Let's start our Family History Video!! We've been working for months to digitize our memories.  Today we import them into a video and begin the editing process.  It's a video - click here.

Today's blog is the second video in our Family History Video editing tutorial series.  Click here to watch.

Today begins the video editing process using Corel VideoStudio Ultimate X7.  Click here to see our first video.

Your ‘To Do’ list for this week is obvious. 

1. Choose a subject matter – Whether an individual, a family unit, your research journey, or an event.
2. Build a folder on your computer for that subject.
   
3. Go through your now digitized library and look for items that will support your subject and add it to that folder.
   
4. Go to our Links page and click on the Corel VideoStudio X7 Ultimate. Download at least the trial version of the software. 
   

Have you thought about what or who you want your first family history video to highlight?  We brought you some ideas on Monday.  Did you think of any others? (Feel free to leave a comment.  We’d love your input!)  Maybe you just want to give Mom, Dad or even the kids a unique Christmas gift this year. 

What would you like to include in your video?  You’ve digitized many mediums.  You may have even done some new filming or interviewing. Take some time to look through it. If you’ve been working for years to research your family tree, trying to narrow it down to a few minutes may feel like stuffing an elephant into a sugar bowl.  It is simply not possible.  So choose just one section of your tree for now.  Choose a family unit or a person or a couple that you have some pictures of.

Next build a folder on your computer with that name, i.e., Harry and Ida Smith, or Harry Smith, or the Harry Smith Family. Move or copy everything that is related to your subject into the folder.  Include all your pictures, videos, stories, and research specific to your subject. Not sure what to include or when to say “when”? It’s ok.  You can always add things you may have missed so try to just include things that you couldn’t tell of their existence without. For Harry and Ida, it would include their wedding pictures and maybe the family portrait. Do you have that scanned newspaper article about Harry or pictures of him in his military uniform or a photo of his medals? The Smith Family would include that family portrait that includes all of the children and maybe some family videos. Very possibly there will be overlap in what you’ll use.  Harry’s life included his wife and children so doing his story would include many of the same things as a story about him and Ida or a story about their entire family unit. But if you’ve got enough that is specific to Harry – maybe his business life or life before he met Ida – then you might want to make one just of him.  We are just shooting for a focus right now so the project doesn't seem overwhelming.  You can always make one of the entire family unit later and it could be made up of several short focused segments.

We are going to move into software next but before we do we need to have an idea of what we want to concentrate on.  There are many ways to present your family history in film.  Here are a few examples:

One Event – Special Birthday? Graduation? Wedding? I’ve mentioned before that my first video compilation was 16 years ago for my parents’ 50th Wedding Anniversary. It was a history of their life together up to that point.  It was about 25 to 30 minutes long.  There was no script but it had video with sound and without, interviews, background music, and still pictures. They were thrilled with it.  They knew each house they had lived in, each park they frequented, each favorite restaurant, each area of town that the street car wound through as they met.  We didn’t need to explain or name each of their 4 babies or which year pictures were taken. It was a gift for them only. If I were doing it today, I would be thinking of what people 50-100 years from now would be thinking as they watch it.  That requires a bit more explanation, even if it’s simply adding text titles. 

One Family Member – It’s not unusual for people not to want to talk about themselves, but ask them to tell you about their mother and, wow! You’ll get all kinds of information. If you have enough information to fill 15 minutes on just one family member, that may be the way to go.  Then follow up with another family member and another until you feel you’ve covered as much of the family as you are comfortable with. 

One Family Unit – This may be the most work but the most rewarding.  It will show a true family history and the relationships with parents and siblings.  Most of us can choose a time in our history with shared struggles, tough decisions, relying on family, and subsequent outcomes. What a phenomenal gift to future generations!

One Year in Time – Maybe there was a pivotal time in someone’s or your family’s life.  Or maybe you have so many films and pictures of your grandchild that you are going to concentrate on one year and add another each year – much like scrapbookers do each year with the family photos.

Memorialize – You may have made a video or compilation in haste for a loved one’s funeral service.  You could add dates, names, relationships, eras, or remaining family interviews now that the raw sorrow has lessened. 

Your Tree Research - You may want to simply make a video explaining what you have learned in your research of the family tree.  For Western Hemisphere non-natives or Aussies, it could be you’ve traced back to your original country. You may want to cite your sources, show pictures of the boat that they traveled on to their new world, or your suspicions as to why they left their home country.  Even Old World families moved around.  If you have worked to research and found a lot of answers, think about doing that 50 years or more from now!  Don’t make them start from scratch or lose all the work you’ve done!  Put it into a video/book that can be archived and then found by future family members.

