How to preserve the magic of your wedding with muvee’s storyboard feature

Posted on May 14, 2012 by nevin

June is traditionally the most popular month to get married (although August is a close second). Why? The reason has to do with nice weather and with an ancient Roman goddess named Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage, and the namesake of that wonderful month, June.

We love June because, at least in muvee’s home base of San Francisco, the fog and mist of the winter and spring has faded, leaving beautiful dry days and plenty of warmth and sunshine. The flowers are in bloom, the birds are tweeting, and it’s just a wonderful time of year to tie the knot.

So, how to preserve the magic and memories of your wedding? Use muvee Reveal’s Storyboard feature.

Creating an interesting story is a great way to preserve memories of your wedding. To do this, use muvee Reveal’s storyboard tool to rearrange your wedding photos, videos and even music to tell your story. Add in your titles, credits and other calloits as you need them, and also rely on red-eye reduction capability, magicSpot™ for photos and magicMoments™ for video.

magicSpot™ and magicMoments™ are useful tools that allow you to focus on specific parts of a video or photo for added dramatic effect.

muvee Reveal automatically combines the final media, with the style and your music choice letting you concentrate on the overall story of your wedding. No editing or fussing with aligning music to media. Just 3 steps to create and tell your story.

Here’s a good example of a wedding slide show using muvee:

Preserve the magic moments of your wedding with muvee’s storyboard feature by easily dragging and dropping photos exactly where you want them. Try the photoElegance Style too!

Have a wedding video you’re proud of? Send us a link so we can share!

Posted in muvee Tips, Video Tips

Make videos hip with muvee’s Polaroid Style

Posted on April 25, 2012 by nevin

Ever since Instagram stunned the world by getting snapped up by Facebook, we here at muvee have wanted to point out that, hey, we also make videos hip, with, in your case muvee’s Polaroid Style, which is part of the wonderful photoFabulous Stylepack.

muvee Styles, of course, help make your home movies come alive. Our Polaroid Style does what it says on the tin: it adds retro Polaroid-style photographs to your video slideshow.

make movies better with muvee

Remember Polaroids?

Similar to Instagram and other popular mobile apps, muvee Styles such as photoFabulous make it easy to get creative and personalize your photos with funky retro themes and effects. Polaroid, of course, is a particularly elegant style that can help focus whoever’s watching your video on your photos.

The clean white boxes are a perfect contrast with whatever classic background you choose. Here’s an example:

Of course, as mentioned in a previous post, photoFabulous also includes the wonderful Postcards style which is more retro than retro, and will take you viewer back to an era where communications occurred over a matter of days or weeks, rather than the seconds or minutes of today’s internet-connected age.

Lomo Loco is another distinctive style that adds life to your photos by reimagining them as the products of Andy Warhol’s fevered mind, with beautiful saturated colors. What could be hipper than that? Here’s a sample:

Whichever muvee Style you choose, it’s clear that the future is friendly – thanks to technology it’s getting easier and easier to create highly personal and engaging photos and photo slideshows. Be part of the trend, and try a muvee Style today.

muvee makes video slideshow creation easier.

Posted in muvee Tips

Happy Earth Day from muvee

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Lindsay

This Earth Day we want to deliver one simple message: We can do better. We have selected some of our favorite photos from around the world: people making a difference, scenes from our glorious planet, things that help make our world a better place. We encourage you to view and share this muvee with your family and friends. If you love Mother Earth as much as we do, you’ll love this muvee.

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Posted in muvee News | Tagged , , , ,

3 tips to make video better

Posted on April 20, 2012 by nevin

tips to make video betterWe all know the muvee Reveal X makes it easier to make video better – it’s possible to just shoot a bunch of video, throw it into muvee, choose a Style, press a button, and out comes a fantastic looking video or photo slideshow.

However, the more muvees you make, the more you’re going to want to pay attention to the little details in order to up your game and make even better videos.

