Making a movie with SentenceShaper files

If you have a web page, you can post an exported workbook on it, as explained in a separate section. But what if you do not have a web page? Youtube and Facebook don't let you post mp3 files. Instead, you will need to turn your exported mp3 files into a video, which you can then upload to these or other sites.

For this purpose, you can use two free programs that come with Windows...if you don't find them on your computer, you can download them for free from Microsoft. They are Windows Movie Maker (in Windows XP and Vista) and Windows Live Movie Maker (in Windows 7).

There is a lot of clear documentation about how to use these programs. You might want to do a Google search on "How to use Windows Movie Maker" ...you'll find many links to short tutorials about these very useful (and FREE) programs.

Or you can start with their Wikipedia entries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Movie_Maker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Movie_Maker

Crash course in Windows Movie Maker

In this section, we will give you a quick lesson about how to turn an exported SentenceShaper workbook into a movie. The instructions are for Windows Live Movie Maker (in Windows 7), but Windows Live Movie Maker (for Windows Vista and XP), while a different program, feels very similar.

As we noted earlier, some of the export applications we suggest are designed for the more adventurous among you. This is one of them...it does require that you try out a third party application, so it may not be something you have time to do. But it is not that hard to make a very simple movie, and the process itself can be very entertaining, so don't assume that it will be painful.

How to make a movie of just one workbook page

We will start by telling you how to make a movie from one exported workbook page. Recall that each exported page has one mp3 sound file ("Page_1_Speech.mp3") and its companion picture ("Page_1_Picture.jpeg").

When you first open Windows Live Movie Maker, the screen will look like the first screenshot here. Click the "Browse for videos and pictures" button (outlined in red), and browse to your SentenceShaper Export Folder and the sub-folder where your workbook files are stored. Only the picture files will be displayed, though. Choose the first image (e.g., "Page_1_Picture.jpeg") and click "Open".

The picture will now appear in the little screen on the left; a thumbnail will also appear in the "timeline" area on the right. Now you will add the sound file for that page. On the "Home" tab at the top of the screen, click the menu labeled "Add music" (speech and music files are the same...just sound files), and then choose its sub-menu "Add music at the current point...". They are marked with an arrow in the second screen shot.

You will now be asked to browse to find a sound file to add. Go to your Export Folder again. This time, it will only show you the sound files in the folder (e.g., "Page_1_Speech.mp3"). Click "Open" to add this sound file. A label with its name will show up above the thumbnail of the picture you just imported.

By the way, you will not have to go searching for your Export Folder every time. It will now remember where to look for pictures and sound files.

One last step: on the top of the screen, click the "Project" tab, and then click "Fit to Music"; both are outlined in red in the next screenshot.

The purpose of clicking "Fit to Music" is to make sure that the picture is shown long enough for the sound file to play.

Now you are ready to turn this into a movie (of course, you may want to add more pictures and sound files...we'll get to that). From the leftmost menu, click "Save movie..." and then choose among the various options.

You can just choose "For my computer". Now give your movie a name, and remember where you saved it. The movie file will end in ".wmv" (which you may or may not see, depending upon how your computer is set up) and it is now ready to be uploaded to Youtube or Facebook. You can even do that from within Windows Live Movie Maker by clicking the "Home" tab and then clicking the Facebook or YouTube icons at the top of the screen. The program will lead you through the process.

If you want to save the movie project, go to the same menu on the left but choose "Save project". That will save the collection and order of all the sound files and pictures you have added, so that you can go back and edit it (or perhaps re-save it as a movie in a more compressed format).

Making a movie with more than one workbook page

In order to make sure that the sound files and pictures are in sync, you will need to start by making a separate movie for each page, and then combining them into a single movie.

Here are the specific steps:

• Create a single movie for each workbook page, following the steps outlined above (and making sure that you click "Fit to Music" each time).
• Now open a new Windows Live Movie Maker project. But instead of importing mp3 and jpg files, this time you will import each of the little mini-movies that you made, one for each workbook page, in order. How? Click the "Home" tab and then click "Add pictures and Videos", outlined in red in the earlier screen shot. Now add in all the mini-movies in order, and create a single movie from them.

In the future, we may enhance the Export feature to create movie files directly within SentenceShaper.