January 2007 Meeting: 'Mucking about with Multimedia’ by Paul Brooks

( Attempts at ) Presenting Family History in Text, Image, Sound and Motion

Paul began by looking back at the technological leap in the last 25 years, from the birth of the IBM PC to the mobile phones of today which can share voice, text, images and video. He highlighted the mass of images, slides, cine film, audio and camcorder tapes that most families have accumulated over the last 50 years, which would become meaningless within a generation if not properly identified and preserved for the future. Scanning was discussed with advice on resolution and file formats, along with importing images from memory cards and photo CDs, a couple of more advanced editing tricks, and the use of images in family history programs, charts, and word processed booklets. Paul's view was that images scanned at 100 dpi, and saved in the JPG format would probably be fine for general use on web pages, etc, at the moment, but for editing, zooming in, and future viewing, it would be worth scanning a copy at a minimum of 300dpi, but preferably 600 dpi, and saving in a non-compressed TIF format.Creating and editing sound files was considered using a microphone, importing from audio tape or old records, followed by a method to create a slide show with soundtrack using Microsoft Movie Maker. He related his personal experience of converting cine film to VHS tape and DVD, both through the use of a specialist company, and home projection and digital recapture. Methods of importing digital video were then reviewed, directly from a camcorder using firewire and indirectly through a coaxial cable to a WinTV card. Finally Paul explained the basic principles of editing digital video, combining the moving image with soundtrack and voice using a timeline, and the principles of creating a family history DVD using Ulead VideoStudio software.. Multimedia was recognized to require 'fast thinking PCs, with plenty of brain cells’ for processing 25 to 30 pictures every second in the case of video, so a machine of at least 3ghz speed with 2gb of RAM was recommended. Storing video at a reasonable quality was seen to consume around 4.5 gigabytes per hour before being processed, thus requiring large volumes of disk storage. Ideally members considering their next machine should also include Firewire as well as USB connections for attaching digital cameras and camcorders, etc.In summary he reminded the audience that they should ensure that all their existing photographs, slides, cine, audio and video should be clearly labelled, and that old cine films really should be converted now before the reels become too brittle with aging to be projected.In the question and answer session that followed it was noted that members with old cine film with a wider social significance might wish to contact the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, based at the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester.

(To see this report with illustrations go to
www.berksfhs.org.uk/events/MeetingSummaries/meetingsummary2007_01_17_multimedia.htm

Program for 2007

Wednesday 17th January 2007
Mucking about with Multimedia: by Paul Brooks
Presenting Family Histories in words, pictures, sound and motion pictures.

Wednesday 21st February 2007
Family History Online and other genealogical search engines
Compare and contrast Ancestry, FamilyHistoryOnline, FindMyPast, FreeREG, etc for information relating to England and Wales.

Wednesday 21st March 2007
Putting Your Name on the Map: by Howard Benbrook
Howard will illustrate his talk with 'live' demonstrations of the programs Surname Atlas, Gen Map and LDS Companion.

Wednesday 18th April 2007
Publishing Family History: by Barry Jerome

Wednesday 16th May 2007
British Library Newspapers: by Stewart Gillies
The collections and services, including information on electronic newspaper resources, and news of two exciting digitisation projects taking place in 2007 followed by the Branch Annual Meeting

Wednesday 20th June 2007
Blogging: by Gillian Stevens
Using a web log to record your own family history

Wednesday 18th July 2007
Creating a Family History Presentation in Powerpoint: by Paul Brooks
Incorporating scanned images and screen shots

August 2007
No Meeting

Wednesday 19th September 2007
From Balaklave to Barrackpore: by Peter Beaven
Following a Family History using Web Pages, Wills, the LDS, Censuses, online Newspapers and Journals.

Wednesday 17th October 2007
Getting your Family History into Print: by Kate Parchment
Practical advice from Parchment Printers

Wednesday 21st November
Scotlandspeople and the like: by Phil Wood
Using the ScotlandPeople website to find birth, marriage, death records plus census and much more