For this week's hands-on assignment, you should add narration and computer-generated music to the digital story you created last week. Important Note 1: You may use the same photo story you already created, you may edit the initial photo story with new pictures, or if you prefer, you may create a new photo story for this week's assignment.
Important Note 2: Here are the instructions for submitting the .WMV file of your initial digital story. You will be submitting or transferring your file to the personal web space that you have been assigned on either the Viking or Mariner server.
1. Be sure that you have a copy of Secure Shell (SSH) for Windows or Mac. You will find a link to download SSH at:
http://www.coe.uh.edu/mycoe/cite/docs.cfm
2. On the same page, click on the link: How to Use Your Webspace on Viking from Off-Campus with Secure Shell (by Donna Smith). This will include directions on how to upload the file.
3. After you have uploaded your digital story file to the server, try to access it in a web browser or media player and copy the URL. Then post a comment here in which you paste in the URL and discuss your experience adding music and narration t your digital story.
4. If you are uncertain or have problems, bring the .wmv file with you to class next week.
59 comments:
OK - this one took some time. I was originally going to record the narrative on my podcasting rig and splice it together with some audio I created using Adobe Audition but after a bit of thought I figured that was outside the scope of this step of the project.
I thought it might be interesting to see if it was possible to produce something workable with the Photostory 3 audio editor and some narrative. I made the decision to use the digital story I had previously produced and just play with the timings a little. I also made the decision to add narrative only where there were text slides in order to retain some of the impact of the pictures.
I played with the audio a lot and came to the conclusion that while most of it sounds like a cheap Casio keyboard some of it was OK, especially at the beginnings of the tracks. To that end I pieced together some audio who consists or 3 of the tracks available in Photostory 3 and used them multiple times changing the tempo slightly each time so that the overall effect if to speed up and then slow down towards the end.
I have to say that I am not certain it works too well. The audio is OK but I found most of them quite annoying. I was forced to stick to pretty classical pieces on piano to make it sound halfway decent. I think that the upbeat and up-tempo nature of the audio does greatly improve the original piece as it lends a certain sense of whimsy to it (which was where I was going with it in the first place).
I found that my radio announcer voice came in handy when I was recording the narration and I tried to be a funny as possible. I think it gets little corny in the middle but I guess it is what it is and that's how I was feeling when I recorded it.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Hope you guys like it! Looking forward to seeing the rest :)
Hal's Intro Story with Far Too Happy Music and Narration - you have been warned! :P
Cheers
Hal
I decided to use the same pictures and basic information in this version of my personal digital story as the first version, substituting voice narration for the text slides.
I wanted the digitized music in PhotoStory to sound a little different than what I usually hear generated in that program. I was pretty happy in using Country Honky Tonk Up Beat Piano.
I tweaked the timing and motion of the slides and added voice narration.
I am having some trouble with an impacted wisdom tooth, and so my enunciation was not as clear as I would like. My older daughter heard me previewing and said that my voice has a Peanuts quality. However, I think that it is the feel of the music that gives her the impression of listening to "Charlie Brown."
Please view my revised digital story.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~crepa/grad/iamcarolyn.wmv
I chose to use the same digital story I created last week, and add only minimal audio. I did my project in Movie Maker so I didn't have the music creator to add the music. I added only a small amount of audio because I thought it worked well with the black and white theme and the repetition of "I am". Enjoy!
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~rcavazos/CUIN7358/
The hardest part of this assignment is scripting what you want to say to go along with your pictures and story. If you have it scripted out, the process will go alot faster. The music is easy to use and it does the job. Its not very exciting and students or kids will always make fun of it.
I didn't get a chance to use the snowball microphone but I think the cheap 10 dollar microphone did its job. I think the sound quality would have been better with the snowball microphone.
Even though the music sounds cheap, it does add to the overall effect of the digital story. You just need to be careful not to put your background music too loud because it will compete with your narration. Your narration should be louder than your music.