Give some thought to what you have and what you would like your first project to highlight.  If you are new to video editing, you may want to choose a simple subject and shoot for a 10-15 minute film.

Since we told you about video software on Wednesday, this weekend try to have a look at a few videos on Corel VideoStudio X7.  You can easily find them by going to You Tube and searching.  Here are a few to check out:

• Software Tutorialer - Corel VideoStudio Pro X7 Tutorial for Beginners 
• Corel VideoStudio – See what’s new in Corel VideoStudio X7
• Freedomearthmoon1 – Corel VideoStudio Pro x7---Ultimate & Pro Features Overview    

 One of the reasons we recommend the Ultimate version instead of the basic version is that it includes three specific things that don’t come in the basic version: a stabilizing filter that is great for those shaky home movies, Boris Graffiti which gives lots of extra title options, and Roto Pen which will allow you to show the trail of your family history.  

• Here’s a great video showing an example: gripps2211 – Corel VideoStudio Pro X5 – roto pen
  

One caveat: Do not let any of these overwhelm you.  They will cover a lot of information and much of it you will not need to know, or certainly will not need to know all at once.  Treasured Archives will walk you through each step in the coming weeks.  These are just to give you an idea of what they are.  

Now that everything is digitized, it’s time to compile all your information into a video.  That requires video software.  Don’t panic!  We will walk you through each step. First though, let me explain why we chose the software we recommend. 

We have taken several years to come to the conclusion to recommend Corel VideoStudio.  Whatever is the most current Ultimate X (just upgraded to Ultimate X7.)  It is the most affordable while still giving you plenty of what you will use for a family history video.  It offers many options without being overwhelming to learn.  Perfect for the genealogist that doesn’t really want to become a movie maker but still wants to make their hours of research available and engaging to future generations.

If you already own and know how to use technical video software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, Corel VideoStudio would be redundant.  But if you are new to video editing both of those can be very time consuming to learn.  There are many classes you can take at your local community college for Adobe products but I have never found one specific to Premiere Pro.  Same goes for Final Cut Pro.  That means that unless you are in the business or are attending a college and working in a Bachelor program, you will have to learn video software on your own.  That is really scary if you’ve never done it before!! 
And these two programs are not always user friendly.  Simple things require you at least know some of the language they use and they are not always words that you use in everyday life. 

Both of those programs also require a large amount of memory on your computer to function well so that may require an added cost of buying a computer, graphics card, etc.  If you plan to do other types of movies that require a lot of special effects it may be worth the memory and extra cost but most family history movies don’t need more than a few basic special effects.

There are other programs out there that are less expensive than even Corel Video Studio Ultimate but I found them very “buggy” (crashing often) or they didn’t do enough to make an engaging, comprehensive family history movie.  The difference in cost is minimal – too minimal not to get the better software.  The simplest programs that are built into your windows or mac, Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, just don’t have enough functions to tell your story.

The final criteria were support and learning aids.  The Corel team is very helpful should you need them and there are lots of great You Tube videos available to learn how to do different things.  You can also buy private sessions with Corel and they are great.  You tell them what you want to focus on and they do their best to answer each question you ask.

In summary, Corel VideoStudio Ultimate X7 is affordable (under $100), easy to learn and use, doesn’t use up as much memory on your computer as the larger programs, and you can learn from many different sources. We could have offered many software options on our site but since we recommend Corel VideoStudio Ultimate X7 and will be using it to teach you how to make your family history movie, that’s what you’ll see on our Links page.  Should you decide to take up this endeavor, we would appreciate your buying it from us.  You can even start with a Free Trial.

Since we started this journey into making our own family history video to be archived, we have tried our best to teach you how to digitize every type of medium (photos, 8mm film, slides, negatives, etc.) and how to capture new footage interviewing family members. In Wednesday’s blog, we likened the movie Boyhood to our family history stories. 

Speaking of boyhood…This week is our grandson’s 15th birthday (see picture.)  It was such fun going through our digitized old tapes to give him a video of himself on his first birthday and the following few months.  Doing that exercise on each family birthday this year has been a wonderful side benefit to digitizing all the videos and pictures that make up our lives.

So here’s your ‘to do’ for this week:

As you go about digitizing your photos and videos to add to the family history archives, don’t forget to enjoy the here and now.  Take more photos and videos as you see family and friends.  Those will be treasures one day. Call it your Labor Day of love.