Photo Story 3 for Windows

When making videos from digital photos, I always find that the file size is too big. Hence I have been searching and testing with some tools, looking for a way to make the video file smaller in size.

Last week I found a free progam from Microsoft, i.e Photo Story. The result video file has a very good image quality and a much smaller in size, compare with what I get from using Windows Movie Maker or Picasa 3. The Photo Story is a simpler tool, comapre with the other two, but it does serve my purpose most of the time.

Two things I found not very flexible about the Photo Story 3 are:

1) I have to do it photo by photo if I want to change the display duration for each photo display in the video.

2) If I want to make use of my own selected song, there is no option to make the song fits the whole video length. I have to manually calculate to make sure the number of photos with my desired display duration and the music/song fits well.

To resolve the first problem, I found a tool to help. It is the Tweak P S - Photo Stoy Tweak Tool.

For the second problem, I have not found a quick fix as yet.

If you are interested in the above tools, they are available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

http://www.windowsphotostory.com/TweakPS/

Maxwell Hill (Bukit Larut) - Nov 2010

Maxwell Hill (it's called Bukit Larut now) as I preferred to call it, is a hill resort situated in Taiping, in the state of Perak, Malaysia. It is at 1250 metre above sea level.

I was there with some old friends for a 3 days 2 night stay. It rained in the afternoon and hence it gets quite misty. This is a good place to get away from the city for a quiet and close to nature break. The last time I was there was many many years ago. Without TV, shops, and commercial facilities, I enjoy the stay much much better than I had with other travelling trips of which the places are usually too commercialized.

There were talks about cable car project to be built in this hill. I hope it won't happen so as to preserve it's natural and tranquility ambience.