Photo Story 3 - PapaJohn's Newsletter Archive

It finally happened... the development, beta testing, speculation, and rumor phases are over... Photo Story 3 was officially announced and released on Wednesday. The verdicts are coming in, pros and cons, as you'd expect for anything done by Microsoft. Rave reviews, some negative comments, and issues we are just beginning to hear about and understand. For me, the continuing development of Photo Story is why I started my Photo Story website for version 2, and why I'm folding my version 3 website into a new major branch of my Movie Maker 2 site.

Microsoft expanded the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Program and Photo Story 3 is one of 7 additional bonus items for participating. It's a free download for those who opt into the program. If you don't already have it, go get it. Here's the download link:

WGA is being used by Microsoft as part of its effort to combat software piracy and create a better experience for users of genuine Microsoft Windows software. The bottom line is that, if you have a legitimate copy of Windows XP, you can download a free copy of Photo Story 3. I already had a copy but wanted to check the normal process to get it; I did that Wednesday afternoon and let it install over my previous setup. All went well.

The tricky part for me was finding the Windows XP key... it's a 3 strikes and you're out process. I made it after taking 2 strikes. My Toshiba laptop came with a Toshiba DVD, not a Windows XP disc. I ran a Belarc report, which includes keys for installed software... I messed up on my first attempt to enter all 25 characters right - strike 1. I found a typo and tried again - strike 2 and I didn't know why. Is it because my laptop recently went out and came back with a new hard drive, with a ghosted image from someplace other than what was on it originally? With one strike left, I found a Windows XP sticker on the bottom of the laptop with a different key, and it worked. That got me to the download package and the installation.

I've been playing with PS3 a good bit, and I like to illustrate things with examples. Here are a few. Two were made with Photo Story 3 and two are combo projects, using both Photo Story 3 and Movie Maker 2. I both apps, but I'm particularly intrigued by what you can do when you use the best of each and work them together, doing things not possible with one of them alone.

In this newsletter, I'll explore the new version a bit. There won't be a mini-tutorial, just an overview.... with some details of course.

• Another routine notice about the change from a free newsletter subscription to a paid one. I'll carry this notice one last time next week, in the last of the free subscription issues.

Next Week's Issue #26 will be the end of the free subscriptions. See the main page of my www.papajohn.org website to continue beyond that.

A paid subscription is for 52 issues, not a calendar year... those subscribing before issue #27 will receive 52 issues after #26. Subscriptions after that will get 52 issues.

If you'd rather send a check instead of using PayPal, send an email and I'll return it with my real name and address.

• Another day, another couple deadlines. Besides the weekly newsletter tonight, today was the deadline for my final submittal of an article for MaximumPC's winter quarterly special. I submitted the 176 MB zipped file for the CD to be included earlier this week. It'll be a 5 or 6 page tutorial titled 'Make a Killer Flick with Movie Maker 2'. The issue will be on newsstands December 7th and be there for 3 months.

• I was asked to checkout the proDAD Adorage package for Movie Maker 2, which I'll start doing this weekend. it's a package of special effects.

In a word, the new version of Photo Story is fantastic. It's moved from a slide show app tucked in with a pack of utilities for $20 to a main feature, right up there with Movie Maker as high-end free software. :)

I had a hard time getting those interested in developing high end slide-shows to use Photo Story 2. When they tried it and also Movie Maker 2, they decided to keep going with Movie Maker 2 - mainly to use the special transitions. I expect this bias to change with Photo Story 3. Here are some highlights of the new version:

After the welcome window, you import your pictures.... the little icons under the preview monitor are for levels adjustments, red-eye reduction, rotation by 90 degrees, and editing (rotate or crop, Auto Fix contrast or color levels or red eye reduction, add special effects - choose from 10 effects).

Drag and drop them from your file browser or import via the menu. The other feature on the page is for removal of black borders.

The Next window is for adding text and special effects (the same 10 you can get to on the previous window). Version 2 was limited to text on the title picture. Version 3 lets you add it to any of them. If you add text to an image, it's pasted to where you put it, so the text moves with the picture when you apply motion effects.

Choosing Save Project... on any window saves the project file, now with a wp3 extension. The project file is, like version 2, a compressed file with all the source files for the project copied into it. With the right utility, you can reach in and copy a file from it.

Next comes the window to narrate and customize the motion. The narration seems the same as it was before but the motion feature is much better... it's outstanding!!! I have to show you that window after this one.

Press the Customize Motion... option under the monitor and go to this working window, where you can pinpoint the starting and ending position. The picture I'm using in this one is 4072 x 3054 pixels (12 megapixels).

The tightest I can go into this picture is 246 x 185 pixels... an area of just over 1/3 of one percent of the total area of the picture.

Using a picture of 320x240 pixels, the tightest I can go in is to 19x14 pixels.... again an area of just over 1/3 of one percent.

When I extrapolate that, thinking of rendering to an 800x600 video file and using the tightest points.... how many megapixels would the starting picture have to be to have the tightest zoom as 800x600 pixels... so the video is a sharp as it can possibly be when saved at 800x600? A few calculations shows it's a picture from a 118 megapixel camera (13242 x 8904 pixels). Of course I had to make one that big and try it.

The 118 megapixel BMP weighed in at a file size of 354 MB.... and the error message taught me something. The maximum size of 7200x7200 equates to one from a 52 megapixel camera. That should do for a while.

I made a 7200 x 7200 picture and tried it. With black borders, the total was effectively 9600 x 7200 pixels and the tightest zoom I could do was to 579 x 434 pixels.... that would make a pretty high quality video using the tightest zoom. I tried it, but the rendering was taking so long I aborted the process abnormally.... more on that later.

