Digital Storytelling Software Guide

Digital Storytelling Software Guides

The following guides are a quick reference to using free software to make Digital Stories on a PC and while not exhaustive should provide a step by step solution to creating your own story for free.

The software we use can be downloaded for free:

Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

GIMP http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Windows Movie Maker 2.6 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=34

NOTE: If you’re running Windows XP or Windows Vista, Movie Maker 2.6 is already installed.

Follow the installation instruction for each package.

Some Quick Advice on Keeping Control!

The most frustrating thing you will find if you dive straight into these guides is that you may find your work “disappearing”.

The best way to avoid frustration is by keeping organised and working logically one step at a time.

You’ll often find that you will be repeating actions (like opening and saving files) but always take care to try and understand exactly what you’re telling the computer to do.

1. Make a folder and call it “[your name] Story”: EVERYTHING to do with your story should live in that folder so you always know where your files are.

2. If you’re using removable media (memory sticks, cameras, CDs, DVDs etc.) to carry your picture/audio files ALWAYS make sure you copy all of the media you need into your folder on the computer and then disconnect any storage device BEFORE you start editing. This will prevent you from “losing” work.

3. Be logical, one step at a time and think about what you are instructing the computer to do.

Audacity Guide Page 1

How to use Audacity

Quick Run Through

Open Audacity, You should get something that looks like this

Things to notice and be aware of if some of the steps here don’t work: The gig buttons here control the playback plus YOU ALWAYS NEED TO BE USING THIS TOOL. Just click it to make sure you’re using it.


Let’s Begin:

Import Your Pre-Recorded Audio

File-->Open (then search for your audio (Desktop/My Story) and hit open.)

Once you’ve found your audio recording and clicked on “Open”, you should get something similar to this


Normalize it!

First things first, if your audio is a little quiet, NORMALIZE it.

To do this click on the timeline of your recording, press CTRL + A then go the toolbar at the top of the screen, click the drop down menu called EFFECT, and click the option that says NORMALIZE.

After you’ve done this a dialogue box will appear, DO NOT uncheck any of the boxes, and just click OK.

(NOTE: In newer releases of Audacity you may be asked to input a value here, if so type -3)

Now you can edit your audio.


Topping and Tailing it!

You’ll need to top and tail your recording so that it starts and finishes in the right place

First listen back to your audio (the big green triangle button or spacebar) and keep an eye on the moving line that shows you where you are in the timeline. Click at the point where your story starts.

Wherever you click, thats where the playback will start next time you press Play.

NOTE: You’ll notice that there are groups of spikes and flat bits. Spikes are speech and flat bits are not speech: ONLY CUT FROM A FLAT BIT NEVER THROUGH THE SPIKES.

When you’ve clicked on that flat bit just before the story starts, mouse over the line and when you see the cursor change to a hand click and drag it all the way left and this will highlight the bit you want to get rid of:

Press BACKSPACE and it will be deleted. Listen to your audio now and make sure it sounds OK. If you want to undo anything (take a step backwards) hit CTRL + Z on the keyboard.

Now do the same thing at the other end of your recording. Select the flat bit right after your story has finished, click and drag to select everything to the right of that and delete it.

Now your audio is topped and tailed.

NOTE: if you can’t delete or the Effects are greyed out make sure you press Stop (or spacebar)


Editing unwanted content!

You ONLY need to take out content from your audio if, during recording, there is a mistake that you noticed, paused and then went back to the last natural break and redid.

In other words if you know you made that mistake at the time you’ll have repeated that bit of audio so you know what to take out.

If you’re tempted to start removing pauses or you don’t like the way you say a particular word DON’T, you’ll spoil the natural tone and colour of your story.

So here’s how to get rid of that mistake:

Use your zoom tool.

When you zoom in to your selection of unwanted content, you need to look for “flat lines”.

You will then want to edit your audio from these “flat lines”. Editing from flat lines will give your audio a more natural sound and feel.

Also be aware of “double breaths”. Whilst it looks like a flat bit there’s always an intake of breath before any speech so edit quite tight to the spikes so you leave ionly one breath in the audio otherwise it sounds strange.

Once you’ve got the offending audio selected, press Play and it will now only play the selected area. If all is well press BACKSPACE and the go back a little while in the audio and play it back to make sure it sounds natural.

REMEMBER: You can always UNDO by hitting CTRL + Z on the keyboard


Finishing Touches.

If you are done editing your audio, you can now do the final touches.

Fade in & Fade out –

Insert a fade in at the beginning and a fade out at the end to make the audio easier on the ears.

To do this is the same as topping and tailing but you’ll need to zoom in to see the flat bit you need to highlight.

Highlight the section you want to fade in (NOTE: Just the flat bit and not the spikes).

Use only a small section (1 second of audio, if that.)