My friends have always made fun of my radio announcer voice and I am sure I will hear some cracks and comments about it too.
Hope you guys enjoy the video tour and I hope you like it.
Okay, I added music from the program onto the same photostory about me. I also used the mic that you lent me (cheap one). I added small phrases to all the pictures and had about 4 different songs throughout the entire photostory. I did "trial and error" throughout most of the process. First, I played with the music to see if I liked it. Then, I used the mic to record narration. When both, music and narration were on, I noticed that the music was too loud and you couldn't hear my voice. Fortunately, I figured out the volume and set it to where I wanted it.
I downloaded secure shell and transfered my video to my viking space. Once there, I had no idea how to view it on the web in order to copy the URL. This is why you see no URL here. I'll try to get the URL in class on Monday (once I can mess with Viking more than I can here at home) and try to figure it out.
I added music and narration to the PhotoStory I submitted last week. For the narration I was fortunate to use the Snowball Blue microphone, and I could definitely hear the difference compared to other microphones I have used in the past. The setup was simple. The hardest part was disassembling it and putting it back in the box. I noticed that the Snowball could pick up the subtleties in my voice that other microphones cannot. I could hear the difference between something I recorded after a meal and before a meal, which surprised me. I could also detect the difference in my voice from sitting and standing, which I have not noticed in the past. I tried to speak deliberately in order to convey an emotional malaise. I also tried to be informal and used contractions, short sentences and phrases.
I used the ‘create music’ function in PhotoStory and chose a New Age sound with an orchestra. All the music seemed inappropriately cheerful so I had to change the tempo to the slowest possible to create the feeling of dreaminess that I wanted. I divided my story into two parts. In the first part I wanted to give a slightly positive tone, while in the second part I wanted to be more subdued and melancholy. I attempted to do this by changing the ‘mood’ of the music in PhotoStory. It was a very subtle difference that was hardly noticeable in the final product.
A Natural Betrayal
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~jcjames/7358/ps9-24/ps10-1c.wmv
Charon--What did you name your second digital story? If you saved it in your CUIN folder inside your homepage folder, your URL is:
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~cgrimaldo/
cuin7358/the name of your digital story.wmv
Hopefully, you did not put any capital letters, punctuation, or spaces in the title. The URL will have no spaces, either.
I hope this helps.
Hal--
Well done. I have a couple of feedback points:
--The music was a bit loud in your piece and drowned out some of your narration. Music should set the tone and add to the piece, but not take away from it. Also, I agree that the music in Photo Story 3 can sound like a cheap Casio keyboard.
--The text slides in your piece are all very effective and went well with your story. When you narrated over them I had to choose, as the viewer, to either read the text or listen to your narration because it's hard to do both. In the future, if you would like to use both it may be better to input your narration after each text slide for better effect, so that you're not talking over the text. It is hard for the brain to both read the text and listen to narration at the same time. (Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43-52.)
Hey Anne,
I agree that the music is quite loud - it is louder than I would have liked it but I had some issues with volume in Photostory. For some reason my computer hates it and would be fine in preview and then the music would just drop to a faint squeak when I exported it to WMV. By the time I got it to this stage I was sick of the sound of it :)
It was also a concious decision to record different audio over the top of the text slides. I considered removing the text slides all together but thought that they supported the theme a little too well to lose. I understand your point about overloading the viewer and appreciate the reference however I must confess that my main aim was to entertain and not educate. The double loading of the slides leaves more room for interpretation on the part of the viewer and allows the piece to be more entertaining the second time round. (Brierley, 2001)
I might have a play with the story and record the narrative after the text slide, but I think I would prefer to leave most of the pictures with just the music and let the viewer choose what to make of them.
I have had a look through most of the other and think everyone is doing an excellent job. Sound can be such a pain - especially when you are limited to essentially a volume control and a tempo knob. I think one of the greatest disadvantages in Photostory is that there is no volume control in the program for the narrative.