So, in the spirit of helping with self-improvement, and to help you reach your inner geek, here are 5 tips for making better videos:

1. Read the manual
These days, virtually every camera, videocamera, or phone makes it easy to point, click, and capture stunning images. However, just reading the manual will open up a world of possibilities, and will even help you enhance your creativity.  This will help from everything from improving color to capturing the appropriate depth of field, allowing you to tell a better story. Reading the manual can help you improve the battery life of your camera, for example, or get more out of your memory card. If you’ve read the manual and want to know more information, About.com has a great guide to video cameras.

2. Geek out and get prepared
Investing some time into your “video kit”  will help pay off in spades when it comes time to actually shooting video. Do you have an extra battery? How about an extra memory card? Or have you been able to download existing footage from your HDD disc in order to make room for more footage? What about a tripod? If you don’t want to lug around a large and unwieldy hunk of metal, why not go for  a flexible tripod?

3. Shoot more footage
By reading the manual you will master your camera, and by mastering your camera you will become more creative and innovative when shooting video. And by being prepared you’ll actually be able to capitalize on these new opportunities. So this means you will be able to shoot more footage, and as every great videographer knows, besides planning the single-biggest factor to taking and making better video is shooting a lot of footage.

If you shoot more footage you’ll have more to choose from when it comes time to throw video into muvee.

These were 3 tips to make video better… Do you have any you would like to share with us?

Posted in Video Tips

The best video editing program? muvee, of course!

Posted on April 14, 2012 by nevin

Spring is finally here, Mother’s Day is just around the corner (more on how we can help with that in a future post), and we’d just like to show you why we think muvee is the best video editing program around!

You take a lot of pictures, and we want to make sure you have the best chance possible to show as many friends and family these digital assets. Here’s how:

1.  muvee videos are never boring
We’d like to challenge you: when you share videos and photos with friends online, are they actually all that great? Sure, your friends and family will take a look, and may even print out a photo or two to tape to the fridge, but let’s face it – most of the videos and photos we take are viewed maybe once or twice by our friends, and that’s it.

muvee makes awesome videos, and it’s way easier to use than more expensive software programs out there

2. muvee is easy to use
Many video editing programs are designed for “power users” who are used to deciphering complicated software programs that are designed by an engineering team. These are great programs, but where muvee really shines is that it makes everything “push button”: fire up muvee, drag some photos and videos in from a file on your desktop, choose a Style, and wait for muvee to do the rest.

As an added bonus, muvee makes it super simple to share on YouTube and Facebook

3. muvee Styles make it easy to personalize your slideshows
There is no possible way we can explain every single muvee Stylepacks – there’s Styles for every type of use, from simple, elegant styles to jazzed up styles perfect for displaying your action packed material. Explore further on your own to find out how well the product works and what the styles will do for you.

Finally – we would point out the power behind magicSpot and magicMoments, as well as intertitles and captions that allow you to tweak the “automated” output to suit your needs.

That’s why we think muvee is the best video editing software around. Here’s a YouTube clip that explains the basics:

Posted in muvee Tips

One muvee, Three Styles: How Steve Fisher Changed Up His Springtime muvee in a Click

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Lindsay

Steve Fisher, self-proclaimed muvee Maniac and avid amateur astronomer, has been using muvee since autoProducer 6. He mainly makes muvees for his family and 2 granddaughters, and like many muvee users, Steve’s team videos are often anticipated.

His favorite thing about muvee? “Did I mention I have a wife, two teen age granddaughters and two Shih Tzu’s at home? Did I mention my love for Astronomy, camping and car shows? The absolute best thing about using muvee Reveal X is how fast you can produce an excellent muvee.”

We had asked via Facebook for some volunteers to share their Springtime muvees with us and Steve was kind enough to share a muvee that he created to encompass the change from Winter to Spring. “Most of the photos for this video were taken at home in my wife’s gardens, at one of my favorite places in the world (Great Basin National Park) and at the Stansbury Park Observatory Complex where I do most of my astronomy.”

To show how each muvee can be completely changed in just a click by switching the Style, we asked Steve to create the same muvee using a different Style. Steve told us: “Having different Styles at your fingertips allows almost instant gratification for any project. With the number of stylePacks and the variations available in them it is hard to imagine not being able to find several Styles that will do an excellent job on your muvee.”

