How can I turn a picture into a video?

April 5, 2008 7:17 AM

I have a picture that I want to make a video out of.

It's a jpg, but I want it to be displayed for about 3 minutes, with an accompanying mp3. I want the end result to be something like an .avi, so I can send it to a friend and they can play it out of the box, probably in VLC. Powerpoint is not an option, but that's something like what I want, without all the fancy animation. Just a stationary picture, displayed to music.

How do I go about creating this? I know a little about muxing video and audio (I'm assuming VirtualDub will do the job?), but I have no idea what program to use to create the video of the image. I'd prefer some nice simple point and click software to something technical.

posted by Rabulah to media & arts (5 comments total)

Windows Movie Maker or iMovie could probably do the job. Just import the image and mp3 and stretch the image to accommodate the music. If you have Adobe Premiere or After Effects they would do the job too, but that might be a little overkill.
posted by husky at 7:19 AM on April 5

I can confirm that iMovie does this perfectly. I have made lots of little slideshows and such for various events and it has always worked quite well. You're likely to end up with quicktime, though. Not sure if that is a problem in your particular case.
posted by MasterShake at 7:55 AM on April 5

I can confirm the same for Windows Movie Maker, which creates WMV or some such files.
posted by moonmilk at 11:54 AM on April 5

I use MS Photo Story to do this type of thing (though I usually use multiple photos) and I find it much easier than Windows Movie Maker. Free download.
posted by juniper at 3:27 PM on April 5

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Unfortunately, Windows Movie Maker kept crashing on loading, and Photo Story wouldn't even install. Photo Movie Creator did the job in the end.
posted by Rabulah at 2:19 AM on April 6