If you haven’t discovered the treasure Windows Photo Story, you are missing out! Photo Story, a free download from Microsoft (sorry, no Mac version), allows you to quickly create a slideshow with your still images that pans and zooms across your images. You can add titles, narration, and even create a soundtrack from within the program. You can download it here.
Photo Story creates a WMV file by default, which is not suitable for podcasting on most sites. Instead you need to get it into the format required by the site hosting your podcast. In this example, we use PowerMediaPlus.com as our host. Here’s how to pull this off (it’s really not that hard)!
1. Download and install the free iPod video converter.
2. Convert your completed Photo Story (WMV) file with the converter utility. Click Add Files, find the file, then Convert!
3. The converted file will be made into an .mp4 format. You could also select .mov if necessary. Some podcasts hosts will allow you to upload these file types. For our purposes, PowerMediaPlus requires another file type: .m4v.
4. Simply change the file extension so that the file is renamed: movie.mp4 à movie.m4v. (Note: if your file extensions are not showing, you will first need to show your file extensions.)
5. Now you’re ready to upload the file to your podcast hosting site!
Here’s an example Photo Story that I have turned into a video podcast: http://tinyurl.com/2a2e7o
If you are using Firefox, simply click on the link and it will launch iTunes and subscribe you to the podcast. Otherwise, open iTunes, navigate to Advanced à Subscribe to podcast then enter this URL into the dialog box:
If you convert a Photo Story into a video podcast, I’d love to know about it! Leave a comment below.
