Photosynth - '3D' pictures of biblical sites

Back in June I noted that Microsoft had offered the Photosynth online site in beta. It is now out of beta and fully up and running. (Reviews and videos here at CNET and here at PCMag.) Some observations:

• It's FREE!
  
• I have had mixed results running it in Firefox. It works fine in IE7.
• It is not true 3D, but it is a remarkable way of getting a fuller sense of a location.
• There are a number of biblical sites available for viewing. Check out sites in Turkey (including Izmir, Istanbul, Pergamum, Ephesus, Miletus...) or Greece (mainly just Athens).
• There are also a couple of Bibles (Gutenberg and Mainz) from the Library of Congress.

The really neat thing is that it is quite easy to create your own Photosynth images. To make a truly 'synthy' pic (i.e., with lots of overlapping views), you need to plan your strategy in advance. I did, however, create one simply using some pics I already had taken of Beit Shean. Click on the graphic to see my trial which was as easy as uploading a bunch of pics.
In my June post, I had also noted the OpenPhotoVR site. It also can be used to create this kind of '3D' pic, but Photosynth does it automatically whereas OpenPhotoVR requires (and sometimes better results might be possible) editing to describe the views.

Adobe Photoshop Express now online

Adobe Photoshop Express went live online today. This free service (with registration) provides some excellent photo editing tools. You can upload pics from your computer or from online Photobucket, Facebook, or Picasa accounts. You can create online Galleries or Albums with 2Gb of free storage. It's reasonably fast, but you do have to reckon on the time for uploading, editing, and saving. Where it can probably be most handy is that after editing, in addition to saving it to your online gallery, you can download, email, link, or embed it. For blogging, this will be pretty handy. Here's a quick example of embedding a pic I edited.

No doubt it is faster working on your own computer, but this is free and provides a nice way for online sharing. Compare it to Picasa...

Parable in PowerPoint and Publishing to the Web

I have recently been doing some work on the 10 Bridesmaids parable in Matthew 25.1-13. To tell the story, I wanted to use PowerPoint and some simple illustration, but I also wanted to do so free of any copyright issues. So, in addition to using my own translation, I created all the graphics from scratch using an old Serif DrawPlus program. (More info here.) After creating the PPT with all the animations, I wanted to share this on the web. Here are a few examples . (Please forgive the lousy narration and background audio. I was doing this quickly and I threw together the audio using a free music program that is designed to generate copyright free midis. With more time, I would probably use something like "Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying" or "Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers." They are available with clear copyright from a site like the CyberHymnal. Since they come in MIDI, and the programs I will use require WMA or MP3, one then has to convert them using a program like JetAudio.) I tried four [

• HERE is a version using Camtasia Studio. Its a FLV file with narration. What's nice about this one is how fast it loads. Since I basically just ran my PPT, the timings are pretty good. (A little trick: in PowerPoint, if you click on the little slideshow icon at the lower right while you are holding down the CTRL key, it will open a mini version of the slide show and allow you to still see your slides and edit them. I recorded the mini version.)
• HERE is a version done using the free Microsoft Producer program. This is really easy to use. You import your finished slideshow and add any audio if you want it. I used music but no narration for this one, but you can do both. (BTW, you will need IE to view this, not Firefox. This one takes a while to fully load.) I didn't bother to set the timings on the slides, but that would be possible to fix, and I also didn't bother to properly name all the slides. Do note that it does preserve the animations. The program does allow for the addition of narration and video to the PPT.
  
• Check out this birth of Jesus video from Zondervan which uses audio from their "The Bible Experience." Note that it is really only a bunch of pictures with the 'Ken Burns' pan/zoom effect used. This effect is accomplished using the free Microsoft PhotoStory program. As an example, HERE is one I did using my PPT slides and adding audio and narration.(5Mb) No animations, but it could work well for some PPTs.
• Another really easy way to publish PowerPoints to the web is by using . Here it is embedded. (Note that it doesn't preserve animations.)

• BTW: Want to save one of those little videos from Google or YouTube or such? (I have had occasion to need to do so when I've been presenting somewhere without web access.) I've tried a bunch of browser plugins for video downloads, but the best way I have found is to use KeepVid. Simply enter the URL of a page with a video, and it downloads it to your computer. As always, observe proper copyright restrictions.

My point? Each of these options is basically free to do. You do have to learn a bit about how they work, but they really are geared for a popular market so that anyone can do them. With the slideshare one, it is simply a matter of uploading the PPT. No doubt there are other ways to accomplish getting PPT to the web (e.g., Impatica for PowerPoint, but it costs $500), but for the educator who only does something like this on a very occasional basis, these are viable alternatives. If you have other or better options, I'd love to hear from you.

