How to show a before and after in video form & hosting on flickr

[weezerisrock]

If you want to show off the post processing on a photo there is no better way to do it than a before and after. To show the beginnings of your photo and then to show the artistic flair (other than the photo itself obviously) that helps define you as an artist. There are multiple ways to do this but I'm going to focus on making short movies for this tutorial.

FLICKR

Flickr has a great new feature with video hosting which they have recently added to the free accounts so more than just pro accounts can utilize it. There are some drawbacks to only having the free account however, and they are as follows.

Free account:

• only 2 video uploads a month
• videos are only available in standard definition
• file limit of 150MB (more than enough for this tutorial)

Pro account:

• unlimited uploads
• videos are available in standard definition and high definition
• file limit of 500MB

In both cases you can only upload only 90 seconds of video. If you upload something longer than that flickr will only show the first 90 seconds. Since most of our videos won't be going past 10 seconds at the most, this should be of no consequence. I do recommend going pro if you haven't. At only $2 a month ($24 for the year) you really can't go wrong.

PICTURES

For this to be effective, you need to have two copies of your picture. One with all of the attributes at 0, and one with your edits in them. It will be easiest if you keep this in mind from the get go and create a copy from the beginning that will be unaffected by your edits. You can still go back and remove your edits later, but it is possible to lose your edits if something catastrophic were to happen.

Lightroom has a great preset called "zeroed". Clicking this will take your photo back to its unedited state, which then once you export it, you can quickly hit "edit" on the menu bar and "undo" and viola! All of your edits are back. But as I mentioned before, its a lot easier and a lot safer to create a copy of your photo from the get go and keep one edited and one not for pictures you want to do this on.

Sample before picture:


Sample after picture:


I'm using this photo because there were quite a few obvious edits done, the major one being the cloning on the grass. So this will make it easy to see the edits on the video.

VIDEO EDITING

There is quite a bit of variety in video editing software. From Microsoft Movie Maker, which should be loaded on any computer that has Windows XP SP2 or higher on it, (Imovie for you mac fans) to free downloadable software *example*, to higher end programs such as Adobe Premier, there is quite a bit to choose from for any budget. I will be working in Sony Vegas for this tutorial but just about any editor will do. They just have to be able to load pictures and do a fade transition.

Once I open Vegas, I import my pictures into the media manager. From there I merely drag them to the video track. The nice thing about vegas is you just drag the picture to the length you want. Your track shouldn't run longer than 10 seconds at the most. Otherwise you risk losing the interest of the person watching. I also recommend you start your transition fairly quickly as you do not want people wondering if the video has started or not. I have found what works for me is around a 7 second showing of the picture with the transition starting 2 seconds into the video. The transition needs to be fairly fast as well. The slower the change the less dramatic the edit will appear. I usually keep this around 1 second to 1.5 seconds.

In Vegas, all you have to do is drop your first picture to the video track then drop your second picture down on top of it and the software will automatically create a fade transition. IF you are using another program you may have to tell the program to use a fade transition.



Link to Large

After you have the pictures the way you want them, its just a matter of rendering out the movie! This is where it could get tricky. You need to tell it what kind of video you want to make, and it needs to be compatible with flickr.

This is what flickr will allow to be uploaded:

• AVI (Proprietary codecs may not work)
• WMV
• MOV (AVID or other proprietary codecs may not work)
• MPEG (1, 2, and 4)
• 3gp

Use whichever you are comfortable with. If you are not sure which one to use, WMV or MOV would probably be your best bet. As far as bitrate, the higher the number the better quality your movie, and the bigger your file size. No matter how high you have your bitrate though you should not hit anywhere near the 150MB mark for a 7 second video. Play around with the bitrate and see what works best for you!

UPLOAD AND ENJOY

At this point your video is ready to be uploaded to flickr and shared with the world! Upload like you would a photo and when you want to paste it into a webpage, look for the button at the top that is labeled "/EMBED" and you will receive your code, just like sharing a picture from flickr. Be forewarned however, if you use wordpress as your blog, they have a short code to make your flickr video work. It's [flickr video=http:www.flickr.com/yourusername/linktoyourvideo]. Just copy and paste the web address and it should show up. Your video will have to be set to public though to share in that fashion, otherwise you will just see a black box with an error.

And here is our finished project!


Ryan McKay
www.flickr.com/photos/readmckay
readmckay.wordpress.com

[weezerisrock]

I just realized my title is a bit misleading about flickr's role in this. Is there someone who could change it for me?

Maybe to How to use video to showcase before and after shots hosted on flickr?

Or maybe even something smaller. Sorry about the confusion.

[Nicole]

Fixed your title

[weezerisrock]

Thank you!

[Austin_HXC]

Neat tutorial.
I prefer just a side by side before and after picture, though.
I find that someone might just skip your video if they have to watch 10 seconds, whereas the side by side is right there in their face.

To each their own.

[weezerisrock]

I like the side by sides too. Those certainly give the opportunity to really study the photos. They both have their charms

[wulf]

I think it is good to keep the video short - then it can act as a neat preview to viewing the before and after shots in more detail. When I get to that stage, I normally open the before and after shots in two tabs in Firefox so I can easily switch between them and compare changes in each area.

For a slightly more involved video, you could add extra stages reflecting the process by which you transformed the photo. I might try that next time I do some editing to test the idea (and, if it works, to show what I mean).

Wulf