Soccer Salsa

How To Spice-Up Your Sports Photos

by Derrick Story

I bet you have some pretty good soccer shots stashed away in a shoe box under a pile of books in some lost corner of your house. Before their exile, you probably managed to mail a few to family or show your favorite ones to friends during a visit. If you were really industrious, you may have even posted an handful of them on the family web site.

I shoot lots of pictures too, and I found that many of them just weren't getting enough air time with family and friends. So I began experimenting with more dynamic ways to present my images. That's when discovered a medium called "Digital Storytelling," and as a result, I'm more excited about photography than ever.

You can take your existing soccer photos and use them to create a digital story that will impress friends and family alike.

What I'd like to show you today is how to use digital storytelling techniques to spice up your photo presentations. I'm going to cover the most basic visual storytelling technique: the electronic slide show. But we're going to enhance its flavor by adding titles and music. You my think that this type of production requires lots of special equipment and expensive software. It doesn't. But it does require a little time in front of the computer.

If you have a relatively modern Mac or PC, a dozen or so good pictures, and are wiling to purchase some inexpensive software, you too can create digital stories.

And even better, their overall file size is small enough to post on your family web page or distribute via a floppy disc -- thereby making your "movies" available to family and friends everywhere. To see an example of what I'm talking about, take a few minutes to watch the accompanying digital story titled, "Soccer Salsa."

To play the story, you'll need QuickTime player. Chances are, you have the free player already loaded on your Mac or PC. If you don't, you can download a copy from the QuickTime downloads web page.

QuickTime 4.1 is a cross-platform multimedia environment that enables authoring, editing, and playing of music, stills, and video on Windows and Macs. It's an extremely popular format that's used, for example, by movie studios and record companies to distribute their promotional content. If you'd like to learn more about QuickTime, you'll find this overview helpful.

I'll talk more about QuickTime later while I'm showing you how to put your digital story together. The one thing you should be aware of now is that to play QuickTime movies the software is free. To author movies, which is what we're going to do later in this article, you need to purchase the Pro version, which costs $29.99. If you plan on making movies, and don' already have QuickTime on your computer, download the "authoring" version. You don't have to pay for it at the time of the download. You can do that later. Once you pay, the QuickTime folks send you a registration key that "unlocks" the authoring tools. In the meantime, you can use the playback functionality for free.

Whether or not you decide to invest in QuickTime Pro will probably depend on what you think of my digital slide show. So go ahead and watch the "Soccer Salsa" movie -- it runs 46 seconds and is only 490k big. If you like what you see (and hear), then read on, and I'll show you how to make one for yourself.

Digitizing Your Photos

The easiest way to digitize pictures for computer presentation is to capture them with a digital camera in the first place. The problem is, with sports photography especially, is that most consumer digital cameras have an inadequate zooming range to "get in tight" with the action. The fastest way to lose your audience is to show them a bunch of distance shots of a soccer game.

Therefore, I recommend that you use your 35mm camera with the longest lens you have available. A telephoto that tops out at 200mm will work; one that extends to 300mm is even better. Pricing on 75-300mm zoom lens have really come down recently, and quality lenses can be purchased for around $200.

If you're lucky enough to have a scanner, you simply scan the prints or negatives that you want to use. Scannerless folks have a great alternative too called PhotoCD. Talk to your photo finisher about pricing and options, but generally speaking you can have your pictures put on a PhotoCD at the time of processing, or choose to digitize specific negatives that have already been processed. The costs are very reasonable, and you end up with a CD of digitized photos that can be displayed on either a Mac or PC.

Preparing Your Digital Pictures

Now you're ready to get to work. Create a separate "project" folder that will hold the pictures for your slide show. You'll need an image editor such as Photoshop 5.0 LE ($95) or Ulead's PhotoImpact 6 ($89.95) to crop and resize your pictures. Chances are, if you have a scanner or a digital camera, it came bundled with an image editor to handle these tasks.

Choose a dozen or so pictures that you want to include in your show. Think in terms of telling a story, so pick shots of different types of activities. Make copies of these pictures in put them in your project folder.

