slide by pressing the "Narrate" button. You need to have your mic set up before you can use this function. You can only narrate to one slide at a time. The lenght of the slide will increase to accomodate the duration of your narration.
• If you want to select only a section of a slide to appear in your slideshow you can use the "Crop" function to resize or trim the slide.
• To add a camera zoom effect to your slide, press "Zoom" button and you can set zoom-in or zoom-out to add motion to your slide.
• Color settings and color effects can be quickly adjusted and applied from the "Manage Color" button.
• You can add a text caption to individual slide by typing it into "Caption:" field. You can also add caption and adjust text color, font, alignment and other settings by pressing "More..." button next to the text caption field.
• You can change the position of a slide on the timeline by just dragging and dropping the slide on the timeline and in file list.
• You can copy a slide by selecting the slide and either pressing "Copy slide" button or selecting "Create copy" from the slide's context menu on a timeline.
• You insert a blank black slide by either pressing "Blank slide" or selecting "Insert blank" from the timline's context menu.This is usually used as a transition effect or as a background for inserting text.
• The "Swap slide" command from the slide's context menu on a timeline can be used to change the file of the slide without changing the effects and narration applied to the slide.
• You can add sound or music track to your slideshow by either pressing "Set sound track" button or selecting "Add sound track" from the context menu of the sound track field on the timeline. However, you have no control over the volume or the lenght of the sound track. This is the most glaring set-back to this otherwise excellent program.

• Once you have completed setting up your slideshow, you need to build it.
• Press the "Build slideshow" button. A new dialog box will appear.
• There are 7 destination devices for you to choose. Select the destination device.
• Next, select the format you want your slideshow to be built for.
• The format choice available to you is THE best for a free video-editing program. Leave it as default if you are unfamiliar with the various encoding options.
• Press the "Build Slideshow" button again and your slideshow will be created for you.

With Photostage, saving your project file is slightly different from the usual "Save" function.

If you want to save your project, you select File -> Save Project As from the menu and select a destination file to save your project to. All PhotoStage project files have a ssp extension To load the saved project, select File -> Load Project... from the menu. Then select your saved project file.

A word of caution.

When you save you project file you do not actually save your images and videos into it. Only filenames are saved. If you want all the data including slides, narrations and sound track to be put into one project file you can use the "Backup Project" function. This function allows you to backup your project and all the data it uses into one file. To backup select File -> Backup Project... To restore a project from backup select File -> Restore Project...