The second tab in the window provides 48 transitions to pick from, and lets you set the duration from 0.1 second to as many seconds as the lesser of the two picture durations... extend the picture duration and you can then extend the transition duration.

The final window before rendering is to add background music. Select a file as you did in version 2, use the new create music feature of version 3 (high quality midi music), or mix them... by mixing I mean select a different background music file for each image, not overlap the music files.

The profiles are .prx files in the Photo Story 3 for Windows\Profiles\1033 subfolder. As with Movie Maker 2 profiles, you can create custom ones using the Profile Editor.

You can see in the above picture that I made a couple personal ones to be able to create widescreen 16:9 stories. They work well.... but all the work in Photo Story 3 is done on the assumption you'll be rendering it in normal 4:3 aspect ratio, so you need to think a bit about your input picture sizes. I'll get into that in another newsletter.

... back to some comments about that rendering I started last night, the one I aborted part way through because it was taking so long. The story was using a single 7200 x 7200 pixel image. Today I let the render go on, watching CPU, memory and hard drive usage. I learned a couple things.

My laptop uses a C drive for the operating system and an E drive for other stuff. Photo Story 3 is on the E drive, but there are no options in it to select a folder for temporary files. As the story was being rendered, I noticed the file wasn't building up where I told it to, so the data had to be flowing into temporary file(s) first, and then from there to the final one. Where were they?

c:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp\PhotoStorySession_\PSPreviewImage_

... in my C drive where I don't want them. Of course they disappeared as soon as the rendering was finished.

What about last nights temporary files when I closed PS3 abnormally? I found them still in a PSPreviewImage0 folder.... by abnormally shutting it down, they hadn't been cleaned up.

The temporary files have interesting names and sizes... more about them another day, after I explore them a bit. I looked at some of them and my guess is they are key frames made at regular intervals, using just the pixels from the selected area.

That's enough of an introduction for this newsletter. As always, it gets long and large.

I asked Microsoft which newsgroup we should use for Photo Story 3. We'd been using the one for the Plus pack, but the new version is a stand-alone product. I was told that, at least for now, use:

I'll see you there and in the forums at WindowsMovieMakers. It wouldn't surprise me to see a new one for Photo Story 3 someday.

The feedback about Photo Story 3 is just starting to roll in. What will be the new issues? One item of note that I learned yesterday, not a new issue, more of a basic limitation when playing photo stories. The special player to view WMV files on Macs has the Media 9 codecs hard-coded in them. They don't download from a server in the background as they do for the Windows Media Player. And the hard coding doesn't include the image codec needed to play photo stories. If you are sending a story to a friend who uses a Mac, run the story through Movie Maker first and give them the movie file instead.

Other interesting issues or limitations will surely come out of the woodwork as time goes by. And I have a lot more limits to test in it. I'll do another newsletter in about a month and explore Photo Story 3 some more.

I look forward to comments and discussion about this and other newsletters on the forums at:

I'm involved in many things that support the users of Movie Maker and PhotoStory, and adding more daily. Here's a list of what is available to the public. Some are free and others are reasonably priced.

Movie Maker 2 - Do Amazing Things

(with its online companion on www.papajohn.org)

MaximumPC's winter quarterly special - tutorial 'Make a Killer Flick with Movie Maker 2'. The issue will be on newsstands December 7th and be there for 3 months.

Movie Maker 2 - www.papajohn.org - two goals: to help you solve problems, and to be the online companion to the Do Amazing Things book... and currently thinking of another goal of movie making and editing styles.

PhotoStory 3 - www.papajohn.org - there's a new major branch at the bottom of it, which is only starting to be rolled out.

Movie Maker 2/PhotoStory 2 newsletter. The annual subscription fee is $20 and the link to subscribe is on the main page of my Movie Maker website at:

#29 - Follow-up on Photo Story 3... what's been learned about it since its release a month ago

Transition Maker 2 (TM2) - a utility to make the ultimate in personal and custom transitions for Movie Maker 2:

I routinely beta test the Pixelan packages and think very highly of their people and products: Their SpiceFX packages of additional transitions and effects for Movie Maker 2 are available at:

If you can't save a movie because your project has become too complex, e-mail it to me and I'll divide it into manageable sub-projects for you, and provide detailed instructions to render the parts and assemble them into your final movie. $49.95 - for details, see the sidebar on the Problem Solving > Can't Save a Movie page of

Movie Maker 2/Photo Story 2 training and support services start at $50 per hour - email me at PapaJohn@CharterMi.net and I'll help you determine your needs, and work with you to plan and implement them.

Wedding website/video packages start at $2,500 + travel expenses. See www.jill-mark.papajohn.org for a sample.

About John 'PapaJohn' Buechler from Microsoft.com

John "PapaJohn" Buechler, of Kalamazoo, Mich., goes by PapaJohn online. An avid user of Movie Maker since its first release, and a regular supporter of the community of Movie Maker users, John received a 2003 MVP award from Microsoft for that support. In March 2003, he started a comprehensive website about Movie Maker 2 at www.PapaJohn.org. He maintains the website, writes books and articles, teaches, and provides support services - all for the community of Movie Maker 2 users. An engineer by formal education, John is a computer database and multimedia expert by business and personal experience. He co-authored the first book about Movie Maker 2 and is actively working on a second one. You can find his advice in the Windows XP Movie Maker newsgroup and in the Windows Movie Makers Forums.

This newsletter is republished with permission of John "PapaJohn" Buechler.
Please note that this is an archive of newsletters and some information may become outdated. PapaJohn, and the webmaster of this site, provides this information "AS IS" with no warranties.

Visit - PapaJohn's Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 2 Newsletter Index

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