Now resize each image to 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels tall. Make sure you're precise in your sizing, or QuickTime will skip images that are not the correct dimensions. This will be the viewing size of your slide show. Adjust brightness and contrast as needed, and make sure their screen resolution is 72 dpi. Save them as Jpegs.

Next decide the order that you want your pictures presented in the slide show. Rename the images accordingly by using "002" "004" "006" and so forth. Don't add any other information to the file name -- just use the three-digit numbers. I don't number my pictures 001, 002, 003 because I want to have "openings" in the sequence in case I want to move or add pictures later on. Also the spacing leaves openings for titles too.

At this point you have a project folder that contains a dozen or so pictures resized to 320 by 240 with numbered file names. Now you're ready to create your show.

Creating the Image Sequence

To create your slide show, choose "Open Image Sequence" from QuickTime's File menu.

Here's when you'll need the Pro version of QuickTime. Once you're set-up with the registration, launch QuickTime and choose FILE: OPEN IMAGE SEQUENCE. Navigate to your project folder and select the first image, which should be named, "002".

Next, the Image Sequence Settings dialogue box will open and you'll have the opportunity to set the Frame Rate. For slide shows I like to use "3 seconds per frame" or "4 seconds per frame." Make your selection and click OK.

QuickTime will take your pictures and make a slide show for you. You can review your show by hitting the Play button.

ToThis option tells QuickTime how long to dispaly each picture before moving to the next.

At this point, you can save your slide show by selecting the "make movie self-contained" option under SAVE AS, and distribute it freely. If you'd like to add titles and music, read on.

Adding Titles to Your Movie

QuickTime allows you to import regular text and create movie titles. That functionality works well, but I think it's a technique better suited for intermediate and advanced users. I'll describe an easier way to add titles to your movies using your image editor.

Simply open your image editor (Photoshop, PhotoImpact, etc) and create a "new" 320 pixel by 240 pixel canvas. Fill the canvas with black (or the color of your choice), add the type for the movie title, and save it as a 72 dpi Jpeg using the file name "000" or "001".

Now add your new image to the project folder and create a new image sequence. Just like magic, you have a title to begin your slide show. You can add additional titles throughout the show as desired by using the open slots in your file numbering sequence.

Finding Music for Your Movie

There's an old saying in Hollywood: "half the picture is sound." It's true. Turn down the sound on the Soccer Salsa movie and notice a big difference.

The hardest part about adding a soundtrack to your movie is finding the music you want to use. Almost all of the music that we hear and are familiar with is copyright protected. For home productions you can get away with using your favorite song. But if you publish that song on the Internet, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to receiving a nasty letter from the lawyers.

If you're musically inclined, you can write your own soundtrack. Or you can use commercial "royalty free" music, which is my preference. My favorite of the available packages is SmartSound by Sonic Desktop.

For a complete run-down on how the software works, you might want to take a look at the Web Review article I wrote earlier this year, The Smartsound Solution. There are other packages that offer royalty free music. Just make sure they offer you the option of editing your sound tracks so you can customize them to your digital story.

In the short term, using royality free music does cost you a little more. But in the long run, you'll have far fewer headaches when looking for music to use for your slide show and PowerPoint productions, and you won't have to worry about legal hassels.

How to add Music to Your Movie

How to Compress in QuickTime

1. With your master movie open, choose "Export" under the File menu which opens a dialogue box.

2. Make sure the Export box is set to "Movie to QuickTime Movie."

3. Click the "Options" button which reveals a second dialogue box.

4. Check the Video box and then click on "Settings."

5. Choose "Photo JPEG" under Compressor (the video codec).

6. Choose "High" under Quality.

7. Ignore the settings under Motion for the time being.

8. If you want to apply a QuickTime filter, such as Sharpen, you can do so by clicking on the Filter button. Remember however, this will add to the processing time.