Cheers
Hal
Brierley, S. 2001. "The Advertising Handbook". Routledge: London.
Click here to see Ramadan video with narration
Click here to see Ramadan video with narration and music
I used the Snowball microphone to record the narration for my movie. Since I used Movie Maker to create the original project, I recorded my narration in Movie Maker as well. However, after that, I could not figure out how to add background music to my movie. Any music I tried to add would over right the narration. From what I could tell, the only music I could use for background music would be music that originally came with a clip. So, I saved my movie with just narration, then opened up the movie in Movie Maker and added music this time on a lower volume to set it as background music. But, I don’t think it went well together. I’m not sure how to adjust the volume settings to make that come out ok. I’ve included links to both versions (narration only and narration plus background music).Oh yeah, I couldn’t find an option to create cheesy music in Movie Maker. So I used sample music that comes with Windows Media Player.
I decided to use the same pictures from my digital story that I submitted last week. The hardest part was recording my own voice. I hate the sound of my speaking voice when it is recorded, so that was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I played around with PhotoStory's music creator and came up with one of the cheesiest things that I've ever heard...it's actually the love theme in the sound track section. I chose it because it was soft enough to not interfere with my recorded voice (which was a little softer than I would have liked because I had microphone volume issues that I couldn't resolve very well). All in all, I think it's ok, but I cannot wait until I can add one of my favorite songs or something from www.freeplaymusic.com .
Shaunna's Digital Story (w/audio)
I used Photo Story 3 to edited my story and added narrative and music. I really like this software as it is so easy to use. I have heard that Movie maker is better and I intend to try it, but so far, I haven't found anything unsatisfactory with Photo Story 3, so I continued to use it. Anyway, I want to get to know it before trying another software. So, I did everything I could to improve my story and finally I produced something showable, I think.
The only problem is I could not upload it. I tried with both Viking and mariner but my password was not accepted. This is curious as I opened my X drive in the lab last time and saw my space under mariner. I emailed the CITE lab but received no reply. I will come to the lab before class to ask for help. I would like to post my story to get comments from everybody, but if I cannot sort this out, I have no choice but bringing my story to the class on a flash drive again.
Hal--
Thank you for your explaination of your reasoning behind the choices you made. I now better understand your story and your intentions.
Part of my work as a TA for the class is to give you critical feedback on your stories so that you may strengthen them as you see fit. But, I do not want to interfere with your creativity.
Rene--
Your digital story was straightforward and gave me, the viewer, a good overall introduction to your personal life. This is a risk not everyone is able to take but I feel it pulls the viewer into the story.
The music in your piece is a bit too high and distracts a bit from your narration. Others are having the same issue and can probably be attributed to what Hal said about the difference in the volume in the preview mode in Photo Story and the volume when it's saved as a .wmv
Jaison--
Great use of allegory. I was also pulled into your piece by its tone and pacing. The contrast of color and absence of color added another dynamic to the narrated allegory as well.
This is my 2nd attempt at posting, my first post vanished.
Everyone's photostories are looking good. I am amazed at how different a little sound/narration can make on the end product. Some of the photostories are enhanced by the music and narration, but some I enjoyed better without.
For my photostory, I decided to start again from scratch. Again, the hardest part for me is the creation stage. It takes me awhile to get my ideas out on projects like these. I wish there were more hours in the day!
Unfortunately, because I can't seem to log onto citelab from home, I will have to bring my story to class on a flash drive.
Judy,
I think the music and narration really helped your story have a more finished quality. However, your voice is louder in some places and softer in others, so the next time you're recording your narration, you might try to get the volume to be as close as possible on all the slides. Also, I think using a Snowball or other USB microphone would also help. But at this point, you've done a good job.
Dr. Robin,
I completely agree on all points. I was aware of the different levels of sound and quality of my voice--no doubt caused by me going back and redoing the narration on some of the slides. I thought about revising some more but was having trouble with a painful tooth problem that interfered with my speech and chose to leave the video as was.
