The past few "Idea Factory" articles dwelled on some new avenues of earning additional production dollars with your Toaster/Flyer system. This time lets tackle something so fundamental, so easy, that literally NO prior experience is needed to pull this off. I'm talking about using your Toaster to transfer stills to video. You actually don't even need a Flyer to do this job since you could utilize only Framestores to accomplish this task. In doing so, however, please keep in mind that you will need to give your Toaster plenty of preload time for Framestores, CG pages, effects and transitions. If you need to do quick transitions and run the images by very fast you will need the Flyer to convert Framestores to Flyer Stills with practically NO preload time when using the NLE. The use of transitions and effects will depend largely on your application. For youth-oriented videos (like photographers specializing in schools) I use lots of different mattes, transitions, border wipes, and digital transitions. For an anniversary scrapbook or similar application I tend to use only the dip-to-matte fade, set to BLACK with a 1 second transition time.

To begin with, I know a lot of you use your scanner to enter and manipulate stills. While this method IS superior, it WILL take considerably more time just to load and manipulate each image, then resize it to fit the TV screen. Each picture handled in this fashion could take ten minutes if you are picky. I have learned that there is a better method for transferring lots of pictures to video in a short length of time. Granted, the quality isn't quite as good as the scanning method, but for reproduction on a television set with it's reduced resolution, you can't tell much difference between the two methods. So my recommendation for critical image quality in small jobs is to stick with the scanner method, but for converting large numbers of photos quickly for television viewing only, try using a camera stand. There are dozens of these units on the market, and they range from just a few hundred dollars (you furnish the camera) to the complete set-up which includes a color camera in the thousands of dollars.

For the purposes of this article, let me describe the unit I use here. It is the "Visual Presenter!" model by Doar Communications. It boasts a modest 16"x 22" footprint, so it takes very little room on a desktop. This particular model is more than just a simple camera stand, and comes fully equipped for live presentations as well. It has two composite video inputs (with audio), and composite video as well as BNC video out, with a master audio out jack. A/V Inputs are instantly switchable from the top panel. A genlock BNC connector is also located on the rear panel for inserting the unit into a video chain or passing through a switcher. An S-Video output jack is also provided. Connected to a projector, any object or image that fits within the viewing area can be projected to a large audience. It has AUTO/MANUAL White balance controls, as well as POS/NEG image (for 35mm slides) and COLOR/B&W selector (for use with monochrome images). On the front panel you have controls for FOCUS and ZOOM, as well as a manual IRIS control. You have a choice of two ways to light the subject, either with two fluorescent tubes located in moveable arms on each side of the unit, or switching to the internally-lighted opaque base which is better suited for slides. The camera head is affixed to an adjustable and telescopic arm attached to the rear back of the unit. The head houses a single CCD color chip and the lens attachment. The light arms and camera attachment fold flat onto the viewing service when not in use. This unit has all the bells and whistles, including SubCarrier and Phase adjustment screws and dipswitches and sells in the neighborhood of $3500. It is worth every penny and I have paid for it several times over.

Originally I purchased this unit for legal/medical/forensic video jobs, but found it indispensable for a number of other tasks. I have several clients who are professional photographers and I produce promotional videos for them to play for high school students searching for a photographer to do their senior portraits. Traditionally, the program runs about 6-12 minutes and is REALLY fast-paced and accompanied with driving rock music. One of my clients even videotapes some sessions and I digitize the footage using ChromaFX and fly it in between segments. Even with CG pages ("CALL TODAY!") and short video vignettes I can usually cram 80-100 or pictures in a ten-minute video promo. As a test with each photographer I digitized ten pictures using both the scanning method and the Presenter! method. Ten pictures scanned and sized by computer took at least 20 minutes. The same pictures were then sized (instantly) with the Presenter! And digitized to the Flyer as FlyerStills in just under 3 minutes. Everyone could see the difference in the pictures when A/B comparisons were made, but considering the additional cost of production, all parties decided it wasn't worth the extra money considering how little time each image spent on the TV screen.

Another lucrative market for the "still show" is weddings. Many times the client will want a collage of pictures taken from "the early years" of both the bride and groom, culminating in the staged wedding portraits of the two of them. This video is usually shown on a big-screen TV during the wedding reception, or sometimes during or after the rehearsal dinner. The Presenter! will make really short work of a usually tedious job of painstakingly scanning and sizing each individual image for the TV screen. With The Presenter! I can instantly look at my framing on the screen. If the image is too tall I can elect to crop it or I can create an instant matte by first placing a black sheet of photographic paper under the picture. I used to matte certain pictures in ToasterPaint but the "instant" method works about as well and saves the client even more production time. Some of the short cuts may not be acceptable to some clients, so I always give them their choice and they can act according to their needs and discriminating tastes. Since I charge a simple hourly wage as opposed to a different rate for literally every service it makes it easy to forecast a time frame and therefore a production budget.

Many of my clients are retirees who want to take select pictures from their scrapbook and making a nice flowing "slide show" for television, complete with musical memories from the era. They give these videos to their children and grandchildren for Christmas presents of for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. These people are usually on a fixed income, so remaining affordable is very important to them when they start looking for a videographer to do their job for them. For music, I am very careful to either use acceptable music from my production library or I might use records that they bring to me from their own collection. In this event, I make sure to note on their statement that CLIENT FURNISHED THEIR OWN MUSIC. NO CHARGES FOR INCLUDING THE MUSIC ARE REFLECTED IN THIS STATEMENT. Many of their selections are out of print or public domain, but I do not take chances with regard to using copyrighted music. I do not support piracy in any form, but sometimes those musical memories mean so much to the individual, and diving into the red tape of copyright usage just for one video copy for only private use hardly (in my humble opinion) constitutes a major infraction of the existing laws. I am a music publisher myself, and if I learned that some old couple out there used one of my songs for a "special memory" I would feel more flattered than irate. Now, if they had 5,000 copies duplicated and were selling their video to the public, I might take a different stance. It IS a very gray area, so you have been warned!

Other potential customers for this type of video would be colleges and universities wishing to have a promo video for recruiting students to their campus'; fraternal organizations and groups wanting to create a "slide show" for members; churches who want to show their congregation a summer youth camp program or the adventures of a recent mission; real estate companies creating a "property scrapbook"; elementary schools using a child ID program; even an individual's stills of the contents of their house for insurance purposes. This particular form of producing video's of stills can be utilized in as many situations as one can imagine, and it takes no special skills right from the start. All you really need is your trusty Toaster, a video camera, a wall and a couple of light bulbs and you, too, can create a "Video Slide Show" for fun and profit!

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