When you’ve highlighted it, go to Effects at the top of the screen, on the drop down menu select Fade In.

Now jump to the end of your story and select the little flat bit after the story finishes. When that is highlighted got to Effects --> Fade Out

That’s all the editing done so finally hit Effect --> Normalize again as you may have removed some big spikes during editing


Now just Export your edited audio file

Zoom all the way out so you can see all of your audio and click anywhere in the audio to make sure nothing is highlighted

Go to File --> Export as WAV.

Make sure you save the audio in the right place (Desktop/My Story) and give it a name like “Mogs Story EDIT1”. This way you will always have the original file if you need to go back and edit it later.

When you’ve done all this, your audio is ready to use.

Checklist

1. Import and normalize

2. Top and Tail

3. Remove mistakes

4. Fade in/Fade Out

5. Normalize again

6. Export with different filename

GIMP Guide Page 1

How to use GIMP (Digitising old Photos)

Quick Run Through

As with most things, the best rule of thumb to follow is to ensure that the capture process is as high quality as possible.

• When capturing your photo make sure the camera and the photo are as parallel and flat as possible – this will the reduce foreshortening effect that comes with taking the picture at an angle.

• Watch out for light. That includes light that can “bounce” off the photograph (especially if it’s glossy) and the camera flash.

• Take a few shots of the picture and you can decide which is best once you have them on the computer.

NOTE: When transferring (copy and paste) your pictures to the computer make sure you disconnect any cameras/cards/memory sticks etc. BEFORE YOU START THE EDITING PROCESS and make sure you know where those photos are (e.g. Desktop/Mogs Story)

GIMP Guide Page 2

That done open GIMP.

Then load your picture File--> Open and navigate to your picture (e.g. Desktop/Mogs Story)

You should get something that looks like this:

GIMP Guide Page 3

Cropping

So we need the “CROP” tool to cut away the parts of the picture we don’t need (e.g. background).

It looks like a scalpel and will allow us to cut away parts of the picture we don’t need.

Click on the tool to “pick it up” and when you then move the mouse over your picture the pointer should look like a cross hair. If it doesn’t then that means you haven’t picked up the scalpel so go back and click on it again. Once you have the crosshairs you’re ready to crop.

Click and drag a box around what you want to keep and the bit that is being cropped (removed) will turn darker.

You can adjust the crop range by mousing over the boundaries of the crop box in the edit window.

GIMP Guide Page 4

Press RETURN to apply the crop.

NOTE: There are 3 windows in GIMP and you have to make sure to “activate” the window you need by clicking on it first: You'll see the top border of the window become lighter indicating it is active.

Also if you make a mistake press CTRL+Z on the keyboard to undo.

GIMP Guide Page 5

Colour Adjustments

Because of the way the computer “sees” images it is often the case that the colors of your digital photo will look “washed out” when compared to the original. We can adjust this using Colors --> Brightness-Contrast:

Use the sliders to turn up the Brightness (start at about +10) then slide the contrast up and you’ll start to see the difference.

Be gentle and check how much difference you're making by unclicking and clicking the Preview box to get that before/after effect before you apply the settings with the OK button

GIMP Guide Page 6

Save your Edited Picture

File-->Save As..

Make sure you point the computer to the right folder (e.g. Desktop/Mogs Story) so we can keep track of where our photos are on the system.

Give it a different name to the original (I've added EDIT1 to the end of the filename) and that way we can keep the original in case we need to re-edit it later.

NOTE: Make sure the filetype is set to JPEG image – just type in .JPG after the filename and then press Save

Now repeat this process for each picture that needs to be edited.

GIMP Guide Page 7

Checklist

• Open your image

• Crop

• Adjust Brightness-Contrast

• Save As a .JPG file

Movie Maker 2.6 Guide Page 1

Windows Movie Maker 2.6

Quick Guide

Get Started!

Firstly, Open Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (NOT Windows Movie Maker Live!).

You should get something that looks like this:

Click on Show Timeline to get the right view up (as below)

Firstly you will need to import all your pieces to make your Digital story (Pictures & Audio)

Import pictures; on the left hand side of the screen there should be a task bar, on there, there should be an option which says Import Pictures. Click this link and import your pictures (e.g.Desktop/Mogs Story).

Once you’ve imported your pictures it should look similar to this (also notice the “timeline” layout at the bottom).


After importing your pictures, you will need to import your audio.

Same instructions as before with the pictures, go to the task bar on the left hand side of the screen and select import audio.

Import the edited version of your audio from earlier and it will appear in the Collections window as a blue quaver.

NOTE: You will need to save frequently in Movie Maker: Got to File --> Save Project As... navigate to your folder (e.g.Desktop/Mogs Story), give it a name and press Save. From now on whenever you change anything in the timeline press Save (File-->Save)

Get the view right

Your timeline for your story should look like this.

