Add Flash to online albums

From...

by Melissa Perenson

(IDG) -- Already tired of the ordinary digital photo album? SmashCast is betting on just that with the introduction of a free Web-based Flash moviemaking application called PhotoPoint MovieMaker on the PhotoPoint.com site.

SmashCast, formerly known as Mslide, will offer similar, custom-branded versions of SmashCast MovieStudios on other photo-sharing sites as well. The program will pop up soon on Zing.com and Hewlett-Packard's Cartogra.com, company representatives say.

SmashCast MovieStudios represents a complete overhaul of what was once known as Mslide, the engine behind ZingShows on Zing.com. However, Mslide created only a simple slide show with text and music viewed by Microsoft's Media Player or RealNetworks' RealPlayer. MovieStudios takes the concept further by making it easy for you to point and click your way through creating your own Flash animations, or "movies," pulling together still images, music, and text captions in a snappy and dynamic manner.

You build your movies from still images, not video, which is easier to share. Not everyone has the bandwidth to view online home movies, although those custom video services are starting to appear.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE

IDG.net home page

PC World home page

Animation in a Flash

Your pictures ought to be in Yahoo

Web movies change real time view

Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net

E-Business World

TechInformer

Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you

Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletters

Search IDG.net in 12 languages

News Radio

Fusion audio primers

Computerworld Minute

Built entirely in Macromedia's Flash, SmashCast MovieStudios is the Web-based application that powers PhotoPoint MovieMaker. You don't need to know anything about Flash; follow the step-by-step template, and you're off and running.

Build a Photo Palette

Each movie can feature up to 24 photos; you can select from 30 templates for animated backgrounds and transitions. Many have themes built around such family milestones as birthdays, holidays, vacations, and weddings. Other categories include pets and hobbies, and the company is adding holiday theme templates next.

The software can directly import images from a PhotoPoint album, or you can use images from other sources. The images must be in the supported formats, which are BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, and TIFF. Then you simply storyboard your images, enter credits, select the sound track, arrange the images, and add captions. The sound track options include music from some 117 popular song titles across a variety of genres.

You can't save movies to your hard disk, only to the PhotoPoint Web site. But they are generally accessible through a link the site assigns, and you can make the viewing private via password protection. While PhotoPoint MovieMaker's incarnation of SmashCast is fully embedded in PhotoPoint and branded for its site, SmashCast's servers actually host and broadcast each movie.

Businesses can make use of SmashCast's technology, too. Commercial Studios is available for license to individual companies; with that program, companies can painlessly create slick, professional looking sales- and marketing-oriented animations for such industries as real estate, travel, and entertainment. Access to the application would be via the company intranet, but SmashCast will still handle the back-end hosting and playback of movies.

Users stream to Web video
February 3, 2000
Video, audio to enhance e-mail messages
November 13, 1998
Managing the flow of streaming media
August 6, 1999
Invasion of the killer Internet movies
May 16, 2000
Internet video may be coming to your TV
July 20, 2000

Trim your photos for the Net
(PC World)
Broadcast your video on the Web
(PC World)
Your pictures ought to be in Yahoo
(PC World)
Broadcast your videos on Lycos
(PC World)
Review | Flashy Web pages
(PC World)
Animation in a Flash
(MacWorld)
A Blockbuster deal coming to a PC near you
(The Industry Standard)
Web movies change real time view
(PC World)

PhotoPoint.com

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.