I also feel that a better microphone is needed. Because I record a lot of sound for personal projects, I have chosen to purchase a Blue Snowball.
Thanks for your comments.
Shaunna,
There are a couple of things about your narrated version that are particularly good. First, I think you did prove that the "cheesy" music that PS3 creates can be tolerable. It seems to fit your slides very well.
But even more importantly, the narration sounds like you knew exactly what you were going to say and record. I'm guessing that you wrote down the words first, rather than just start recording and ad libbing the narration. I'm sure that some people can do that, but for most of us, it will really help to write down what we want to record, practice reading it several times and then turn on the recorder and do it for real.
Good job!
Anh Nguyen said...
I'm in CITE lab now and after talking to the technician, I 've learned that Secure Shell is working only for Viking. For those who are in Mariner, they are going to post the instruction to the use of a software similar to Secure Shell in an hour. Anyway, I managed to upload my homework. Please have a look at it and give me your comments.
My story
I used the the blue snowball to record my audio. Although I liked it, I found myself having to be very cognizant of my inflection and annunciation. I know that my photo story is pretty cheesy, and the music is a little on the "Neverending Story" side, but hey...
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~mfrobert/Digital%20Photography/Class%204%20and%205/Hawaii.wmv
Dr. Robin,
Thank you for your critique of my digital story with audio. Yes being the OCD person that I am, I HAD to write it all down before I recorded it. I'm definitely not good at ad-libbing...I think it makes me sound more awkward with strange pauses and weird voice inflection. Honestly, even though I had written it down, it took me roughly three tries to get it right with the microphone. So sad!!!!
Sophia, I really liked your narration. It was friendly and upbeat, and explained several things that could only be inferred from the video without the narration.
It took some time trying to find music to fit the project and a narration that was not too corny, so i decided to keep it really simple. It was funny hearing myself on the playback because I did not think it sounded like me. I wanted to add some pictures of me and my mom, but we could not agree on a picture that we both liked to have other's view. I used the snowball microphone. I guess it worked alright, I had no problems. That's it.
viking.coe.uh.edu/~kscott/cuin7358/cuin7358_1.wmv
This is an entirely new photo story for me. I used photo story 3 to create the photo story. I created the music using photo story and also added narrative too. The music was ok, but I would prefer to use copyrighted music that would be more appropriate and emotional. I was able to use the microphone fairly easily, but I found that the music needed to be turned way down to hear the narrative. I've basically put the music on its lowest volume to be able to hear the narration.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~sbrower/PhotoStory/PersonalPSRobin.wmv
I was able to get my photostory but found out today that I need to wait for a program in order to upload from home.
Go here: http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~rlacquey/rebeccalacquey2_2.wmv
This story is a vast improvement from the one I turned in last week . . it certainly is more meaningful to me.
Sam's Photo Story
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~staylor/Photo%20Story/Personal%201music.wp3
Once I figured out the initial set up of the Snowball Microphone, I expected everything to work smoothly. Besides the few issues with making sure all the different volume and microphone volumes were on, the Snowball was probably one of the easiest pieces of technology I have used! It was very nice to click on the record button (and say 'no' to the pop up) and listen to myself speaking a few seconds later! My one frustration was trying to gauge how loud my voice was, especially when I put music with it. I don’t think my laptop speakers were very reliable!
Through this process, I also became a little concerned that perhaps I should have added more narration to explain each of my pictures, but I decided against it. My project seems to have transformed into a ‘third-person’ story reflection, so I wanted to leave more of a visual progression of my life after I moved out on my own. As a result, I used the computer-generated music to drive the feelings I wanted to evoke for different parts of my life. So, hopefully, you get a sense of how I feel about leaving my old home (El Paso) and eventually ending up here in my new home (Humble). I was also under the impression that we could only use the pictures we had taken with our assigned digital cameras, so I left out most of my life that still lives and functions in El Paso, which basically translates to no family photos.