Steve’s original muvee was made with the Squares Style from the Mix It Up stylePack. Check out the muvee here:

To add some light and clouds, Steve then changed the Style to Soar, also from the Mix It Up stylePack.

Lastly, Steve decided to try one more Style – and from the Wedding stylePack. This muvee made with the Velvet Style was Steve’s favorite.

We asked Steve why he chose the Styles he did, and he told us, “The theme for these three muvees is “Spring” and so I wanted a slower pace, a more easy going style. The Velvet Style from the Wedding stylePack and the Soar Style from Mix It Up were nice and slow paced. The version using squares from Mix It Up was just about as upbeat as I wanted to go with this video.”

Thanks to Steve for showing us how just a click of a button can change the whole feel of your muvee! Which one is your favorite??

Posted in muvee User Profiles | Tagged , , , , , ,

Get the hottest Styles for spring (muvee Styles that is!)

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Lindsay

Want to give your videos more personality and more edge? Looking for ways make your muvee come alive with pacing, fades, and transitions? Then check out muvee Styles and find a perfect, and unique, look for your videos.

At this time of year the muvee team sees a lot of muvees created with photo and video moments from Spring Break, Easter, the outdoors, and family vacations. To help you with your Springtime muvee-making we thought we’d highlight some of our favorite Styles for the season.

Choose a muvee Style that’s unique to you

For those can’t-be-missed Spring Break photos, check out the Polaroid Style, featured in our latest stylePack, photoFabulous, which puts the hip in hipster, from retro effects and lighting to throw-back classics:

Hitting up the great outdoors? The Mojave Style from the California stylePack will add some grit and gravel to your big adventures:

To add a little Spring time color to your photos and videos, check out the Soar Style from the Mix It Up stylePack that even comes with 5 different background to choose from!

No matter what Style you choose, your muvee will look different with each one, all with the click of a button. In our next post, we’ll show you what a difference a Style can make.

Choose your own muvee Style here. And, don’t forget to tell us what your favorite muvee Style is!

Posted in muvee Tips | Tagged , , , ,

Video tip: mistakes to avoid when shooting home movies

Posted on March 30, 2012 by nevin

Easter is just behind us, which means most families had their videocameras out or, likely these days, tried to figure out how to take the best videos using their iPhone or Samsung.

While fiddling with the video settings on a smart phone is a topic best left to another day (although we do encourage you to explore our smart phone video editing app), as Spring approaches and people become more active, here are some video tips:

Mistakes to avoid when shooting home movies

1. Shooting into the sun
If you have young children, just keeping them in-frame can be quite a challenge, which means that it can be easy to forget about the position of the sun.

Shooting into the sun will basically make it very difficult to figure to see your subjects’ faces. Shadows will be accentuated, and colors will be washed out.

So, the solution is, always try to shoot video with the sun behind you. The natural lighting will bring out the best in whoever you are shooting.

2. Shooting from below
The change in perspective is jarring and unusual, and completely unflattering to your subject, especially if they haven’t trimmed their nose hairs.

Another equally awkward scenario is shooting video of your subjects while they are eating. There’s nothing more embarassing than watching a grown man masticulate, although video of babies digging into their first birthday cake is pure gold.

3. Shooting children from above
This is one of the most common mistakes we see here at muvee HQ. Why? Once again, it’s often difficult to keep the kids in-frame as they run around like crazed wild animals. So, as you’re chasing after them, remember that capturing video of their face and eyes is infinitely more interesting than video than video of the top of their head.

Remember to squat down or kneel as you take video, to get the most interesting shots.

4. Distracting backgrounds
We tend to tune out the most familiar parts of our surroundings that will appear completely new and noteworthy to people watching our videos. If you’re shooting home movies, is there clutter such as toys, clothes or whatever else on your living room floor? If you’re taking birthday video of lighting the candles on the cake in the kitchen, are the dishes washed? If you’re outdoors and you’re taking video of your kid learning to ride a bike, is the background distracting?

