Tribute videos benefit from some planning . . .
. . . which helps us to process everything more quickly and provide you with an entertaining, satisfying video remembrance. Nothing here is complicated, and not everything may apply to your particular video. We are readily available to answer questions, so please don’t hesitate to contact us.
How long will it be?
- When calculating run time for the tribute video, we generally allow 10 to 12 images per minute. For example, a three minute video will need approximately 30 to 36 images. We’ve found the most satisfying runtimes tend to be between 10 and 20 minutes, although we’ve produced some that ended up close to 30 minutes in length, so be sure to plan accordingly.
How big should the photos be? What format?
- Any type of printed image up to 8″ x 10″ in size can be easily scanned by our high-speed equipment here and returned to you afterwards. Try to avoid prints created by inkjet printers – when these are scanned they produce a noticeable moiré (or swirl) pattern. If possible, it is much preferable to have the original digital image file that the print was made from.
- Photos in digital form need to be at least 1000 pixels wide. anything smaller than this will show up as a very blocky image on screen. Note: when sending photos over the Internet via e-mail, be sure the e-mail program does not compress the image in order to make it fit into an e-mail (most e-mail programs will do this automatically without telling you.)
- We can hand scan magazine and newspaper pages. Be aware that the body text from these is generally very hard to read on screen. Headlines and photographs generally show up fine, although newspaper photos can sometimes show moiré patterns.
How should I arrange them?
- Photos should be arranged in the order in which you would like them to appear. Important: be very careful not to write directly on the back of any photos, as the writing can very easily imprint through the photo paper and be visible as raised lines on the front of the photograph. We recommend using sticky notes on the back of any photos that need annotations.
- Digital photographs should have their files renamed so they will be listed in the proper order within the computer folder. It’s also generally a good idea to incorporate some sort of description as part of the name (this is not essential for our work, but is sometimes helpful.)
- Suggestions for order of the photos: chronological order is the most popular way to organize photos, but we have also seen photos grouped by topic (“growing up”, “friends”, “school”, “taking care of business”.) If you would like us to put title pages in at various places within the video, write the title on a piece of paper and insert that into the stack of photos where you would like the title to appear.
What about music?
- Royalty free music from our library is available to add flair and a connecting thread running throughout these videos. We also highly recommend The Music Bed (www.themusicbed.com) as a source of contemporary vocal music that can be licensed for video at reasonable rates (starting at around $50 per cut, depending on where it will be used.) We do NOT recommend using copyrighted music without properly secured permission, due to legal issues.
- It’s helpful to us in selecting royalty-free music to know what genre and/or musical artists the honoree prefers. If you have specific types or themes that you would like used for specific segments, please let us know. There is a considerable amount of flexibility here. The only thing to be aware of it is cuts of music less than about 30 seconds are usually perceived as being too short – we recommend 60 seconds or more, and we do have the ability to tailor music length to fit specific segments.
How will the finished video be delivered?
- We normally deliver the finished product as a high definition video file in electronic form (mp4) on a flash drive for computer playback. The flash drive will also include the digital files for any photos that we scanned for your video. If you would prefer to have your video as a standard definition DVD for playing in a set top player, please let us know. Blu-ray DVD format is also optionally available.
As always, please contact us with any questions about getting everything in order for us to produce your Tribute Video.