Tips for Gathering and Preparing Tribute Video Materials

When calculating run time for a tribute video, we generally allow 10 to 12 images per minute. In other words, for a three minute video, we will need approximately 30 to 36 images. Generally speaking, more is better.

Any type of printed image up to 8 inch by 10 inch in size can be easily scanned by our high-speed equipment here and returned to the owner afterwards. Prints created by inkjet printers should be avoided, as when scanned they produce a noticeable moiré (swirl) pattern — if possible, it is much preferable to have the original image file that the print was made from.
Photos in digital form should be at least 2000 pixels wide, although images down to 1000 pixels wide will also usually work. Anything smaller than this will tend to show up as a very blocky image on screen. Note: when sending photos over the Internet via e-mail, be sure your 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 have a file transfer service available at no charge that will entirely bypass the need to send via email.
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.

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. For that reason, we recommend using pre-numbered sticky notes on the back of photos to organize them, and also for 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.

Music: 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, and music can generally be shortened as needed to fit any particular segment of the video. We do advise against cuts of music less than about 30 seconds in length, as they are usually perceived as being too short, which is distracting to the viewer.
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.

We normally deliver the finished product as a high definition video file in electronic form (mp4) designed for computer playback, usually over the Internet. If the file is large, we can easily burn it onto a flash drive as a data file to be copied onto a computer. If you would prefer to have it 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.