5. Shooting indoors
Beware of artificial light! Conventional light bulbs, while providing “warm” light, can cause sharp contrasts, and can emphasize wrinkles, goiters, saggy skin, hollow eyes, and, if given the chance, pigeon toes. On the other hand, fluorescent lighting washes everything out, so your subject will look either like a shop-window mannequin or a vampire… or a combination of both. If you need to shoot indoors, the best thing to do is to shoot near a window during the day, or turn on as much lights as possible – a combination of conventional lighting and florescents may do the trick.

After years of trial and error, and in an effort to avoid having his pigeon toes exposed to the world, Nevin has decided to share his video tips with muvee’s large circle of friends.

Posted in muvee Tips, Video Tips

Make video slideshows come alive with muvee Styles

Posted on March 28, 2012 by nevin

We all take a lot of photos and videos when on vacation or even hanging out on the weekend with our kids, but when it comes time to actually make video come alive, well, editing can be tough work.

Of course, readers of this blog will already know all about how muvee can automatically create a great slideshow – the program just seems to know what combination of photos is going to work best, and in what order, and as an added bonus, sets the whole thing to music.

However, as more advanced users of muvee can tell you, you’re missing out if you’re not using muvee Styles. It’s like magic –  muvee Styles turns your photos and video clips into engaging movies that your friends and family are actually going to want to watch and share with others.

muvee Styles makes videos using our patented (and cooly-named) “Artistic Intelligence engine” which is hand-tuned to use the right mix of effects, transitions, background treatments and even fonts to help you make anything from rockstar music videos to romantic wedding slideshows.

Each stylePack contains three Styles sold together as add-ons to increase the creative possibilities of all muvee video products,  and is all about helping our users create fantastic and impressive slideshows from photos, videos and music in a few steps – add titles, credits, captions and voiceovers to tell my stories in a better way. The many Styles with their different animations, effects and transitions, together with their personalization capabilities, combined with the possibility of creating my your very own custom Styles, makes a great tool for hobbyists, or people just wanting to make sure their relatives and family

Nevin challenges you to make video slideshows using muvee Styles.

Posted in Photo Tips, Video Tips

Use photo slideshow software, bring memories to life

Posted on March 16, 2012 by nevin

Not everyone feels confident shooting home movies, but it’s always fun to bring vacation snapshots to life by using photo slideshow software.

Of course, thanks to YouTube and powerful smartphones, we’re all trained now to watch videos, and nothing but, so if you can’t get your head around taking videos, or maybe think your camera setup isn’t quite up to snuff, it might be difficult to attract the attention of friends and families with a link to a set of photos on Facebook.

Never fear, muvee Reveal X can provide you with the tools to

There a couple of rules to follow when creating photo slideshows (and try to think about this when you are taking vacation snaps). First, try to vary the kinds of photos you include in your slideshow. Try to have scenic shots, closeup shots, and vary the kinds of photos you’re taking of your kids. Closeups of smiling faces are great, as are action shots, or shots of your kids framed with the (hopefully) gorgeous scenery of your vacation destination.

As well, pay attention to the actual size of the photos you’re loading into your photo slideshow software – you want to make sure your audience can actually see the photos, and you also want to make sure the photos will fit the screen. The standardized format for either standard or widescreen includes a frame size of 720 x 480 pixels. So, you do not want your source photos to exceed 1000 x 750 pixels.

Of course, you can leave it all to muvee Reveal X to take care – just make sure your photos are large enough so that your intended audience can see all the details.

To get more of an idea of how our muvee Maniacs are using Reveal X, here’s an example of a Hawaii vacation video created with muvee photo slideshow software.

If you really want to create an amazing slideshow, check out muvee’s photoFabulous stylePack. For example, here’s an example of the Postcard Style for muvee Reveal X:

If this doesn’t suit your fancy, there are other stylePack options to bring your slideshow to life.

We think muvee Reveal X is probably the best photo slideshow software on the market today.

Posted in muvee Tips, Video Tips