If it looks like this; don’t worry, click the drop down menu that says storyboard and choose timeline.


Putting it Together

Firstly drag and drop your audio into the AUDIO/MUSIC area on your timeline and it should look like this.

NOTE: The audio needs to be at Time Zero. You can drag the audio by placing the mouse over the audio until it becomes a HAND. Now click and drag.

NEVER USE THE RED ARROWS THAT APPEAR AT THE EDGE OF THE AUDIO. These arrows will cut your audio and you don’t want that.

Then once you’ve done this, drag and drop your first picture into the area above your audio timeline where it says VIDEO. So it should look like this.


Making your story fit!

You will notice that your picture may not fit properly. To make them it fit, move the cursor over the edge of the picture and a little red arrow will show up this means you can drag and extend the picture.

Listen back to your story with the Play/Pause button (just above the timeline) and decide how long your picture needs to last.

NOTE: The length of your picture will usually correspond with a “flat bit” in the audio. ALWAYS allow the audio to dictate the flow of the pictures.

Once you can roughly judge where the picture needs to end move the mouse over the edge of the picture until you get the red arrow up and then click and drag the picture to the desired length.

(If you need to remove a picture just right click and select Delete.)


Transitions

Once you have your first picture lined up drop in your next one. It will automatically “snap” to the preceeding one:

That may seem OK but the problem is that the pictures will “jar” against one another. What we need to do is arrange them so they flow easily, they fade from on to another. This is called a transition.

To add a transition hold the mouse over the last picture you added until you see the HAND. Click and drag the picture backwards (left) so that it overlaps the preceeding one.


The further you drag it backwards the longer the transition lasts so keep it quite short.

Now repeat the earlier step of dragging out that picture to the desired length. Its really important you do it in this order. What it also means is that you have to be careful about the order in which you arrange your story as you won’t be able to easily replace or move pictures about in the timeline later. So get it right as you go along.

Here’s a breakdown of adding pictures:

• Drop the picture in

• Drag it backwards with the HAND to add a transition

• Drag it out with the RED ARROWS to the desired length

• Repeat for the length of the story

Once you reach the end of the story allow the last picture to overlap the audio just a little so it will have time to fade out.

With that done right click the very first picture and select FADE IN, the right click the last picture and select FADE OUT.


Effects

It is not recommended you use many effects on your digital story but you may do so if you wish. To do this, on the left hand side task bar there will be a section that says View Video Effects:

We’re only going to be using Ease In and Ease out. These gently zoom (in or out) for the duration of the picture. To use them just drag and drop them onto the picture you want to effect:

Be Gentle! Less is always more and don’t be tempted by any of the other effects!

(To remove an effect, right click on the picture and select View Effects... and in the pop up box you can remove the effects)

Play back your film and ensure that everything is in order.


Titles and Credits

If everything is in order we can finish the film by adding a title at the beginning:

On the left hand side of the screen click on Make Titles or Credits. On the next screen click on Add a title at the beginning of the movie:

Type in a title for your film and you’ll see a preview on the right hand side

Now click on Change the text, font and color (if you can’t see that link you just need to scroll down a bit)


Click on the little box next to the A (it will probably be blue) and select the colour black from the pop up colour palette (bottom left).

Click on the drop down arrow next to the font and select Arial.

That done click on Done, add title to movie:

You will now see the title at the beginning of the timeline but it will have pushed all the pictures to the right. So we need to move the audio to the right so it matches.

Move the mouse over the audio and use the HAND (not the red arrows) to click and drag the audio. You should feel it jump and stick to the first picture. Let it go and hey presto the film all matches up again.

Now watch your film back and make sure everything is as it should be before we commit this to a video file.


Finish up!

If you have done all this and are happy with your video Save it and publish it as a movie.

To publish it as a movie go to File --> Save Movie File, then you will see this come up.

Click next. Then this will appear.

Name your movie (use the title you chose earlier for the filename) and choose where you want to save it (e.g. Desktop/Mogs Story) and click NextNo index entries found.


DO NOT choose the option that says best quality for playback.

USE the option that says more settings and be sure that the drop down menu is set to DV-AVI (PAL)

Then click Next and you’re done.

Checklist:

• Import your media (pictures and audio)

• Drag the audio into the timeline and position it using the HAND (not the arrows)

• Drag in your first picture and use the ARROWS to adjust its length

• Drag in your next picture but this time drag it backwards with the HAND and then resize it using the ARROWS

• Repeat the last step for each picture until you reach the end of the story and make the last picture slightly longer than the audio.

• Add a fade in and out to the first and last picture respectively

• Add effects if you need them (Ease In/Ease Out)

• Add a title at the beginning of the film with a black background and Arial font

• Re-position the audio using the HAND so it lines up with the first picture

• Save the Movie file with DV-AVI(PAL) settings

Documents

Digital Storytelling Software Guide