I am one of the people who is having problems posting my link, hence no actual evidence on this site of it!
The incorporation of audio and music did not enhance my original digital story, in my opinion. Perhaps I am speaking in a tone too low, but I can’t hear the audio. Or maybe it’s just the computer I was on. Therefore, I made sure that I did not increase the volume of the background music. I really did not know what to say. It felt so unnatural to speak into a microphone…besides the fact that I hate my voice. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to say what was on my slides or something in relation to them. So, I did both.
This is my in progress digital story with the addition of audio and music. Still trying to work out why I can’t hear the audio. I plan to give the Snowball one more shot with this digital story.
Amber’s digitalstorywithaudio
Here it is!
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~abarela/PhotoStory/DigPersonalMus.wmv
Becca--What a lovely story. Wonderful music, excellent writing, terrific picture choices. I had tears in my eyes when I finished watching it. Absolutely wonderful job!
Okay thanks to Judy, I now know how to see my projects online after uploading them to Viking through secure shell. Here is my powerpoint with sound (from the photostory selection):
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~cgrimaldo/cuin7358/cgrimaldowithsound1.wmv
Sam--
Good starting story. Most of your pictures were high resolution and looked nice. There were a couple that were pixelated--like the one of your high school. Make sure not to use low resolution pictures in your digital stories.
Your story flowed well and didn't feel too long. Also,the music volume was good and didn't take away from your narration.
Andrea--
Good start. Nice pacing of your story and your music didn't drown out your narration. I think choosing to not add more narration was a good use of the 6th Element of Digital Storytelling --"Economy" – defined as "using just enough content to tell the story without overloading the viewer with too much information."
7 Elements on Class 4 page
Amber--
Good start to your storytelling. Interesting to know that you moved to Houston as a result of Hurrican Katrina. I know there are a lot of students at UH from Louisiana and it's interesting to know one.
The pacing of your story and the economy of detail is good. Some of your images are pixelated so you may want to use images that are larger.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~ealeman/cuin7358/Digital%20Photography2.htm
Keyana Jackson
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~kjackson/cuin7353/kjacksonphotostory_2.wmv
Adding music and sound to photo stories makes the projects more interesting and personal. The pictures themselves speak without narration, but adding narration gives the audience better insight into the authors ideas. I chose to use Classic Amadeaus to my story because the music felt happy and joyful like me. I enjoyed this project.
I did this assignment a while ago and looking back at the blogs realized I never posted the link to the blog. I didn't add narration just because I need a microphone to use and hopefully will attain one soon. Since the school stopped using frontpage and I got a new computer, I have been having issues with linking my assignments to my web page. I need to adjust this at school. I will try to figure out what is going on. I will hopefully have this up soon.
You can see my narrated version of my first photostory
here. by clicking on "PhotoStory2."
I didn't like this photostory to begin with, but I thought I'd see what I could do with narration to spice it up. Its still pretty disjointed, but I consider this version a definite improvement over the silent version.
For this assignment, I had to add music and I chose the option "create music" from Photostory. I chose the piano, the style is "classical: armadeus", and the mood is "sentimental." I didn't have to change the time for each picture because the music was set by Photostory. The photostory is a little bit more interesting with music added as oposed to the silence.
For this digital story I chose to do completely different theme than my last one. This story briefly details the last ten months of my life. The narration took a while to get down because it needed to match up with each slide. It also took me a while to get the narration volume and music volume just right so that the music did not drown out my voice. I used photo story 3 again to create this digital story.
Personal Photo Story
Adding music and narration was at first a concern but after I watch Dr. Robin and asked a couple of friend it was easy. Recording my voice was a bit strange. I hated messing up and having to start again.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~shwang/cgm.wmv
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~shwang/nar.wmv
For this assignment, I did some research about Greek/Roman God and Godness. Then, I added my narration and computer-generated music and created two separate files.
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