Adventures in Movie Maker and Microsoft Surface

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About a week ago I was asked by another department who was putting together an annual report if I could create a 1 to 2 minute video about my work with Microsoft Surface here at the University of Virginia. So I wrote up a script recorded a voice over and even included some of my own music. I shot the video myself on an inexpensive digital camera and included some still I shot. Since the subject was going to be a Microsoft product; I thought I would put the whole thing together using Microsoft Movie Maker versus iMovie (I hate the new one anyway). Movie Maker was decent enough to work in. It had all the editing and special FX tools you would expect. When I was done I exported it as a High Definition WMV. Here’s the kicker. The department putting the online annual report together asked for the file to be in H.264. Movie Maker only does WMV’s and Flash for YouTube. So I put the movie together in iMovie and saved it as an H.264. The iMove file was pixelated and the audio was full of spots of static. The high definition WMV was simply gorgeous. Below is the standard definition. In the area of Surface application development; our grad student working on the project is quickly putting information together that will be used in the applications. Things like metadata about the material in the applications. Transcripts of the letter from the various signers of the Declaration of Independence are also being worked on. Me? I’ve been working on the button array that will be used to access information about the Signer you’ve accessed. I am also working on using the new Menu Element that SP1 for Surface brought us. I also would like to include a sound scheme to this batch of software. We will see about that. The good thing is the release schedule has been extended to I can take some time on this. There is only my own crazy need to get some new programs on the Surface unit soon! :-) Microsoft Surface at the University of Virginia Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

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