Digital+Storytelling

This is a Digital Storytelling project which is of the adolescent life of someone who became a friend of mine. You are about to hear (and see images) of the things he has encountered. Much of it is extreme, but it is undoubtedly a story of inspiration, because my friend made a wonderful life out of the mistakes he made. He found a way to rebuilt his life in a complete and utterly unique way. He is now the nicest, most passionate person you could ever meet. And most important of all, he has no connections to the way he once was; he has eliminated those ties.

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Summary: I have chosen to browse the internet for a new program to make a video with -- one I wasn't familiar with. This, I thought, would make me more independent and allow me the chance to explore the many options of video-making. The program I chose is called AVS Video Editor 4, and it has many features which I wasn't introduced to before. One of the features I found useful -- though I didn't use it in my video -- was the video effects. It allowed the video-maker to have images appear in an unusual way, such as overlapped photos, photos which would begin minute and gradually increase in size, and, what is perhaps most useful, images which could very easily be sized directly from the program. One of the features I did use was "transitions." This is a feature that converts one image to the next; it replaces what is usually the void nothingness that appears as an image changes to something new. The transition allowed me to choose what action I wanted to occur. There were many to pick from, I believe over 50 different actions, and with appropriate choosing I was able to have drastic actions occur when switching to a drastic image, subtle actions when switching to subtle images. But, what I enjoyed most of all about this program was how extremely easy it was to use. It took little to no time at all figuring it out; in fact, for the most part it was common sense. The downfall of using the AVS Video Editor was that there was a surprise at the end for anyone planning to post their video to a website such as YouTube. This could not be easily done... at least not for the trial members. I had to download a convertor to change the file type, because the original file was something YouTube didn't recognize. Once I finally converted it to something more common (and thankfully there was a nice list to choose file types from) everything pieced together and I was able to upload it to YouTube. But then there came one final surprise! There is a tiny logo that appears in the center of the video for any of the trial users. Until you purchase the program, the logo exists. All in all, I wish I would have chosen a more friendly program. However, there was really no way to predict all this unless I would have first researched AVS Video Editor to see what others had to say about it.