9. Choose "Size" and set the width to 320 and the height to 240, (or same as original) and click OK.

10. Now, back in the Movie Settings box, check the "Sound" box.

11. Click on the "Settings" button revealing another dialogue box.

12. Choose "QDesign Music 2" for music tracks or "Qualcomm PureVoice" for voice tracks (the audio codecs).

13. Set the rate to 22.255 kHz.

14. Set the size to "16 bit" and use mono or stereo depending on your preference, then click OK.

15. Then click the box"Prepare for Internet Streaming" and choose "Fast Start."

16. Finally, click "OK" in the Movie Settings box to register your settings and to let you name the file of your compressed movie.

17. Once you've renamed the file, click"Save" to begin the export which can take anywhere between 2 and 50 minutes depending on size, compression, filters, and of course, processor speed.

Once you've positioned the images in your slide show just the way you want them, note how long your presentation runs. For instance, Soccer Salsa is 46 seconds long.

Now using SmartSound, or the music generator of your choice, create a soundtrack that is the same length of your slide show. Save the music as a QuickTime, AIFF, or WAV file.

Launch QuickTime and use the OPEN command to open your new soundtrack. QuickTime will open a Player with no image, but with your music loaded. Then open a new Player and launch the slide show that you want to add music to.

The two players (music and slide show) are now side-by-side on your monitor. Go to the music Player and choose EDIT: SELECT ALL. You'll see that the entire soundtrack is selected. Now go to EDIT:COPY. Your soundtrack has been copied to the clipboard.

Click anywhere on the window of your slide show to bring it forward. Make sure the diamond movie pointer is positioned to the beginning of very first frame of the slide show. If you're using a Mac, hold down the OPTION key and select EDIT:ADD. If you're using Windows, hold down the CONTROL and the ALT keys and select EDIT:ADD.

What you've done is added another track to the existing slide show without replacing any of the existing tracks. Had you used the PASTE command instead of the ADD command, you would have replaced your images with music. QuickTime allows you to add as many tracks as you need.

Now play your movie. You should have titles, music, and pictures all working together. If you like what you see, save your work of art as a "self contained movie." If you want to remove your music and try something new, go to EDIT: DELETE TRACKS, remove the sound track, and try something else.

Exporting Your Movie for Web Publishing

Chances are your current "master"movie is somewhere between 1 and 20 MBs in size -- certainly far too big to serve over the Web. Fortunately, QuickTime has a number of terrific codecs built-in that allow you to compress the audio and video to decent web-serving size.

I've outlined the steps for exporting in the accompanying sidebar. At this point I want to remind you to keep your "master" movie in a safe place where you can find it again. The master is of course the uncompressed version that is of the highest quality. If, up the road you want to make changes to your movie, you can do so to the master without any quality loss. Then you can export a new compressed version from the updated master.

Once the movie has been exported to the new file, check its size. You'll be amazed at the level of compression. Double-click on it and play. You'll notice some differences in the audio and video, but I think you'll be surprised by how good it looks and sounds. Your movie is now ready to post on your web site or share with friends via diskette.

Additional fine tuning

Once you've successfully compressed your movie, you can begin to experiment and recompress. That's why keeping a master file is so important. You always have the original to use as your starting point. From there you can add more audio tracks, insert graphics and play with the compressor settings. The set-up I've outline here is intended only as a starting point.

You may want to venture into the world of movie editors and compression programs such as Terran's Media Cleaner which allow you to dynamically preview your settings before compression -- a real time saver indeed.

If you want to post your movie to your web site, upload it just like you would a regular Jpeg image. After that, I like putting a little poster image from the movie on the web page that links to the movie. I usually select my favorite picture, place it on the web page and create an href link to the movie I've just uploaded. When visitors click on your poster image, if will load and display your movie on a separate page. It's that easy. QuickTime doesn' require any special server configurations.

I'd like to also mention that QuickTime has much more functionality than I've covered in this article. If you'd like to learn more about its capabilities, then I suggest you visit the QuickTime Authoring to get started.

I keep an ongoing list of resources, samples, and my own movies at the Story Photography web site. if you want to go directly to the digital storytelling section, Windows users should visit Multimedia for Windows and Mac users can go to Multimedia for Macintosh. Either way, I hope you take some of those fine images you have, and breath new life into them by creating a digital story.

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