Still more web and media tools for educators

I have posted previously (here and here and here) about a variety of tools I use for working with graphics and video for educational stuff. Here are some updates and great free offers!
Screen Capture:

• I had previously recommended the FastStone Capture program. Since that posting, the latest version (5.7) has become Shareware instead of Freeware. The clever web surfer will find the last free version (5.3). It is the first tool I use.
• TechSmith's SnagIt is an outstanding screen capture program with lots of extra features. It is able to capture scrolling windows.

Video Capture:

• I had previously looked at a variety of lowcost screen/video capture programs. (WME, Wink, Zentation, VCASMO, etc.) It really can't get too much easier than Jing, however, and it is free. Download the program, set up a free account, and record in a variety of ways. You can even store the video online. HERE is an example of a Jing video of a BibleWorks procedure I had demonstrated in class using Parallel Windows and the Text Comparison tool.
• TechSmith's Camtasia Studio screen recording program is another fine product. The first time I tried it, I had no problem capturing a region of the screen along with microphone audio and a webcam feed. Very impressive...
  

UPDATE1: Read the comments to this post, especially if you are a Logos user and need to capture views of long windows.
UPDATE2: Here is a post on "Further Investigations into Free Screencast Software." It is noted there that the latest SnagIt is greatly improved. It also provides a comparison of Jing, Camtasia, and CamStudio. Also on that blog are "Quick Tips for Improving Screencasts."
UPDATE3: "Learning to Use Camtasia" online tutorial.
UPDATE4: (2008.02.11) Yet another nice, free screencasting tool: FreeScreenCast

More Web and Media Tools for Educators

This posting is somewhat off-topic, but I've previously posted here and here about various tools that I am playing around with as I seek to create effective online educational resources related to my courses in biblical studies. Specifically, I'm exploring various ways of integrating audio, video, screen captures, and PowerPoint to create learning experiences which can be shared online. (I'm also trying to do this with tools that are free.) As noted in those other posts, to do screen captures with audio overlay (e.g., to demonstrate how to Bible software), I've been using Windows Media Encoder or Wink.
In contrast to screen captures, if you have a PowerPoint show and want to integrate it with audio and/or video commentary, a great resources is Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint. It's free, rather versatile, and fairly straightforward to use. With this, as well as the other programs I'll mention, probably the biggest issue is simply getting the video and not making your files too huge. With Producer, you will need your own server space to upload your final project.
Alerted by observations on the UK Web Focus blog, you should also check out two other possibilities: Zentation and VCASMO. Both are free. I worked with VCASMO a bit, and it really is quite simple. Upload your PowerPoint, PDFs, images, music, or videos, and then you edit timing on a storyboard. You have a free 1Gb of space to use.

Regarding images and such...

Okay, this is not specifically related to biblical studies, but I find that I am regularly making recommendations to others about image editing tools.
For detailed or extensive editing work, I use Adobe PhotoElements. It's slow, somewhat expensive, and requires some work to learn to use. Many times, it is way more program than I need, and so I like to recommend the following free programs.

• I really like the FastStone line of products. Their Image Viewer is as fast as IrfanView (another fine free program that can handle a ton of formats and can use plugins), and it is very nice for quick manipulation of images.
  
• If you do need more extensive image editing power, I think Paint.NET is the best free program out there. (Some people like GIMP, and it may do more, but it seems a bit more difficult to me.) [UPDATE: 2007.12.03] Another program that works well and is fairly simple to use is Photobie, which is quite nice for graphics creation, image and photo editing, and gif animation.
• UPDATE (2007.12.11): A recent CNET-TV feature highlighted free Photoshop alternatives. In addition to Paint.NET and GIMP which I noted above, they also pointed to an online photo editor, FotoFlexer. It handles most basic editing and is rather fast.
  
• PhotoElements includes an album feature, but I actually prefer using Picasa, Google's free program that provides for easy organizing, editing, and sharing of images.
• I have tried a lot of screen capture utilities, and by far the one I like the best is the FastStone Capture program. It can capture scrolling screens, a variety of shapes, saves in a variety ways, and also includes a color picker.
• [UPDATE: 2008.03.20] If you need to create your own vector graphics, there are four decent options:
  a) Creative Docs.NET is an excellent choice and it is free. In addition to creating graphics, it also works as a page layout tool for posters, illustrations, short newsletters, etc.
  b) Inkspace is very nice though there is a bit of a learning curve.
  c) though an older version, Creature House Expression 3 (now owned by Microsoft) is a fine, free program.
  d) Serif Draw Plus version 4 is a free download, and is good enough, but once you get on Serif's list, you can upgrade to version 7 for only about $8. (Note the very latest version of DrawPlus, version 8, will cost close to $100.)